Richard Nixon | Speech Accepting the Republican Nomination for President, August 8, 1968
After a decade of upheaval, the 1968 Republican candidate Richard Nixon, as the following passage from his address at the Republican National Convention shows, appealed to conservatives by supporting their demands for a smaller federal government, maintaining law and order, and cutting expenditures for social welfare programs.
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How does Nixon reply to the claim that “law and order” is a code term for racism? According to Nixon, what is the source of the nation’s economic and social problems? How does Nixon view African Americans? |
[T]o those who say that law and order is the code word for racism, there and here is a reply: Our goal is justice for every American. If we are to have respect for law in America, we must have laws that deserve respect. Just as we cannot have progress without order, we cannot have order without progress, and so, as we commit to order tonight, let us commit to progress. And this brings me to the clearest choice among the great issues of this campaign. For the past five years we have been deluged by government programs for the unemployed; programs for the cities; programs for the poor. And we have reaped from these programs an ugly harvest of frustration, violence and failure across the land. And now our opponents will be offering more of the same—more billions for government jobs, government housing, government welfare. I say it is time to quit pouring billions of dollars into programs that have failed in the United States of America. . . . But for those who are able to help themselves—what we need are not more millions on welfare rolls—but more millions on payrolls in the United States of America. Instead of government jobs, and government housing, and government welfare, let government use its tax and credit policies to enlist in this battle the greatest engine of progress ever developed in the history of man—American private enterprise. Let us enlist in this great cause the millions of Americans in volunteer organizations who will bring a dedication to this task that no amount of money could ever buy. . . . Black Americans, no more than white Americans, they do not want more government programs which perpetuate dependency. They don’t want to be a colony in a nation. They want the pride, and the self-respect, and the dignity that can only come if they have an equal chance to own their own homes, to own their own businesses, to be managers and executives as well as workers, to have a piece of the action in the exciting ventures of private enterprise. Source: Richard M. Nixon, “Address Accepting the Presidential Nomination at the Republican National Convention in Miami Beach, Florida,” August 8, 1968, in John T. Woolley & Gerhard Peters, The American Presidency Project, http:/ |
Put It in Context
How does Nixon’s speech reflect conservative ideology?
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