Library. The exact date of the remarks are unknown, but the library believes it was in new york in 1966. [applause] mr. Reagan thank you. Thank you very much. [applause] thank you. Thank you. [applause] thank you. I havent even announced yet youll make me think ive been elected. [laughter] ladies and gentlemen, you have given me a welcome thats so heartwarming, its something i will remember always. If i had no such reasons at all to be happy about the form of the grieving and the introductions here tonight, i could be grateful because every once in a while, being introduced, i get selfconscious when they forget to introduce me and start mentioning the pictures ive been in. [laughter] now, i dont mean that im ashamed of them. But everyone thats been around hollywood for any length of time has been in some movies that the studios didnt want them good. It wanted them thursday. And ive had my share. But in the old times, usually could count on the passing years, making you forget those pictures. Now you just stay up late enough at night in front of the tv set, and they all come back to haunt us. [laughter] sometimes i think its like looking at a son you never knew you had. [laughter] [applause] it takes a second, doesnt it . [laughter] i have a friend in the business who stays up late to look at his old movies just to watch his hairline recede. [laughter] but you know, ive been protesting the growth of government for a number of years. I had a concern that the permanent structure of government becomes so big that it would be beyond the control of congress and beyond the will of the people. And i believe that this is a problem that crosses party lines. Ive seen an Interesting Development down through the years. When i first suggested the danger of government control so many federal handouts, there were people who denied, vehemently, that any such things had taken place. And yet, before too long, the same people were saying, whats wrong with government control . And in the recent days, weve heard representatives in the higher echelons of government ask us, well, are you afraid of your own government . Well, to tell you the truth, i am, and all of us should be. [applause] and i speak not in a partisan sense, or an administration or individuals. Im talking an institution of government. Wasnt this the admonition of the Founding Fathers that government tends to grow to take on power until freedom eventually is lost . The fact is, and we cant escape it, only government is capable of tyranny. Now, i realize that this is a controversial subject, particularly as we approach an election year. But then if you didnt take up things that were controversial, he wouldnt talk at all. There was a man knocked on a door one day, a small boy answered, the man said is your father home . The boy said no. The man said is your mother home . The boy said no. The man said i am your uncle on your fathers side. The boy said you can come in, but youre on the wrong side. [laughter] the Boston Committee claimed the right to life, liberty, and property. The First Continental Congress claimed americans were entitled to life, liberty, and property. In june of 1776, the bill of rights asserted that all men were equally free and independent, with a means of possessing, or the right to possess and acquire property. And three weeks later came the declaration of independence, a bloody war, victory, and then a new nation that would be based on a constitution and a bill of rights. Life, liberty, and property had become life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. And 70 years would go by before englands lord actor would comment on the task of these men and what they had accomplished. He would say they solved two problems that which heretofore baffled the most enlightened nations. They had prodigiously increased the power of the National Government and had founded it on the principle of equality without surrendering the security for freedom and property. And its true. Our constitution is a contract guaranteeing the most equitable government and the long history of mans relation to man. Now, however, while a National Power is prodigious, what had happened to security for freedom . And our right to the ownership to the fruit of our toil . The french philosopher said 100 years ago, said the end of freedom comes when the party in power learns it can perpetuate itself through taxation. Well, what does happen to freedom when the executive branch of government can use the money taken from the people in order to coerce the people . A foolish fear . Representative Glenn Andrews introduced an amendment to the Poverty Program on the floor of congress. It is almost inconceivable that such an amendment would be required. It is even more inconceivable that the amendment was even more repudiated and defeated. It was a simple amendment that would prohibit poverty funds from being used for political purposes. Make no mistake about it. The party in power has legislated into existence a 1. 8 billion Campaign Funds for 1966. [applause] five years ago, we reached a new frontier. And now were facetoface with a new society. Along the way, weve added 31 billion to our debt, but weve decreased Gold Holdings until the solvency of our currency. And very shortly, the coins that jingle in our pocket will no longer have the ring of silver. But have no fear. We reached something of a height of absurdity when in a press conference, we were told the government would stand behind those artificial coins and was prepared to exchange them anytime for paper. [laughter] [applause] weve discovered that every family with an income of less than 3000 a year is povertystricken. At the same time, we learned that the cost of government parades out to 300 per family. Weve reached an alltime high in food prices that every housewife hear knows. That the farmer receives the lowest percentage of the Market Basket dollar hes ever received in history, and his debt in relation to income is at an alltime high, higher than even on the people of the 1929 crash eve of the 1929 crash. Four years ago, there were no daily casualty lists. No wives and mothers receiving telegrams that began, we regret to inform you. The last campaign found our opponents claiming themselves conservatives in the sense they would make no drastic change in our easy, prosperous, and affluent way. They would maintain the status quo. Thats latin for the mess were in. [laughter] [applause] we, on the other hand, were presented as radicals who would bring about some cataclysmic upheaval. Well, now the rafts are off the great society, and it has made it plain we are to have the welfare state. With an unprecedented federalization of american life. June 30 last, congress raised the debt limit for the seventh time in five years, but our government spends 260 million a day, 10 million more each day then we were spending just a year ago. We were told we are enjoying an unprecedented prosperity, but 42 Government Agencies are spending 70 billion a year on Public Welfare. And serious discussion is given by men in high place in government to the idea that there is no longer any necessity to connect work with income, and that a man simply by being born, should be assured of an annual income with no need to work. The ancient hebrew book tells us that for a father to fail to teach his son to earn a living is the same as teaching him to steal, for that might be the inevitable result. [applause] our limited government, with its decentralized powers, have given way to planners. And theyve laid a heavy hand on every facet of our lives. He warned that such a government would cover the base of society with a network of small, complicated rules, minute and uniform. Thus, the will is not shattered, but softened and guided until a nation is reduced to animals, of which government is the shepherd. The shepherd, the president is fond of quoting these days from the scriptures. His favorite seems to be first isaiah, the 18th verse. Come, let us reason together. [laughter] that has a warm and cozy sound, doesnt it . Let your eyes straight down a line or two into the next verses. If ye refuse, ye shall be devoured with the sword. [applause] freedom is very fragile. Weve only known a few moments of it in all of mans history, and most of those moments have taken place here, in this land, under this constitutional system and under the system of free enterprise. But freedom is also indivisible. It isnt spelled with an s. You cant elect to be partly free and partly slaves. You are free or youre not free. If we ever decide we need a new declaration of independence, i hope we keep one line from the old. He has sensed swarms of officers to hear our people and eat out our substance. Today for every 10,000, it only takes 12 doctors to keep as well and healthy. It only takes 40 mechanics and oil station attendants for every 10,000 of us to keep our automobiles running. Employees to keep the vast network of telephones going. But it takes 130 federal takes 130 federal employees for every 10,000 to administer the affairs of state. [applause] federal employees outnumber state employees in 30 of the 50 states. I dont know about yours, but thats true of california, and in california, that is not easy. [laughter] the businessman, harassed and beaten out of our substance the businessman spends 35 of his time filling out forms and government regulations. It is an estimated [applause] it has been estimated that this government paperwork costs american industry 20 billion a year, which must be added into the price tag, and it costs another 7 billion a year just to handle governments end of that paperwork and to store it, and already it requires 25 million cubic feet. Sometime back to show you how this can happen there was a little new england town that decided to get in on the surplus food idea. Now, this is a good idea. No one can quarrel with the fact that if we can raise a surplus rather than waste it, it should be distributed to those people who have need. So this little town got in on this and got its share of free federal surplus food, and then they woke up one day and discovered that they were being flooded under a great load of paperwork demanded in connection with this handout, and they discovered finally they put on so many new City Employees to handle this that it was cheaper to get out of the program and buy the groceries retail at the corner market. [applause] now weve declared war on poverty. Now no one, again, quarrels with the humanitarian aim. I dont think any bus want to be like the fellow that heard about the war on poverty and went right out and threw a hand grenade at a beggar. [laughter] but in getting a program passed, we heard a great deal about one state West Virginia. Oh, this became a household word. This was the very center of poverty and distress and unemployment. Some of us thought that the whole war would be fought right there in West Virginia. Now the program is adopted and West Virginia gets 400,000. Texas gets 10 million. [applause] we are winning the war, though, at least on one front on their own bureaucratic home grounds. 19,000 a year is a good salary , and its a very high rate of pay in government salaries. As a matter of fact, theres only one employee out of the 1000 in the department of defense gets 19,000 a year. Only one out of 500 in the department of agriculture. But in the new Poverty Program, theres one out of 19. Dunn springs, virginia, was awarded 74,000 54,000 for administrator salary, 20,000 for the poor. [applause] while one voice in government tells us that we are enjoying this great prosperity, another voice tells us that one out of five in our country is suffering from poverty and destitution. Now, if that figure is true, it should not be too hard to find the people that need the help under this program. Well, in my hometown of dixon, illinois, a committee of 10, selfappointed, beholden to no voters, has established itself and ask the government for a 38,000 grant to so they can go search, to find out if theres any poverty there. [laughter] [applause] it breaks down to 10,200 for the chairman and 7200 each for two assistants, and the balance will go for secretaries mailing office, expense, and travel. In another area, more than 2000 College Graduates have been hired as part of the program to study the culture of poverty. Now, no one disagrees with the youth portion of that program. The idea that we should salvage it possible those young people who, for whatever reason, have failed to fit themselves for the responsibilities of adult life, but we take over a hotel, and we install their young ladies who have been lifted from destitute families, and now they are to be trained, so they will be selfreliant and can go out on their own and make a living, but while they are being retrained, they are given made service, so they wont have to make their own beds. And a program prorates out to 7000 a year for each young lady we are going to help. There are a lot of families in this country raising fine, productive citizens on less than 7000 a year. [applause] i can think of no higher, more noble purpose than to take young men and to make sure that they get an equal chance and a start in life, but we have such a program now, and we put the young men in camps for retraining, and we pay them a higher rate of pay than the young man who puts on a uniform and goes out to defend his country. [applause] i am sure that all of us are agreed, every responsible citizen is agreed, that we should provide shelter for those people who, through no fault of their own, lack adequate housing, and for some time, the government has provided public housing, but now those who administer the program have expressed concern, after almost three decades of it, concerned because an entire generation has grown up, raising children, and a second and a thirdgeneration now are growing up, taking it for granted that this is an acceptable way of life, and there is no incentive for them to improve themselves, because to get a raise might destroy their eligibility for continuing to live on a subsidy in the public housing. And yet, never does government accept that it might be responsible with some of its programs for this trend or this tendency. No, now we are going to have a program subsidizing rent, and under the technicalities of the program, people with incomes up to 11,000 or 12,000 a year will be eligible to live in a house or apartment or a neighborhood beyond their means with their thrifty new neighbors, text to help differential in their rent. A variety of programs have diluted private property rights. For generations, we have had laws of eminent domain. We have recognized the occasional need of government to take a citizens property when there was a clear and present need for that particular piece of property in the public interest, but the citizen had his day in court, first to establish that the government paid a fair price, and second, that the government should be forced to prove that there was a clear and present need. Now, urban renewal grants the government the right to force the sale of private property for resale by government to other private citizens who can then use that property to make profit. And we have average selling were Renewable Properties to private citizens for 30 of the investment that we the taxpayers have in that property. Again, i say the purpose is noble. The idea of providing decent homes for every american and eliminating slums, but one Million People have been displaced with a bulldozer and have wound up in new slums, paying a higher rent. The law says that this place must be offered standard housing at rents they can afford in convenient locations, but if standard housing at rents they can afford in convenient locations had been available, they would not have needed an urban renewal program. They would have moved there on their own. [applause] robert weaver, the federal housing commissioner, has said in the beginning he has made this Statement Public the government gave the use of the land to the people to speed its development. I did not remember history that way. I thought we were here and on the land, and we created the government, but he says [applause] but he has announced now it is the policy of the government to seek to reclaim complete control of the use of the land. Planes equipped with surveying instruments fly over american farms. They survey from the air accurately to see whether the farmer has violated his planting allotment, and if he has, he is guilty as charged. No day in court. And he is fined. If he cannot pay the fine, the regulations prescribed, the government can seize the farm and sell it to enforce the payment of that crime. For 30 years, we have had a farm program. We spent billions to make the farmer more prosperous and to remove unneeded surplus land from farm production to reduce the surplus, and during that same period, the National Income has tripled, but the farmers income is smaller than it was 30 years ago, and we have increased the number of acres in cultivation by 50 million. Every dollar that we spent on price stabilization in 1948 we are today spending 25. We have reduced the number of farmers by half, and the government says another 2. 5 million farmers are unneeded and must be retrained and moved to city jobs. Meanwhile, at the same time, the Appalachian Program provides millions of dollars to reclaim marginal land, so that the unemployed can be made farmers in that area and add to the present farm surplus. An ominous question remains unanswered who will decide which citizens must leave the land, and how will the decision be made . How also will we explain that the same government that says that we need only one million large, commercial farms now, that there is no need for the small family farmer, is still the government that tells us with another voice that no farm over 160 acres can receive water from federal irrigation projects . Somehow, one suspects that government, in all of its involvement in the farm program, will turn out to be something less than a jolly green giant. [laughter] meanwhile, the network of rules more minutely reformed, as de tocqueville warned. Down on the masondixon line is an oil station. A very enterprising fellow running it. A little triangle of ground between the sidewalk and the driveway that so often is covered with gravel or paved over. He planted a few cotton bushes there. Now when a tourist pops in from the north, he gives them picks a cotton bowl and hands it to them as a souvenir of their tour of the south. He has been fined by the federal government for planting cotton without an allotment. [applause] the post office just recently the post office was exposed as been, having the last couple of years, taken mail, letters addressed to citizens, from the mail and turning them over to the Internal Revenue service, if those citizens were behind or delinquent in the paying of their income tax. And we have learned the government is going to subsidize what is meaningful in art and literature. The plan calls for two czars with millions of dollars who will declare what they consider is meaningful in art and literature. There is reason for concern. Now, im not a scientist, but i sometimes have a suspicion that the government is subsidizing just plain, intellectual curiosity, when i see thousands of dollars spent on research in theologies in the now, the only part i understand is that phrase in the middle. There, i know who they are talking about. [applause] but nothing is too small for the government to overlook. The government in washington is now concerned with our ability to enjoy ourselves in the great outdoors, recreational facilities they just issued 134page booklet on the subject. It is full of profunditys. Ies. I wonder how we managed to get along without it up until now. For example, if you lay out a campsite, you should provide drinking fountains at such a height that the drinking fountain is convenient for the person using the fountain. [laughter] but wait until you get to the exciting chapter on wildlife. [laughter] insects crawling into the ears of outdoorsmen sometimes create painful conditions. [laughter] ive got news for them its no fun when it happens indoors. [applause] that is not all they have to say about wildlife. If your Recreational Area has a bath house intended for the use of both men and women, it should be divided into two parts by a tight partition. [laughter] now, you know, wed have never thought of that one by ourselves. [laughter] [applause] honestly, though, i know that they only mean to be helpful. [laughter] i know that its really human nature, and they are motivated by the most humanitarian of idealism. It is just natural for them to see the problem and see the immediate problem and to suggest, if we had a little more money, a little more power, what we could do for the people. Now in an atmosphere of emergency and excessive zeal for our welfare, the federal government proposes to invade an area, the traditional province of the local community and state, the finest Public School system in all the world, with no real determination yet that the federal government is the best manager of our educational affairs. Suspicion prevails that they are not so much interested in speeding progress as they are in asserting authority in every conceivable aspect of the educational system. An educational system that has worked very well and has been responsive to parental opinion, but washington insists that it only wants to help solve the financial problems. Problems there are, particularly because the federal government in recent years has dried up so many sources of local revenue by usurping those sources for its own politics. [applause] but that same government has figures that reveal that we at the local level in the last decade have increased School Revenue by 100 100 56 . We have built in 10 years 30 billion worth of classrooms. We have reduced the ratio of pupil to teacher and pupil to classroom, and we have increased the average teacher salary by 65 , and yet, every suggestion that we make for earmarking tax money and allowing it to remain at the local level without running it through those puzzle palaces on the potomac first is met with great resistance. Already, there are 135 separate federal agencies and offices doling out money at the college level. Some time ago, a group of distinguished College President s, alarmed at the extent to which Academic Freedom has been compromised by these fast money grants, went to washington, and they had a proposal they had worked out. A proposal for allowing the individual citizen to compute his income tax and then deduct a specified amount and contribute it to the college of his choice, in income paying it tax, and the government would be allowed to determine the solve theunt to problem and not disrupt economy. Thus, they would get around to question of church and state, the separation of same, if an individual citizen chose to contribute his money to a churchsupported school. Over and over again in washington, they kept asking, but why wont this system work . Finally, a freudian slip occurred. Francis keppel, United States director of education, blurted out, you dont understand under the plan you propose, we could not achieve our social objectives. Social objectives. And now we uncover a memorandum, thanks to the press, actually. A memorandum in the Community Relations service of the Poverty Program, has nothing to do with education, but the memorandum is very disturbing in this sentence. We should conduct a systematic effort to contact all publishers and School Boards to encourage their publication and adoption of textbooks conforming to established standards. Well, if the government is going to build the schools and buy the books, issue scholarships, make judgments and exert pressure, what if, one day, that pressure is of a political nature not to our liking . Education is the bulwark of freedom, but you remove it too far from the community and the parents control, and education becomes the tool of tyranny. [applause] already here and there in our lands, there are too many students that are studying from textbooks that devote a chapter to Public Welfare and not one line to patrick henry. [applause] sometimes, when you look at the problem, you think government is like a baby. It is an elementary canal with an appetite at one end and no sense of responsibility at the other. We are taxed in our food and drink and shelter with the government taking a higher percentage from the free economy than any government has ever done in history with our ruin. Socalled tax reform, when it is suggested, winds up as the old shell game. They just rearrange it, shift it around, and apply it someplace else, as we discovered with the socalled tax cut we thought we had. [applause] our tax policy today is based on the idea that we are robbing peter to pay paul. Well, wed better take another look. We are robbing paul to pay paul, and we are all named paul. Peter went bankrupt a long time ago. [applause] inflation, planned and deliberate over the last three decades, has reduced the value of our dollar to 35. 5 cents. Well, how did this come about . Mainly because we have perverted our constitution, perverted it with regard to a welfare clause that does not exist, with regard perverted it with regard to the misuse of the taxation system, perverted it with regard to the under state commerce, and we interpretation of the clauses under state commerce, and we have done it under phrases like the greatest good for the greatest number or one man, one vote, forgetting that majority rule becomes mob rule, unless there is a set of ground rules protecting the individual. [applause] ones right to life delivered , to liberty, to the freedom of assemble,o speak, to in short, our godgiven, unalienable rights, may not be submitted to vote. The very purpose of the bill of rights was to put them beyond reach of majority rule. 100 years ago, the problem of the nation was a nation half slave and half free and if such a nation could survive, and today, its a world of half slave and half free and if mankind himself can survive. We call it to the guard in the night and ask, does all go well . And from the shores of the potomac comes back the words, there is nothing to fear. Nothing to fear but an enemy who has since world war ii increased the enslavement from 8 of the worlds population to near 40 . Every lesson of history tells us that as a nation has grown in culture and refinement and advanced, it has softened. And when confronted by the barbarian, the less cultured, the barbarians have triumphed. You and i have come to our moment of truth. Does man exist only by permission of and for the sake of the state, the group marching toward eternity in a super ante, or does he control his own destiny . This is a question that must be answered by all of us, regardless of party. To those who are democrats, ask yourselves if the leadership of your party still follows the precepts of jefferson, jackson, and cleveland. Take the platform of 1932 on which Franklin Delano roosevelt was elected, with its demand for a 25 reduction in the cost of the federal government, for restoration of the powers in the constitution of that government, a return to the states and the communities and the individuals of the rights which have been taken from them. Ask which party would be most at home today with those promises. I know that the bond of Party Loyalty is very strong. I was a democrat most of my life. I know it is hard to make a change from Party Loyalty on the party of your lifelong choice, without a feeling that you are being treasonable or unfair. I say to you have no feeling of disloyalty, if you have decided you no longer can follow the leadership of that party tonight, because the leadership of that party has long since abandoned you. [applause] and now, to those of us of another party, to those who are republicans. Today, the Republican Party is a vehicle we must use as the party of opposition, opposition to the misguided leadership at home and opposition to all the people abroad that threatens the dignity of freedom of man in every land, and it is an awesome responsibility. And you and i who are republicans cannot meet it with a splintered party. For too long, we have been republicans complete with descriptive adjectives and hyphens before the word republican. Moderate republicans, liberal republicans, conservative republicans, whatever label we chose. The truth is, weve been sucker republicans. [applause] those adjectives and those hyphens were given to us by our opponents, and the time has come to bundle them up and give them back. [applause] if you have to hang onto the hyphen, just be a good or a republican republican. We can cringe in the shadow of a philosophy we detest but fear to challenge, or we can rise from a defeat and begin the second round of our struggle to restore the republic. And now there are those among us there are republicans today who, understandably, so hungry to get back to the position we once held, to reestablish some equality in this twoparty system, restore the imbalance we now have, who have suggested , even somewhat cynically, that maybe we should Start Talking to voter blocs and making promises, that perhaps we should even reshape our party in the image of the victorious party, on the basis that perhaps an invitation imitation might get more votes than weve been attracting. I would like to suggest there is a bloc we can appeal to. Its a voter bloc that contains of millions and millions of people that crosses party lines, ethnic lines, religious and racial lines, economic lines. It is made up of millions of unsung heroes. People who get up in the morning, send their kids to school, go to work. They contribute to their church and their charity and their community. They believe they were created in gods image and that god is the author of their rights and freedom, and they are disturbed , because their children can no longer ask gods blessing in the schoolroom. [applause] i say to you, that bloc of voters can be ours. Not if we are coming to them but onlyh any imitation if we are willing to stand on principle. Yes, lets be willing to tell them that we, too, want to solve and will solve to the best of our ability the problems of poverty and hunger and health and old age and unemployment, but we believe we can do that without resulting to undue compulsion and fiscal irresponsibility. That we believe we can put a floor beneath which no american will be asked to live in degradation, but at the same time, we will not erect a ceiling above which no citizen can fly without being penalized for his initiative and his effort. [applause] and let us tell them that hard though the problems may be that face us on the world scene, we will not buy our protection from the threat of the bomb, by trading away the freedom of people in other lands not ours to give. [applause] and lets tell them that if their sons are going to be asked to fight and die for their country, at the same time, they will be allowed to win. [applause] to all republicans today entrusted with this responsibility because it is ours i say, look deep in your own hearts and ask yourselves if you possibly can have any difference with any other republican, what is more important to us than this challenge tonight . If you have, if you are unwilling to meet this challenge, then you had better start preparing, deciding what you will tell your children it was that you found more important than freedom. They will want to know. [applause] thank you. [applause] [captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2020] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. Visit ncicap. Org] election 1976 is a series of about 12 programs produced by the u. S. Information agency during the bicentennial year. It was intended for international audiences. The purpose was to describe the u. S. President ial election system and to follow the campaigns progress. Up next, on reel america, the candidates and the campaign. Three political scientists discuss the activities of president ford and challenger jimmy carter leading up to election night. And they react to clips from debates and candidate events. Governor carter, again, is talking in broad generalities. I think this is an instance of deliberate disclosure. If mr. Carter alleges that his voting by siding that is done, he is inaccurate. Governor carter again contradicts himself. Mr. Ford, i think, confused the issue. Let me correct one other comment governor carter has made. The title question is one that has been confused by mr. Ford. Again, governor carter is inaccurate
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