None of us here in Washington knows all or even half of the answers ... If you love your country, don't depend on handouts from Washington for your information. If you cherish your freedom, don't leave it all up to big government.
Interpretation
Dependence on government for information and support can undermine personal freedom and responsibility.
Barry Goldwater's quote emphasizes the importance of self-reliance and critical thinking among citizens. It suggests that true love for one's country involves seeking out one’s own information and not blindly relying on the government, as this could threaten individual freedoms and responsibilities.
In practice
During a political rally emphasizing individual freedoms.
I say further that for this great legislative body to ignore the Constitution and the fundamental concepts of our governmental system is to act in a manner which could ultimately destroy the freedom of all American citizens, including the freedoms of the very persons whose feelings and whose liberties are the major subject of this legislation.
The conservative movement, to which I subscribe, has as one of its basic tenets the belief that government should stay out of people’s private lives. Government governs best when it governs least – and stays out of the impossible task of legislating morality. But legislating someone’s version of morality is exactly what we do by perpetuating discrimination against gays.
Religious factions will go on imposing their will on others unless the decent people connected to them recognize that religion has no place in public policy. They must learn to make their views known without trying to make their views the only alternatives.
A woman has a right to an abortion. That's a decision that's up to the pregnant woman, not up to the pope or some do-gooders or the Religious Right.
The great decisions of government cannot be dictated by the concerns of religious factions. We have succeeded for 205 years in keeping the affairs of state separate from the uncompromising idealism of religious groups and we mustn't stop now. To retreat from that separation would violate the principles of conservatism and the values upon which the framers built this democratic republic.
While I am a great believer in the free enterprise system and all that it entails, I am an even stronger believer in the right of our people to live in a clean and pollution-free environment.
We can have democracy and a prosperous, just, and sustainable human future. Or we can have corporate rule. We cannot have both.
It is a matter of record that in the German Election of 1933, the Communist Party was ordered by its leaders to vote for the Nazis - with the explanation that they could later fight the Nazis for power, but first they had to help destroy their common enemy : capitalism and its parliamentary form of government.
If you don't have a record to run on, you paint your opponent as someone to run from.
The marginalized did not create identity politics: their identities have been forced on them by dominant groups, and politics is the most effective method of revolt.
The effort to calculate exactly what the voters want at each particular moment leaves out of account the fact that when they are troubled the thing the voters most want is to be told what to want.
Appeasement does not work. As was the case in the 1930s, we see in Saddam Hussein an aggressive dictator threatening his neighbors.
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