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April 4, 2022 - Doug Collins Podcast
54:16
A Shining City on a Hill: A look back at Ronald Reagans Final address as President
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I'll tell you where bravery is found and courage is found.
It's found in this minority who has lived through the last year of nothing but rules being broken, people being put down, questions not being answered, and this majority say, be damned with anything else.
We're going to impeach and do whatever we want to do.
Why?
Because we won an election.
I guarantee you, one day you'll be back in the minority and it ain't gonna be that fun.
Hey, everybody.
You know, we've had a lot of fun going back through and looking at the farewell addresses of presidents.
We also looked at Ronald Reagan's address that really was his coming of political age speech, I guess, was a time for choosing back at the end of the year.
I've had a lot of response to these series on the speeches by Presidents in their final speeches and what it really, you know, is what it says to us today.
Just recently we did Washington and Eisenhower.
We saw sort of the, you know, really the voices from 200 plus years and the voices from 70 years ago that speak to really issues that we have today.
But there's another one, I think, in light of everything that's been going on recently, and especially in our country, the turmoil in our country, the back and forth, the political discourse, the upheaval, if you would, I went back and as I was looking through these, and we're going to do more of these.
And so, you know, your comments and your suggestions on the website, thedougcollinspodcast.com, go there.
You can email me there.
You can catch up on blogs, do other things that we've got going on.
Legacy Precious Metals, our sponsor, they give us, you know, there's a lot of things you can learn about also on our website.
So I want you to go to that website and let me know because there's others.
Maybe you have some that you would like to hear.
There's more that we're going to be doing in this series.
But today we're going to do Reagan's speech from January 11th, 1989. It was, think about, I want to frame this speech at first.
This was Reagan's after eight years.
It had been a long eight years.
It had been an eventful eight years in many ways, good and bad, and I think he acknowledges that in this speech.
But he goes back and remember, early in his presidency, it almost never happened.
Remember, he was almost assassinated, and we didn't really know until several years later how close he was to actually being killed with the bullet of the assassin.
Hinkley at that time and I think if you look at a time in his presidency where he started the campaign coming out of 80 with Carter and and how it began and then how that transitioned after not only the putting in of his perspective after the assassination,
the tax break issue, the tax cuts, the recession and then into an economy that by the time this speech was given the economy was really On a very sharp trajectory up.
There was the excess of the 80s.
For those of us who grew up in the 80s, this was my decade as far as being a teenager in college, getting married.
The pastel colors, the big hair, the music.
I mean, it was just a decade of a lot of...
If you look back on it, as some would say today, it was a lot as you look at this going forward.
So to see Reagan sum this up, and nobody was probably more prevalent than Reagan during this decade, not only on the American stage, but the world stage.
And when you understand his presence on the world stage, that came from an American stage you'll understand better what he says here in just a little bit about how you know there's a quote in here that I'll talk about where he says in the speech he said we started off to change a country and ended up changing a world and I think that's an interesting perspective but let's get started let's dig in on this speech which Reagan gave this was a again a speech right before he was leaving office and it was the 34th time if he says this in his speech that he has spoken from the Oval Office As
you look at this, Reagan's gift to the presidency, besides his policies and besides his steadfastness in the world stage as far as peace through strength and his work with Gorbachev and the Soviet Union, was his ability to remind us of the common.
The ability to remind us of the commonplace, the common aspects of everyday life, and raise them up in some ways to a more sacred position.
And I know that sounds flowery for language, but you have to understand Reagan truly understood people, he truly cared about people, and it showed in everything he did.
As he started this speech, he listened to these words.
He said, one of the things about the presidency is that you're always somewhat apart.
Now think about that for a second.
He's acknowledging something that we sort of know, but we don't want to admit, that the presidency is sheltered in many ways.
They're sheltered from advisors, they're sheltered from their transportation.
He talks about it here.
He said, you spend a lot of time in cars going too fast, in a car someone else is driving, seeing people through tinted glass.
The parent holding up a child and a wave you saw too late and couldn't return.
And so many times I wanted to stop and reach out from behind the glass and connect.
Well, maybe I can do a little of that tonight.
He starts his speech with what he saw as a hindrance to his presidency that we all accept as part of the presidency.
That set-offness, that protected status that a president has.
And it's not just the physical aspects, as he said, of riding in a car and seeing people.
But also the surrounded by advisors, the surrounded by those who would modify or change his appearance in public or speaking in public.
Reagan always felt that when he could communicate with people, this goes back to his GE days, When he was coming out of acting, he was the head of the Actors Guild and he came into GE, he worked for the corporation giving speeches all over the country, banquet speeches, tours and plants where he always would connect with people and during that time he was walking, he was going slow, he could shake those hands, he could talk to people.
And one of his biggest regrets, and I think this is an interesting, he's got another regret we'll talk about in a minute, but one of his things starting off here, it seems to me, was his inability as president many times to what he felt like was the greatest connection, and that was to stop, shake a hand, look someone in the eye, and just make that connection.
Now, for those of us who grew up in this time and have since studied Reagan, Reagan made a huge connection in speeches.
He made a great connection in working with the world.
But he always understood that really leadership came from being with people.
And also that our people and each other ought to get along.
In a sense, I think he felt that if Americans just understood who we were and what we've been gifted as Americans, then there would be a difference in our attitudes toward everyone else.
There'd be a difference in what we do, a difference in how we act, a difference in looking at this great gift of a country we have been given.
This is something I also see lacking in politics today.
As we have grown more and more accustomed to TV and media, whether it be ads, whether it be YouTube or Twitter or social media or even podcasts, we have become more and more detached from people.
Politicians are using, and I've noticed it even in my time in Congress, and I've noticed it's gotten even worse since then, have fewer and fewer Larger group interactions.
They have fewer and fewer times in which they actually get with people and answer questions.
Some of that is out of security.
Frankly, I understand that from my time when people have become so disagreeable over issues that there is a safety element there and we've seen that played out.
But it is missing, and I think it makes it easier for people who like someone or dislike someone to be vocal on a social media platform or in discussions with others when they don't have a chance to know the people that they're actually talking about, and especially when it comes to politicians and those who and I think it makes it easier for people who like someone or dislike someone to be vocal on a social media platform or in discussions with others when they don't have a chance to know the people that they're actually talking You know, from state legislatures, governors, all the way up to the presidency.
And Reagan understood, really, and lamented the fact that he could not relate to people as he wanted to.
With that slow, you know, handshake, that look in the eye, something very much he missed.
And it's interesting he would start his speech that way.
Think about this.
If you're starting your speech that is your final speech as president of the United States, you know, arguably the most powerful man in the world, that you...
One of the things that you start off with is a wish and how fast it went by, but not just how fast it went by.
He didn't talk about accomplishments.
He didn't talk about things that we would normally tick off there.
He started in that first few paragraphs.
He started with this paragraph that basically said, it went by too fast and I felt like I was going too fast to relate, to connect to the very people that I wanted to.
So we get a start of this right now.
He valued that human interaction.
He valued that connection to people.
He valued understanding.
Isn't that a good place to start today?
Wouldn't that be a great place for us to start in our political discourse today?
In which we see the communication breaking down.
We see the communication that is not happening where people would rather communicate through tweets and memes and through emails instead of picking up the phone.
One of the most frustrating things I have in my life is I dealt with my staff and I deal with my kids.
I have one of my children who I'll actually will call them.
They will not answer their phone.
I will text them and they will answer.
They're sitting there.
But yet will not.
This is why I think Reagan, interestingly enough, starts this speech by talking about this connection factor.
He then moves into perspective.
And I think this is appropriate for a president to discuss this.
But it's interesting, the perspective that he brings.
He brings a long-term historical perspective.
And although America is young as a country, I think it's interesting for me, and I hear this all the time.
Our country is old.
Folks, in the world scheme of nations, we're a teenager at best.
20-year-old, maybe.
In the schemes of how long our government has been operating and in the function in which it's been operating, Reagan put this in perspective in a historical format when he said this.
He said, you know, down the hall and up the stairs from this office is the part of the White House where the president and the family live.
There are a few favorite windows I have up there That I like to stand and look out in the early morning.
The view is over the grounds here to the Washington Monument, then the Mall, and then the Jefferson Memorial.
But on mornings when the humidity is low, so you can see past the Jefferson to the river, the Potomac, and the Virginia shore.
Someone said that that is the view that Lincoln had when he saw the smoke rising from the Battle of Bull Run.
I see more prosaic things, the grass on the banks, the morning traffic as people make their way to work, and now and then a sailboat on the river.
And he says, I've been thinking about that window a lot.
Reagan had a way of putting the experiences of everyday life into a communication form in which all of us can relate.
How many of you have that favorite window in your house?
You have that favorite place that you go.
Maybe it's on a drive into work, or maybe it's where you grew up, or maybe it's someplace in your workplace.
Wherever it may be, but that's that one place where you find that moment of solitude, and you can look back.
But imagine the enormity of that discussion when Reagan talks about looking out the windows of the White House, looking across the Potomac, and looking at Washington as it lies, knowing that he stood in similar places to those who had gone before, such as Abraham Lincoln and others who also knowing that he stood in similar places to those who had gone before, such as Abraham Lincoln and others He puts his perspective in a historical context.
He reminds us that our country has a history, that our country is one in which we grow off that history, both good and bad.
That is interesting here is he doesn't, you know, take light of the fact that our history as a whole must be discovered.
But the thing he focuses on in this, and he goes into the next paragraph, when he talks about a refugee in the Indochina Sea when they actually came along, and the gentleman as he's being rescued by the USS Midway sailors talked about being freedom man.
man.
He said, hello, freedom man.
He understood that our country, no matter how we look back and how it is portrayed, is looked at into the world as freedom.
And that is, as he says, we stood again for freedom.
I know we always have, but in the past few years, the world again, in a way, we ourselves rediscovered it.
This is a theme that you're going to see throughout this entire speech when he talks about rediscovering who we are.
Now, Now, coming out, let's take a quick history moment here.
Reagan came to presidency in 80, and the lady election came in in 81, in which we had just been through probably some of the tougher six years of country has been through, and if you want to take it back into the Vietnam War time in the 60s, probably the next 15 to 20 years.
When he came into office, America's standing in the world was low.
The hostages were released, the Iranian hostages were released on the day right after he was inaugurated.
Carter had been dealing with this.
It was on the TV every night.
Day 1, day 20, day 40, day 80, day 90, day 200. It became just an obsession in our country.
During this time in Carter's administration, we had the oil embargo.
We had gas prices.
We had the malaise speech by Carter where everybody just felt like...
Wow, this isn't a good place.
And you saw crime, you saw the other issues.
And Reagan came forward with a message that basically was one of reminding us of who we are.
Sometimes in life, when things are going wrong, when things are going bad, sometimes in life you need to have someone remind you who you are.
Who you are in the sense of a country, who you are in the sense of a person, in a place.
And Reagan did that.
and that was one of the things his perspective was of a long-term view not just a short-term view so many times in politics now we have a two or four year vision and Reagan was reminding I think here as he looked out across those windows was describing those scenes he was describing our nation as a whole and the journey that we have been through that is something we don't hear enough of today we hear uh more of what is the immediate treatment what's actually going to happen today What happened three years ago?
Very seldom do we look back more than just an administration or two unless we're trying to find bad examples.
Instead, Reagan looked across the span of history and took out the fact that we are freedom and looking at that He wanted to discuss it.
He talked about relating to world leaders and how that was the perspective of America on the world stage as a leader as we go forward.
So as you continue here, you see he's basing this speech on a lot of who he is.
He wanted that connection first off.
He then put it in historical perspective and taught again that America is that place for freedom and that is what we stood for across the world.
But what was actually happening, he also puts in perspective, it's interesting, he puts a paragraph in here, which is what I call the pundit's perspective.
Remember, when Reagan came to office, there was such a cynical view of the world and where we were at and what was going on, that most pundits viewed even Reagan's optimism as something to be fearful or scared of, in the sense that they thought, number one, his strong foreign policy, making us a strong nation in the eyes of the world, was going to lead us to war, number one, didn't happen.
is the aspect of putting the economy and the taxes back.
He did what was right at the time, even when the consequences were hard, to get the right result.
This was the tax cuts, then the recession, and then that led to the great recovery that we saw in the 80s.
He said it this way when he talked about this.
He said, well, he said the other opinion leaders were wrong.
The fact is, what they called radical was really right, And what they call dangerous, we desperately needed.
You know, you see a little bit of a victory lap going here, but this is eight years of looking back and saying, look, I did what was right.
The proof is in the sort of the pudding as we go forward in this.
The next stage he turns to, and I think is where he's been heading to in this speech the whole time, was he talks about his nickname, the Great Communicator.
And The interesting part here, he says, but I never thought I was, it was my style or my words I used to make a difference.
It was the content.
Notice what he says here.
He said he didn't think of himself as a great communicator.
He didn't think about his style.
He didn't think about his words.
He said it was my content.
He said it was what I was saying.
I wasn't a great communicator, but I communicated great things.
And they didn't spring full bloom from my brow.
They came from the heart of a great nation, from our experience, our wisdom, our belief, and principles that have guided us for two centuries.
They called it the Reagan Revolution.
Well, I'll accept that.
But for me, it always seemed...
Like a great rediscovery, a rediscovery of our values and our common sense.
And what he saw in that was when, as he continued on, that common sense was understanding that if you tax stuff, if you regulated it, if you had a government controlling and a stifling economy, that the free people would never be able to work in that.
The free people would never be able to excel in a business environment in which we had economic growth He also went on in this section...
And talking about peace, and he talked about the Russians withdrawing from Afghanistan, there's becoming peace in the Middle East, there was other areas that he could point to, that these were actually the right principles, and it was a perspective of communicating in right ways, the content matter.
Today we have become a stylistic society.
We've become a society in which is how you say it and where you say it is more importantly seemingly than what you say or not engaging on topics.
And for folks who get together who want to run for office, let me just say this, it matters what you say or don't say.
It matters if you actually interact with people.
It matters if you actually get out there and talk about ideas and find your way and sharpen.
As the scripture says, iron sharpens iron.
We need to be involved in this battle and I think Reagan communicated that In a very still way, because he said it was my content that made the difference.
He said he discounted this idea that it was his style and his flair for speaking.
It was actually the words underneath it.
I tend to agree with him.
And this is where he makes that great statement.
He says, we meant to change a nation.
Instead, we changed the world.
And it's that going back to understand that you never know who's watching.
And that doesn't apply just to a nation.
It applies to people as well.
You don't know who's watching.
You don't know who's watching in your life, your family, your neighborhood.
You don't know who's watching what you do.
If you set forth in an optimistic outlook, in a style that says, yes, there are problems, but I want to work to overcome those problems.
If you believe in people, if you believe in our country, and you believe in freedoms, you acknowledge the painful parts that exist, but you look to farther those into better ideas and better solutions to help all people, not just some, then that is what resonates, and then you begin not just some, then that is what resonates, and then you begin to change, as Reagan said, "Not just a nation, but It is that communication is a reminder of the past that I think is so important here.
Now, he then goes into something that we hear all the time today, and I've heard this over and over and over again, and he talks about the fact of how our Constitution was worded.
It was not a Constitution, it was worded.
The government, it lays out what the government gives you.
Instead, it lays out what the people give the government.
It was always that reverse mentality for the world is the only constitution that does that.
Normally, constitutions talk about a government and the setting up of a government and then what the government will allow the people to do.
And the result is, as Reagan said here, he said, ours is the first revolution in history of mankind that truly reversed the course of government with three little words, we the people.
We the people tell the government what to do.
It doesn't tell us.
We the people are the driver.
The government is the car.
And we decide where it should go and by what route and how fast.
Almost all the world's constitutions are documents in which governments tell the people what their privileges are.
Our constitution is a document in which we the people tell the government what it is allowed to do.
We the people are free.
And this belief has been the underlying basis for everything I've tried to do in the last eight years.
He believed in expanding liberty.
He believed in looking at a government once it gets too big and once it gets unwieldy cannot actually serve the people.
There's this false doctrine of liberalism out there that believes that the best The path is for government to have more control, the government to have more of a say in the way we do and the way we go in life.
Reagan says that is not true.
In fact, it is the opposite.
When the government does what it's supposed to do and not more, that is when freedom comes and when freedom is allowed.
To speak.
He makes this point very clear when he says that the government expands, liberty contracts.
We've seen that in the 30 years now since Reagan gave this speech.
We have seen that grow even more.
Some of it out of fear.
Some of it came out of 9-11 when we were fearful of an attack, when our intelligence agencies, through siloing and missed opportunities, missed the boat and we were attacked and we were led into war.
To combat the fear of being terrorized again in another terrorist attack, we gave up through the Patriot Act and many other things, the very many other laws, the willingness to give of many Americans to give up freedom to gain security.
And that has cost us.
Every time government grows, whether it's surveillance, whether it is in social programs or wherever it may be, Liberty contracts.
People are more indebted to the government.
And that's just something that, frankly, is a concern.
It's also led, what I believe today, to why people mistrust government so much.
Why there is such a disdain for what we're seeing.
Because right now, people are being told one thing, and we see media many times helping in those discussions, whether it be The Russia hoax, whether it be Hunter Biden's laptop, whether it be what actually a bill will do or what a bill will not do.
It goes back to this understanding that the philosophy in which government is lifted up, where government is expanded, our liberties are decreased and people are getting more and more frustrated with that.
And they're taking it out.
Unfortunately, many times they don't look at the history of our country.
They don't look at the perspective of our country and know that there are ways to do it.
Reagan, 30 years ago, said it is through us.
We the people, through getting involved, being active, is what we need to have and be a part of.
He talks about this later in the speech when he emphasizes that all the things that he accomplished that he was credited with did not actually come from him, but it came from the Reagan Movement followers who wrote letters, who talked to elected officials, who got involved in the process to make the changes that he was advocating for.
He realized he did not do it alone and that we the people aspect here was the aspect that said that when people get involved, when people understand the role of government, when people understand their role in the government, In dealing with the government, then great things can happen.
How many times as a country have we seen, and I'm fearful at times, we're seeing more and more people feel like it doesn't matter whether I vote, it doesn't matter whether I get involved, it doesn't matter who runs for office, it's all the same.
Reagan is trying to break that out and say it is not about government, it is not about what it has done, but what it can be when the people are involved enough to become informed, to become a part of the electorate, And we're not always going to agree.
I think Reagan, and we'll talk about that here in a few minutes, Reagan was very much of one understanding that this was not about a common agreement and a common factor that we all have and that we'll all just agree to.
I think he understood the plurality of our country.
But he said if we don't start from the basis of the fact that freedom and we the people and that the Constitution grants the people the freedom to have a voice in their government, then we miss everything.
And yes, for those listening on this podcast today, that even means people you disagree with.
It means people that you have not saw eye to eye with on politics or life or religion, but yet they are part of this country.
And if we go back to the commonality of our roots, the commonality of who we are, then we can begin to grow.
Then we can begin to expand.
Then we can have the liberty and the freedoms that our founders wanted us to have.
Reagan understood this, and he did so from a perspective of the very document that we lift up, and that is the Constitution.
He says, we the people.
Not we the government.
And that was Reagan's perspective that came on.
In this speech, he then transitioned to what many will say is one of his greatest accomplishments.
It was not fulfilled completely until the Bush administration after him.
But remember, this was his discussion in his work with Russia, and Gorbachev in particular.
When Reagan came to office, there was transition going on among the leadership in Russia.
They had lost one leader, then they lost another leader, and then Gorbachev arrived on the scene.
It didn't happen overnight.
He didn't come in with Gorbachev.
You have to also remember in England at this time you had Margaret Thatcher who was leading again from a very principled standpoint of what we see in Britain which made her equally beloved and equally despised among many.
But they all were coming together at a time in which change was going to be necessitated.
Reagan understood this coming in.
He had talked about the evil empire.
He talked about that communism was dying, that it was not going to last.
And he did not let others...
Move him from that.
He always pushed this fact that Russia was not a good country, that Russia's communist government was not good for the very people that he talked about here under We the People.
He felt that freedom should ring all through the world and that the Russian people under this oppression were not free.
And for Reagan, that was the biggest document in his life.
Are they free?
Are they able to participate?
Are they able to earn a living?
Are they able to grow their families?
Are they able to do those things that make life worth living?
Reagan did not see that in a communist country.
And he was adamantly opposed and vociferously went after the Soviet Union in a time up to his presidency, at the beginning of his presidency.
But then he had something that I think is unique among leaders.
He didn't stay there.
Although he never backed down on his discussions of Russia and that there were problems and that Russia was an enemy and that Russia was not a good state in its communism, he didn't stop him from meeting with Gorbachev.
It didn't stop him from meeting and asking for great things.
It didn't stop him from going and talking about freedoms at the Moscow University.
It did not stop him from going into the street and meeting with normal everyday Russians as they were coming across although there's a lot of KGB thrown in that meeting as well.
But he would get out and mix among people and he would always raise this banner of freedom.
In the midst of a country that was struggling with its own identity in Russia, Reagan was not scared to talk about freedom.
He was not scared to talk about the very basic values that he believed made America great.
And that was the sense that our country was founded on the bedrock principles of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
And so he wanted that for everyone.
And his work with Gorbachev was pretty amazing.
Now, he never backed down and just accepted Gorbachev's promises carte blanche.
He never just said, he was never one of those that, for the sake of getting something, he would be willing to give up anything.
Now, he was very, I think, proud.
He speaks of this in this part of the speech here.
He talks about President Gorbachev, he actually praises him.
He actually says at times that President Gorbachev has brought about some internal democratic reforms and has begun the withdrawal from Afghanistan.
He's also freed prisoners whose names I have given him every time we met.
That was something that was very interesting about Reagan.
Every time he met with Gorbachev, he would give him political prisoners names that he wanted to see released.
We now see a resurgence in Russia under Putin of this Cold War sort of communist, this very totalitarian oppression of people.
We see it in the attack on Ukraine.
We see it in just what is going on inside the country where you have A great deal of haves and a great deal of more so than of have-nots.
And Putin has brought back and really reversed almost 40 years of history in many ways in Russia.
And it's interesting to see in the juxtaposition of time here, A little over 33 years ago, when this speech was given, the Soviet Union was on what many hoped would be a path toward a more free, more just, a more democratic, if you would, society.
It went down a long path.
That's a topic for another podcast.
But today, unfortunately, they came back in the last number of years through Putin.
And his vision of a Roman, not a Roman, but a Russian Empire, such as the Roman Empire, he believes that Russia has been mistreated in the world, that they are an old society, an old civilization, one that is worthy of respect in the world, and he wants to restore that, and that has caused a war now in which many are being killed, useless bloodshed, And it brings us back.
Why would we talk about that?
Well, we talk about it in this speech in the sense that there was a time in which an American president, through strength, went to the Russian president and through his forcefulness, through his willingness, not willingness to give in and to make happy and make nice.
And to say the truth about what was going on, it ended up making a huge difference during that time.
Now, as was said, he never gave in to Gorbachev without the trust but verify.
He trusted Gorbachev, but he always would verify.
And he said, something was very interesting.
He said, don't be afraid to see what you see.
In this speech, he was talking about Gorbachev.
He was talking about the trust but verify.
And right before that, he says, and it will as long as we make it clear that we will continue to act in a certain way as long as they continue to act in a helpful manner.
Notice, he said, we will be Good America and continue to work with you if you continue to act in a proper manner.
If and when they don't, at first, pull your punches.
If they persist, pull the plug.
If they still trust, it's still trust but verify.
It's still play but cut the cards.
I still, it's still watch closely and don't be afraid to see what you see.
For so many today, let me just say this.
It's, it's, believe what you see.
Reality is what you see and what people do.
That's the reality.
And Reagan understood that.
And he understood that if Gorbachev was truly committed to making the changes that he spoke of, that you would see it in the actions.
Look at that in your government.
Look at that in your politicians.
Look at it in the ones who run for office.
Look at it in your family.
Look at it in your business.
It is what people actually do more than what they say that you have to understand.
It is trust but verify.
And I think his conversation with Gorbachev is one of the greater in-depth stories, and there's a lot of books out there on it.
I'd encourage you to go read about this, An Informed Electric, which Reagan, I believe, truly was the backbone of our society.
You need to understand where we have been in this relationship with Russia and where Reagan was with Gorbachev.
And it was peace through strength, trust but verify, that actually moved that along to Russia, understanding they could no longer keep up the pace in which they were in the Cold War.
Now, he then does something that is rather interesting in these speeches and he says, I've been asked if I have any regrets.
He said, well, I do.
The deficit is won.
And he said, I've been talking about this a lot lately, but tonight isn't for arguments and I'm going to hold my tongue.
And this is also where he talks about the victories that he had with Congress.
He believed that Congress did not, I think if you look at his discussions and his writings, he believed that Congress did not keep its end of the bargain.
When they had tax cuts, they had the regulation cuts, they were supposed to be spending cuts and those never happened.
If you look back over history, that is what happens a lot of times.
We have the tax cuts, it makes everybody feel good.
But also we don't have the corresponding budget cuts to programs and ideas so that the actual realization even more so of what was done in government removing itself from the power base of taxes and regulations on business could even be explored even more in our deficit going down.
It bothered, I think.
Reagan was one of those from an older school, my dad's generation, my granddad's generation, who debt for them was not something that they understood.
It was not something they wanted to be a part of.
They saw what happened in the Great Depression.
They saw what happened with those who could not afford to pay their bills.
They lost everything that they had.
And I think the deficit, it's interesting to hear Reagan talk about it.
That was his regret.
And many people will point to him and say, oh, it was because of the tax cuts.
It was because of these things.
But remember, there was always the agreement, there was a discussion that we would do the tax cuts and do spending cuts.
And the spending cuts just frankly never happened.
And that's what we see going forward here.
So as you look at that, think about his regret.
What would we say now in our generation, and I saw it and was a part of it in Congress, and it is a regret that I have that we could never come to an agreement on how you actually bring this debt down.
I have mentioned it many times on our podcast, radio show, the only way you're going to do that is you're going to have to deal with With what we know as mandatory spending.
And Reagan did some of that.
He tried some of that in redoing Social Security and others.
But again, when you don't have those permanent fixes put into place, it doesn't matter what tax cuts or stimulation of the economy can do.
As long as you're spending more money than you take in, there is a deficit.
And Reagan understood this.
He understood long-term implications.
Unfortunately, I think he would just be...
I'm shamefully shocked at the rise in the national debt since he gave this speech.
I mean, it has just astronomically grown.
Ten years after this speech, we were actually on a per-year balanced budget.
We still had a deficit, but we still had on a year-to-year basis there for just a year or two a balanced budget.
And now in the last 20 years, due to a lot of reasons, wars and other things, we have went completely away from that.
So his regret was the deficit.
Does that not sound familiar to George Washington?
George Washington, 200 years now in the sort of the rearview mirror of 160, 170 years before Reagan, said that one of his concerns was public debt.
It is a concern of every administration, and you hear it in Eisenhower's speech as well, and you hear it in the speech here again by Reagan, in the sense of taking the national debt and deficits to be a serious problem.
The question today is, will we acknowledge that?
Or will we buy into the argument, oh, it doesn't matter.
We'll just keep spending.
We'll keep printing money and everything will be okay.
And the government will take care of us.
The government is not in a position to take care of us when they don't have their own fiscal house in order.
And it is at a point now where there's many people saying, how do we ever get it back into balance?
And that's going to be, I think that's the existential question for the next 20 to 30 years is how we begin to battle back through this.
Now, Reagan then moved into what I will say was the crux of his speech.
And this is what I titled his pride part of the speech, or his national pride part of the speech.
Listen to what he says.
He says, finally there is a great tradition of warnings in presidential farewells.
And I've got one that's been on my mind for some time.
But oddly enough, it starts with one thing that I'm proudest of in the last eight years, the resurgence of national pride, and I call the new patriotism.
The national feeling is good, but it won't count for much unless it is grounded in thoughtfulness and knowledge.
And then he says this, he said, an informed patriotism is what we need.
Are we going to, are we doing a good enough job teaching our children what America is and what it represents in the long history of the world?
In this speaking, and as you see through the next paragraph, he talks about, you know, are we teaching, you know, the patriot?
Are we teaching civics?
Are we teaching where this country fundamentally came from?
A lot of discussion right now in that, and there's a lot of discussion that, uh, of Who is to blame and who's the oppressor and taking racism and taking it to new levels?
I think Reagan here is actually talking about the simple fact of let's look at our history as who we are.
Let's be an informed electorate about it.
I think there's no way he can say informed patriotism means that we're blind to the sins of our past, to slavery, to keeping women from voting, to doing all the things that That we have seen in the inequality in our country.
He never would have said, I believe, that that is something to turn a blind eye to.
But he also said that when we see what was done and we see the rectification for what was done, that we need to move forward together.
And he said that the informed basis of this is this country would never exist without the founding principles of those who founded our country to say that however it may have started, we have evolved as a country to realize that our ugliness in our past is also a path to see how we overcome to our future.
And he wanted an informed, as he said, an informed patriotism, one that understands who we are, How we got here and why it matters.
I think it was so important for Reagan to understand and to talk about the why it mattered.
He believed it mattered so many times and he goes on to talk about He said, we have got to do a better job of getting across...
Let me back up for a second.
He says this.
He said, our spirit is back, but we haven't reinstitutionalized it.
I think that's an interesting point.
And what he's saying there is, he said, have we talked about these things he's fixed up?
Have they been reinstitutionalized into our government, into our documents, into our teachings, into our national ethos, is to find out about who we are.
He says this.
He says, we've got to do a better job getting...
A cross that America is freedom.
Freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of enterprise, and freedom is special and rare.
It's fragile and needs protection.
Now notice there, he didn't say only my speech.
He didn't say only my religion.
He didn't say only my views.
He said all of this has to be protected.
And it is that freedom that we have as Americans and it's the protection that is provided by Americans through our Constitution, through we the people, the things he's already talked about in his speech, is what gives us our hope as we look forward.
So the question truly becomes is are we incorporating those into our society?
And I'm going to go back to something that I'm not sure we do.
He says this informed electorate says, I'm informed only to my opinion.
I'm informed only to what I believe.
I'm informed to believe that one group is racist and one group is not.
I believe that one has no bearing on society and one is a bearing on society.
When we understand that we're, when we get away from freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of enterprise and being able to deal in our business deals and to do what we believe God and call us to do, Reagan understood that that was the downfall of our country.
When it becomes that I point to another group and say, you're the problem.
When I point to another group and I say, you are the problem in our country and you're the reason it's going downhill and take no emphasis or blame on myself or in a discussion on how we collaborate to make it better.
It is then when we lose the freedom of our own speech.
Remember, if you only like speech and you want to stop speech of others, then you are at risk of losing that speech yourself and it will not come by people that like you.
It will not come from people you can control.
Just recently, in one of the Ivy League schools, there was a panel discussion on freedom of speech at a law school that was interrupted by students who did not think it was appropriate to be discussing freedom of speech.
I cannot think of anything more ludicrous in my life than a place such as an institution of higher learning that will not allow free speech, where you have to have safe zones, where you have to have places where people aren't offended.
Folks, I'm going to tell you something right now, and I think Reagan understood this, and that freedom of speech will offend you.
There were people who were offended by Reagan.
There were speech that offended Reagan.
But that is who we are.
If we're truly to be free, if we're truly to be a nation in which freedom is a priority, in which freedom is some place that we can actually grow and expand, we have to understand that we are different and that we have to come together in civility and we have to understand that this freedom that has been nurtured from the soil in which we have been raised here from People who came from all parts of the world to find freedom here in America.
Some came as slaves.
Some came as searching.
Some came as outcasts.
Some came as criminals.
But at the end of the day, we have now been given a nation in which we all can stand to the freedoms that are articulated in our Constitution of we the people.
Now some may disagree with that.
That is the starting point of conversation.
But understand that if you were not in a society in which freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of expression, freedom of enterprise was possible, you wouldn't be having these arguments.
And you would be trapped into a system in which the government gives you your ideas, gives you your freedoms, gives you your possibilities, instead of it being the other way around.
Reagan understood that it was we the people.
We talked about that earlier in his speech, but he also said if we don't institutionalize these into which they are taught to our kids, the good and the bad of America is taught so that we can beget better than we will miss who we are.
He believed that America is kept alive and I love how he talked about this.
He said, let me offer lesson number one about America.
All great change in America begins at the dinner table.
So tomorrow night in the kitchen, I hope the talking begins.
And children, if your parents haven't been teaching you what it means to be an American, let them know and nail them on it.
That would be a very American thing to do.
Reagan understood that it was at the home, that it was at the family level, it was at the personal level, that this country had its hopes, had its dreams, had its power.
Folks, if we've lost that, who are we?
If we've lost the very power to sit around a kitchen table, to sit with our neighbors, to go to a public forum, to be a part, and without raising our voices, without shouting names, without doing the things that have become so corrosive in our society, and demanding that only my point of view be heard, then we're missing what it is.
And Reagan understood this internally and made it clear that institutionalizing This was what we needed.
Now, the last part of this speech, and I'll turn to it very quickly here, was basically, he had said in all his politics, and he talked about this, he said, the past few days, as he'd been talking about that window upstairs again, he said, I thought a little bit about the shining city upon a hill.
The phrase he said, he talked about who he came from, was John Winthrop, who wrote it to describe the America he imagined.
What he imagined was important because he was an early pilgrim, an early freedom man.
He journeyed here on what today we would call a little wooden boat and like other pilgrims he was looking for a home that would be free.
I've spoken of the shining city all my political life.
But I don't know I've ever communicated what I saw when I said it.
But in my mind, it was a tall, proud city, built on rocks stronger than oceans, windswept, God-blessed, and teeming with people of all kinds, living in harmony and peace.
A city with free ports that hummed with commerce and creativity.
And if there had to be city walls, the walls had doors, and the doors were open to anyone that will and the heart to get here.
That's how I saw it and still see it.
And he talks about where he sees the city on that winter night.
He said more prosperous, more secure, happier than it was eight years ago, but more than that, after 200 years, two centuries, she still stands strong, true on the granite ridge.
Her glow has held steady no matter what storm, and she's still a beacon, still a magnet for those who must have freedom, for all the pilgrims from all the place who are hurting through the darkness toward home.
And then he makes this final statement.
He says, my friends, we did it.
We weren't just marking time.
We made a difference.
We made the city stronger.
We made the city freer.
We left her in good hands.
All in all, not bad.
Not bad at all.
He sort of ends with a challenge there for all of us.
He ended a challenge.
He said, look, he said, uh, we weren't just marking time.
We weren't just getting up going day to day.
And his speech that, uh, It was built on connection.
It was built on the starting point where he regretted the fast pace of not being able to connect with people.
And he ends with this statement that we weren't just marking time.
Let me ask you, listening to this podcast today, maybe you're riding down the road, maybe you're at work, maybe you're at the computer, maybe you're working out, wherever it may be.
Are you just marking time?
Have you given up on the hope in the process of what is known as America?
If you have, Then I encourage you to go back and listen to this podcast again.
Go actually read the speech yourself and look at the optimism that came from a man who endured a lot in eight years, both good and bad, and realized that the end of the day was about a city on a hill that was free.
That was open.
That was a society that valued the very institutionalization of the freedoms of speech and religion and enterprise and liberty that we had.
And realized that when everyone could come together and experience those freedoms, we all are made better.
Remember his statement.
He said, we started to change a country and we ended up changing a world.
That's pretty powerful, especially when you think about today.
When we see problems around us, we see discourse not as it should.
We see hope not as great as it used to be in many eyes.
We see a pointing of fingers, a telling of why, instead of a telling of how.
My hope in going through these speeches is to let you see that there is power in optimism.
There is power in hope.
There is power in acknowledging the good and the bad and not a Pollyanna existence of saying only my view is right and I don't acknowledge the pain and suffering of someone else.
No, that's not what I'm saying.
And I don't think Reagan said that either.
But he said, we wasn't just marking time.
We actually did something.
So for the listeners here today, will you go do something?
Will you be a part?
Will you help us make this signing city on a hill even greater by your participation?
It may not be what I thought.
It may not be what others think.
But are you going to be a part of seeing that the freedoms that we have are the most important things we have been given?
God bless you.
We'll see you next time.
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