Those who seek absolute power, even though they seek it to do what they
regard as good, are simply demanding the right to enforce their own version
of heaven on earth. And let me remind you, they are the very ones who always
create the most hellish tyrannies. Absolute power does corrupt, and those
who seek it must be suspect and must be opposed. Their mistaken course stems
from false notions of equality, ladies and gentlemen. Equality, rightly
understood, as our founding fathers understood it, leads to liberty and to
the emancipation of creative differences. Wrongly understood, as it has been
so tragically in our time, it leads first to conformity and then to
despotism.

Fellow Republicans, it is the cause of Republicanism to resist
concentrations of power, private or public, which enforce such conformity
and inflict such despotism. It is the cause of Republicanism to ensure that
power remains in the hands of the people. And, so help us God, that is
exactly what a Republican president will do with the help of a Republican
Congress.

It is further the cause of Republicanism to restore a clear understanding of
the tyranny of man over man in the world at large. It is our cause to dispel
the foggy thinking which avoids hard decisions in the illusion that a world
of conflict will somehow mysteriously resolve itself into a world of
harmony, if we just don't rock the boat or irritate the forces of
aggression - and this is hogwash.

It is further the cause of Republicanism to remind ourselves, and the world,
that only the strong can remain free, that only the strong can keep the
peace.

Now, I needn't remind you, or my fellow Americans regardless of party, that
Republicans have shouldered this hard responsibility and marched in this
cause before. It was Republican leadership under Dwight Eisenhower that kept
the peace, and passed along to this administration the mightiest arsenal for
defense the world has ever known. And I needn't remind you that it was the
strength and the unbelievable will of the Eisenhower years that kept the
peace by using our strength, by using it in the Formosa Straits and in
Lebanon and by showing it courageously at all times.

It was during those Republican years that the thrust of Communist
imperialism was blunted. It was during those years of Republican leadership
that this world moved closer, not to war, but closer to peace, than at any
other time in the three decades just passed.

And I needn't remind you - but I will - that it's been during Democratic
years that our strength to deter war has stood still, and even gone into a
planned decline. It has been during Democratic years that we have weakly
stumbled into conflict, timidly refusing to draw our own lines against
aggression, deceitfully refusing to tell even our people of our full
participation, and tragically, letting our finest men die on battlefields
(unmarked by purpose, unmarked by pride or the prospect of victory).

Yesterday it was Korea. Tonight it is Vietnam. Make no bones of this. Don't
try to sweep this under the rug. We are at war in Vietnam. And yet the
President, who is Commander-in-Chief of our forces, refuses to say - refuses
to say, mind you, whether or not the objective over there is victory. And
his Secretary of Defense continues to mislead and misinform the American
people, and enough of it has gone by.

And I needn't remind you, but I will; it has been during Democratic years
that a billion persons were cast into Communist captivity and their fate
cynically sealed.

Today in our beloved country we have an administration which seems eager to
deal with communism in every coin known - from gold to wheat, from
consulates to confidence, and even human freedom itself.