Forceful Words for Freedom
Donald Trump’s presidency raised controversy about the civil discourse in our times. Many commentators said he was being irresponsible by using strong language in his speeches and tweets. But forceful language has always been part of political debate and should be used in defense of freedom. As Barry Goldwater said, “I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. And let me remind you that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.”
When confronting the Soviet Union during the Cold War, Ronald Reagan was criticized for his bold language. In his speech to the National Association of Evangelicals (on March 8th, 1983), he used the term “evil empire” to describe the Soviet Union.
Another example of Reagan’s use of strong language is found in his Address at the Brandenburg Gate in West Berlin (June 12th, 1987). Peter Robinson was a speechwriter in the Reagan White House and went to Berlin weeks before the president’s visit to research for the upcoming address. He visited the Berlin Wall and spoke to local residents. While the US diplomats told him not to mention the wall in the speech because the local people were used to it, the residents of Berlin told Mr Robinson they hated it. In response, the Berlin Wall was mentioned in the speech, including the famous line, “Tear down this wall!”
In the days preceding the delivery, White House staff members voiced their opposition to the line that could offend the Soviet leadership. But President Reagan insisted that it remain in the speech. This line has made it one of the most admired speeches of the 20th century.
Similarly, Robert Menzies used powerful language as the leader of Australia’s Liberal Party (which many people today would call offensive). When the Chifley Government tried to nationalise Australia’s banks in 1947, Menzies spoke with great fervor against the move. He delivered the following speech at a forum held at the Sydney Town Hall in August 1947.
In the speech, he called the Labor Party’s proposal a “superb instrument of tyranny.” He also compared the move to nationalise Australia’s banks to the actions of Germany’s fascist leaders how had been defeated only two years earlier.
Throughout the speech, Menzies used powerful figures of speech, including metaphor, tricolon, anaphora and polysyndeton. Comments about rhetorical devices are included in brackets in the text below.
Menzies spoke out against the proposed increase in government control that would follow the nationalization of Australia’s banks. Today, Australians are confronted with extreme control through vaccine mandates and passports and climate change programs. This is the type of “economic dictatorship” that Menzies passionately spoke out against in the following speech. Unfortunately, very few Liberal Party members are speaking the truth and defending freedom as Robert Menzies did in 1947.
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What A Superb Instrument This Is for Tyranny
Robert Menzies, Sydney, 25 August 25 1947
Almost eight years ago, I sat at a microphone as prime minister of the country, and in the name of the free people of Australia declared war upon Germany and upon Germany’s fascist leaders. Today, I stand here in the name of the same free people to declare war on fascism in Australia.
This is a new war, and in this war, the weapons will not be bombs or rifles; they will be public opinion, and speech, and writing, and above all, the conviction of honest minds. But although in that sense it is a different kind of war, the penalty of defeat will be no other, the penalty of defeat will be no less surely the loss of liberty than if Hitler had passed triumphantly to London, and the swastika had flown over this hall. [He used war metaphorically].
The importance of this issue cannot be exaggerated. This proposal for a bank monopoly by government in Australia goes far beyond questions of pounds, shillings and pence. It goes far beyond shareholders. It goes far beyond shareholders. It goes far beyond bank employees. It penetrates into the whole structure of life and liberty in Australia!
If this proposal, unauthorised by any decision of the Australian people, goes through, it will represent an enormous step towards the creation of a state in which the government will tell the citizen how he may live, and what he is to do, and what he is to spend, and in which it will offer to him certain material advantages, or so-called material advantages, in exchange for his true liberty in life.
What is to be taken from the Australian citizen – and I hope that everybody will understand the implications of this matter – is the right to live and work and to conduct his affairs in his own fashion. This was, let me remind you, the right for which this war was fought.
If anybody supposes that the tyrannies which overwhelmed Europe cannot happen in Australia, let me recall to his mind the true nature of the political system of which Hitler and Mussolini were chief spokesmen.
What is the test of a good government? If the test of good government is whether everybody has a job, and that is all, then Hitler satisfied it. Everybody has a job in Germany under Hitler. If the test of good government is whether houses are built, or homes provide for the people, let you remind that Hitler satisfied it. He and his gangsters built more houses than all the Labor ministers of housing in Australia placed end to end. If the test of good government is whether social services and hospital benefits are increasing, he satisfied it. You see what I am emphasising. All these things, which are good and magnificent in themselves, can be provided by tyranny as well as freedom. [Tricolon (repeating three elements): he repeated “If the test of good government” three times].
But that leaves us with a very much more important question. If the test of good government is whether the state is all powerful, with officialdom in charge, with new executive laws every morning, with parliament a sham, with citizens filling in forms and taking orders, and with the free and enterprising spirit of men rebuffed at every turn and men themselves blackmailed in general subservience to a few people, if these things be the test of good government, then once more Hitler satisfied the test. And it was because he did these things that the war had to be fought, not only to deliver the spirit of European man from chains and slavery, but to prevent the contamination of those monstrous doctrines from reaching our own shores. I warn the people of Australia that, not for the first time in history, a nation has fought and is in danger of defeat thereafter.
Now I want to turn from that and put a few plain, simple questions. Who is affected by this proposal?
[Voice from the audience: “Only a few.”]
I always get appropriate assistance. My friend says “Only a few.” Let us consider. Who are affected? A few shareholders? A few score thousands of Australians? No, they are by no means the most vitally affected. If their property is taken, they will be paid for it.
But the great interest in this matter is not of the few but of the many, the customers, the plain people for whom the banks exist. These are of these people in Australia, it is estimated, at least one and a half million. If anybody tells me that of one and a half million anything less than one quarter million are people of very small means, then I will be very much surprised. So if it is a matter of talking about customers, I say they are not a few. The one and a half million represent the best and most frugal and most thrifty and most enterprising people that this country can produce. [Polysyndeton, i.e., repeating conjunctions].
What happens when the banks are nationalised? There is one bank. Today there are nine or ten. Today the small man, the small builder, the man carrying on a tiny shop in a city or in a country town has his choice of a bank. If one bank declines his assistance, then he can go to another, and another. The whole experience that we have had in Australia has shown that competition between banks has always resulted in favour of the banks’ customers. Now I remind you of this. With one bank, there will be a monopoly. No choice will be left to the customer. Either the customer gets his aid from that one place or he does not get it at all. Therefore, a monopoly bank will be able to control the whole of the financial affairs and financial future of every citizen dealing with the banking structure in Australia.
Let us be clear about it. All industry will pass into the hands of the Commonwealth Bank. And when all industry will pass into the hands of one bank, it will pass into the hands of the treasurer of the day. So all industry will be in the hands of one man. This is economic dictatorship with a vengeance. I hope that nobody will nurse to himself the comforting idea that you can have in a country complete economic dictatorship and still call yourselves politically free. [Used “hands” metaphorically to symbolize control].
Just suppose for one moment that the Government of Australia, after this legislation is passed, decides that there are too many milkmen, or too many tobacco sellers, or even, in a bold moment, too many sellers of beer. Suppose, in these circumstances, it wants to control the number of these amenities there are in a community. In other words, suppose it wants to produce a planned economy in which Jones is told he can be a milkman and Brown is told he cannot be one, but must be something else. That is the very definition of slavery.
When this greatest of all monopolies comes into existence, I have little doubt that there will be financial accommodations, great or small, for the friends of the administration. There will be none for the critics. We can all see what a superb instrument this is for tyranny. What a superb instrument it is to be put into the hands of the government, already a stranger to normal democratic ideas, drunk with power, and which at all times is seeking to extend its authority over more and more of the normal activities of life. [Metaphors include “instrument of tyranny” and “drunk with power”].
If the prime minister thinks that the people of Australia are with him on this matter – and if he does not, it is a detestable piece of fraud to produce these proposals – if he thinks they are in favour of this, let him ascertain their approval. If he is so sure that the people of Australia want this kind of tyrannical monopoly, let him go to the people.
There is one time for him to test public opinion, and that is now. If the government is frightened to test public opinion on this matter, then it is for the public to make its opinion heard and felt. It is, in plain terms, for literally millions of free Australian citizens to take their pens in their hands and write to the members of parliament, the members of the government, write their opinion is. They should write to the newspapers, develop a volume of public opinion on this matter which cannot be ignored, and will certainly not be ignored by a dozen or so of gentlemen who have a pretty shrewd idea that this is their last term in parliament, anyhow…
Over these last months and years, we have seen in Australia the decay of self-government, we have seen lower public morale, we have seen the sapping of the old spirit of independence which was the main factor in our industrial development and the opening up of resources here and in Great Britain, we have seen the decline of competition which still remains the only guarantee of efficiency and of a fair deal to the consumer. We have seen the failure of production, both of consumable goods and of houses to live in. We have seen the rise and growing power of the bureaucrat. We have seen the increasingly tyrannical use of power, and, what is worse, and what will be fatal unless we are careful, we have seen the weakening of the old instincts for freedom and for personal liberty which are our real birthright, and which, being our birthright, we should never exchange for any mess of pottage. [Used anaphora (repetition) at the beginning of each sentence (“We have seen”). This is similar to Churchill’s “We shall fight” at the end of his speech delivered on June 4th 1940].