Ronald Reagan
Statements ring true thirty-one years later
Anonymous
January 1, 2012
On November 3rd, 1980, Ronald Reagan gave an election eve speech that contained several basic ideals that still hold true today. His optimism that the United States was not “down for the count” and that we can “again be a great nation” has never been truer then right now:
“A child born this year will begin his or her adult life in what will be the 21st century. What kind of country, what kind of legacy will we leave to these young men and women who will live out America’s third century as a nation?
In thinking about these questions, many Americans seem to be wondering, searching. . . feeling frustrated and perhaps even a little afraid.
Many of us are unhappy about our worsening economic problems, about the constant crisis atmosphere in our foreign policy, about our diminishing prestige around the globe, about the weakness in our economy and national security that jeopardizes world peace, about our lack of strong, straight-forward leadership.
And many Americans today, just as they did 200 years ago, feel burdened, stifled and sometimes even oppressed by government that has grown too large, too bureaucratic, too wasteful, too unresponsive, too uncaring about people and their problems.
Americans, who have always known that excessive bureaucracy is the enemy of excellence and compassion, want a change in public life—a change that makes government work for people. They seek a vision of a better America, a vision of society that frees the energies and ingenuity of our people while it extends compassion to the lonely, the desperate, and the forgotten.
I believe we can embark on a new age of reform in this country and an era of national renewal. An era that will reorder the relationship between citizen and government, that will make government again responsive to people, that will revitalize the values of family, work, and neighborhood and that will restore our private and independent social institutions. These institutions always have served as both buffer and bridge between the individual and the state—and these institutions, not government, are the real sources of our economic and social progress as a people.”
“That is really the question before us tonight: for the first time in our memory many Americans are asking: does history still have a place for America, for her people, for her great ideals? There are some who answer “no;” that our energy is spent, our days of greatness at an end, that a great national malaise is upon us.
They say we must cut our expectations, conserve and withdraw, that we must tell our children…not to dream as we once dreamed.
Last year I lost a friend who was more than a symbol of the Hollywood dream industry; to millions he was a symbol of our country itself. And when he died, the headlines seemed to convey all the doubt about America, all the nostalgia for a seemingly lost past.
“The Last American Hero,” said one headline, “Mr. America dies, “ said another.
Well, I knew John Wayne well, and no one would have been angrier at being called the “last American hero.”
Just before his death, he said in his own blunt way, “Just give the American people a good cause, and there’s nothing they can’t lick.” Duke Wayne did not believe that our country was ready for the dust bin of history, and if we’ll just think about it we too will know it isn’t.”
- Ronald Reagan
Click here to read the full speech.
|