Name the Right-Winger

Posted by David L. House II @ Intellectual Conservative

Please review the following quotes and determine whether you can name the Republican who spoke these words:

“Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, to assure the survival and success of liberty.”

“The American character has been not only religious, idealistic, and patriotic, but because of these it has been essentially individual”

“Conceived in Grecian thought, strengthened by Christian morality, and stamped indelibly into American political philosophy, the right of the individual against the State is the keystone of our Constitution. Each man is free”

“In Revolutionary times, the cry “No taxation without representation” was not an economic complaint. Rather, it was directly traceable to the eminently fair and just principle that no sovereign power has the right to govern without the consent of the governed. Anything short of that was tyranny. It was against this tyranny that the colonists “fired the shot heard ’round the world””

“If it is in the public interest to maintain an industry, it is clearly not in the public interest by the impact of regulatory authority to destroy its otherwise viable way of life”

“We want prosperity and in a free enterprise system there can be no prosperity without profit. We want a growing economy and there can be no growth without the investment that is inspired and financed by profit. We want to maintain our natural security and other essential programs and we will have little revenue to finance them unless there is profit”

“I would not look with favor upon a president working to subvert the First Amendment’s guarantees of religious liberty”

“Corporate tax rates must also be cut to increase incentives and the availability of investment capital”

“Our practical choice is not between a tax-cut deficit and a budgetary surplus. It is between two kinds of deficits: a chronic deficit of inertia, as the unwanted result of inadequate revenues and a restricted economy, or a temporary deficit of transition, resulting from a tax cut designed to boost the economy, increase tax revenues, and achieve, I believe — and I believe this can be done — a budget surplus. The first type of deficit is a sign of waste and weakness; the second reflects an investment in the future”

Russell Kirk?  William F. Buckley?  Milton Friedman? Hayek? Irving Kristol? Bill Kristol? Ted Cruz? Phyllis Schlafly? Ronald Reagan?  If you guessed any of these names you are incorrect as the aforementioned quotes came from John F. Kennedy.

This proves how far left the Democratic Party has veered.  Yes, John F. Kennedy believed in individual rights, the decentralization of the powers of the federal government, and tax cuts spurring economic growth to produce a budget surplus.  These views would be, in fact are, mercilessly mocked and ridiculed by today’s Democratic Party.

John F. Kennedy once famously stated “And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you — ask what you can do for your country.  My fellow citizens of the world: ask not what America will do for you, but what together we can do for the freedom of man.”  Today the Democratic Party no longer believes in the freedom of man or individual rights, as the sole impetus of the party is the expansion of the state.  For modern liberals it is statism at all costs.  Whatever policy position one has to take, even if that policy position is in direct contradiction to the position you had yesterday, to promote the state, the modern Democrat will take.

Yes, the current mantra of the Democratic Party is no longer “ask not what your country can do for you — ask what you can do for your country.”  A more appropriate statement to summarize the current philosophy of the modern Democratic Party would be “ask not what you can do for yourself or your country, but what the state can do for you.”