February 27, 2008 on 9:24 pm | In Uncategorized | No Comments
This election is also about all those Americans who want to seize this moment. To build the kind of future that we know awaits. It’s about teachers determined to see their students succeed in this new century and young people, hungry for opportunities their parents never dreamed of. It’s about the businesses and unions training people for green collar jobs, the high wage, high-skilled, high-energy jobs of the future. It’s about the scientists and researchers who want to do stem cell research and find treatments and cures for devastating diseases. It’s about our contractors and construction workers who want to rebuild America from the bridges in Minnesota to the levees in New Orleans. It’s about the men and women who wear the uniform of our country who deserve a Commander in Chief who knows they are magnificent but that force should be used as a last resort and not a first resort. – Hillary Clinton
But in the end, enacting this agenda won’t just require an investment. It will require a new spirit of cooperation, innovation, and shared sacrifice. We’ll have to remind ourselves that we rise and fall as one nation; that a country in which only a few prosper is antithetical to our ideals and our democracy; and that those of us who have benefited greatly from the blessings of this country have a solemn obligation to open the doors of opportunity, not just for our children, but to all of America’s children. That’s the kind of vision I have for this country, and that’s the kind of vision I hope to make real as President of the United States. – Barack Obama
February 11, 2008 on 8:41 pm | In Photos by me | No Comments
Town Meeting Of The World: “The Image Of America And The Youth Of The World”
With Sen. Robert F. Kennedy and Gov. Ronald Reagan
As Broadcast over the CBS Television Network and the CBS Radio Network
Monday, May 15, 1967, 10:00 – 11:00 pm. EDT
Charles Collingwood, Host
STEPHEN MARKS: Senator Kennedy, I’d like to ask you what you think of Dean Rusk’s recent claim that the effect of anti-Vietnam war demonstrations in the States may actually be to prolong the war rather than to shorten it?
SENATOR ROBERT KENNEDY: The war is going on in Vietnam, being extended in Vietnam, really because of the determination of those who are our adversaries, the North Vietnamese, the Vietcong, National Liberation Front. I don’t think a particular action takes place – military action takes place in South Vietnam because of the protests here in the United States. I think that if all the protests were ended, and even if all of the objections to the war came to an end here in this country, that the war in Vietnam would continue.
I’m sure to some extent the fact that there are some protests gives some encouragement to Ho Chi Minh and to others. But I don’t – I certainly don’t think that that’s the reason the war is continuing, and why the casualties are going up.
GOVERNOR REAGAN: Well, I definitely think the demonstrations are prolonging the war in that they’re giving the enemy, who I believe must face defeat on relative comparison of the power of the two nations, they are giving him encouragement to continue, to hold out in the hope that division here in America will bring about a peace without defeat for that enemy.
Many of the demonstrations now taking place in this country could not legally take place if there was a legal declaration of war, so we, I think, are faced with a choice here. But again, and I’m sure the Senator agrees with me, America will jealously guard this right of dissent, because I think the greatness of our country has been based on our thinking that everyone has a right even to be wrong.
CHARLES COLLINGWOOD: I’m Charles Collingwood and this is TOWN MEETING OF THE WORLD, the latest in an occasional series of trans-Atlantic confrontations that’s been going on ever since communication satellites made them possible. With me here in the studio of the BBC in London are a group of young people, university students from – one from the United States, but the rest of them from Europe, Africa and Asia. They are all attending universities in Great Britain. They have ideas, all of them, sometimes provocative ones, about the United States, its role and its image. For the next hour, via the Atlantic communications satellite, they will be participating in a global dialogue with Senator Robert F. Kennedy, Democrat of New York, and Governor Ronald Reagan, Republican of California.
ANNA FORD: I believe the war in Vietnam is illegal, immoral, politically unjustifiable and economically motivated. Could either of you agree with this?
COLLINGWOOD: Who wants to start? Senator Kennedy?
KENNEDY: I don’t agree with that. I have some reservations as I’ve stated them before about some aspects of the war, but I think that the United States is making every effort to try to make it possible for the people of South Vietnam to determine their own destiny. I think that’s all we want – no matter how – how we – what reservations we have about the conduct of the war. I think that we’re all agreed in the United States that if the war can be settled and the people of South Vietnam can determine their own destiny and determine their own future, that we want to leave South Vietnam. That’s the stated governmental policy, certainly what I would like to see, and I think that’s backed by the vast majority of American people. The fact is that the insurgency against – that’s taking place in South Vietnam is being supported by North Vietnam. If both of us withdraw and let the people of South Vietnam determine and decide what they want, what kind of government they want, what kind-of future they want, what kind of economic system they want to establish, I think that’s all we’re interested in, that’s all we’re interested in accomplishing. So I think it’s quite different than you’ve described it.
COLLINGWOOD: Governor Reagan, what about you?
REAGAN: Well, I think we’re very much in agreement on this, that this country of ours has a long history of non-aggression but also a willingness to befriend and go to the aid of those who would want to be free and determine their own destiny. Now, I think all of us are agreed that war is probably man’s greatest stupidity and I think peace is the dream that lives in the heart of everyone wherever he may be in the world, but unfortunately, unlike a family quarrel, it doesn’t take two to make a war. It only takes one, unless the other one is prepared to surrender at the first hint of force. I do believe that our goal is the right of a people to self-determination and to not have a way of life, a government or a system forced upon them.
reagan2020.us/speeches/reagan_kennedy_debate.asp
