What He Said: ReaganagaeR on Government Borrowing

The problem, the consequences, and the solution as he saw it in his 1981 Inaugural Address ... eerily applicable again today (especially in light of this and this type of thing):

You and I, as individuals, can, by borrowing, live beyond our means, but for only a limited period of time. Why then should we think that collectively, as a nation, we are not bound by that same limitation?

... For decades we have piled deficit upon deficit, mortgaging our future and our children’s future for the temporary convenience of the present. To continue this long trend is to guarantee tremendous social, cultural, political, and economic upheavals.

Inflation ... distorts our economic decisions, penalizes thrift, and crushes the struggling young and the fixed-income elderly alike. It threatens to shatter the lives of millions of our people. Idle industries have cast workers into unemployment, human misery and personal indignity.

We are a nation that has a government -- not the other way around. And this makes us special among the nations of the earth. Our Government has no power except that granted it by the people. It is time to check and reverse the growth of government which shows signs of having grown beyond the consent of the governed.

Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hpPt7xGx4Xo
Text: http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/ronaldreagandfirstinaugural.html

Oh, and looking back a bit further to 1964:

This is the issue: ... Whether we believe in our capacity for self-government or whether we abandon the American revolution and confess that a little intellectual elite in a far-distant capitol can plan our lives for us better than we can plan them ourselves ... No government ever voluntarily reduces itself in size.

Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yt1fYSAChxs

Happy Reagan Day!

Obama keeps telling us he's the second coming of ... err ... Reagan. Lou Cannon and NPR merrily joined the mantra last week. In that case, it would serve him well to begin delivering messages along the lines of these Reagan Quotes:

Government always finds a need for whatever money it gets

Sometimes I think that government fits that old-fashioned definition of a baby: An alimentary canal with an appetite at one end and no sense of responsibility at the other

Government's view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it."

We don't have a trillion-dollar debt because we haven't taxed enough; we have a trillion-dollar debt because we spend too much.

I have a special reason for wanting to solve this [economic] problem in a lasting way. I was 21 and looking for work in 1932, one of the worst years of the Great Depression. And I can remember one bleak night in the thirties when my father learned on Christmas Eve that he'd lost his job. To be young in my generation was to feel that your future had been mortgaged out from under you, and that's a tragic mistake we must never allow our leaders to make again.

It is not my intention to do away with government. It is rather to make it work -- work with us, not over us; stand by our side, not ride on our back. Government can and must provide opportunity, not smother it; foster productivity, not stifle it.

Growth, prosperity and ultimately human fulfillment, are created from the bottom up, not the government down

There can be no security anywhere in the free world if there is no fiscal and economic stability within the United States.

there has been a fourth branch added to the traditional three: a vast bureaucracy ... of enormous power which determines policy to a greater extent than any of us realize, very possibly to a greater extent than our own elected representatives. And it can't be removed from office by our votes

Government growing beyond our consent had become a lumbering giant, slamming shut the gates of opportunity, threatening to crush the very roots of our freedom. What brought America back? The American people brought us back -- with quiet courage and common sense; with undying faith that in this nation under God the future will be ours, for the future belongs to the free.

This is the issue of this election: Whether we believe in our capacity for self-government or whether we abandon the American Revolution and confess that a little intellectual elite in a far-distant capital can plan our lives for us better than we can plan them ourselves.

Concentrated power has always been the enemy of liberty

You and I have a rendezvous with destiny. We will preserve for our children this, the last best hope of man on earth, or we will sentence them to take the first step into a thousand years of darkness.

They say the world has become too complex for simple answers. They are wrong. There are no easy answers, but there are simple answers. We must have the courage to do what we know is morally right.

Iranians vs. Iran ... Rick Steves and the Shahab-3

As I've said before, I really appreciate Rick Steves' European shows on PBS. When I found out he also maintained a blog (who doesn't these days?) I was instantly hooked! He gives hidden insights and sneak previews, but also shows the entertaining soft underbelly of his job (grumpy tourist office in England, stupid rules in Turkey). When he mentioned he would be going to Iran to separate the real from the rhetoric ... well, honestly I was nervous. This has been used frequently by the peaceniks among us as a euphemism for their peace-at-all-costs world view.

All told, it was a courageous and a valuable thing he did. We'll all be better off if we can humanize this conflict a bit. I agree with him that individual-to-individual contact can lead us all to greater understanding of each other. I share his hope that understanding breeds compassion and even solidarity.

But Rick showed his liberal underpants a bit. While his aim was to present an "even view" of the country, his result was to give glibly cursory coverage to the hate-mongering propaganda spewed forth by the insaniac Iranian government. Does he really mean to suggest that "Death to America" is just a cute figure of speech? I give him kudos for covering every smile and "we love America" he observed from the Iranian citizens. However, by over-emphasizing these, he showed he could not resist the temptation to counter-balance the White House's predilection for fear mongering. with opposite-but-unfortunately-equal myopia.

Here's my take on the Iran:

• To quote Reagan, "People do not make wars; governments do." In this context, the meaning is that the conflict does not really involve the common citizens of either country. On both sides, they're more interested in living their lives comfortably and being left alone than geopolitics. He went on to say, "A people free to choose will always choose peace." I saw this firsthand in the early 1990's in the former USSR - the people never did hate Americans. Had no reason to, except the fear preached them by their government. And they were just as afraid of their own government as ours. Rick did a good job of demonstrating that (many) Iranians are no exception.
  
• To repeat Reagan: "People do not make wars; governments do." His statement has a second meaning: Governments do, indeed, make wars on behalf of their countries. Acknowledging my first point (and Rick's) does not repudiate the fact that the Ayatollah Insane-y and the rabid Ahmadi-nejad army could cause great harm to life and limb in the US, Iran, and most likely anyone else who has the misfortune of getting their attention. Sanctions, containment, diplomacy, saber rattling, and outright aggression may well be necessary in response to their actions.

The fact that an American can traipse around Iran (with government minders) gathering smiles and hugs from children and grandmas alike calls attention not to the power of peace or the senselessness of war ... but to the tragedy of it. I'm quite sure the average middle-class, non-fundamentalist Iranian (if there are any left in that place) is as anti-war as his American counterpart.

However, that (mythical ?) average Iranian does not have his finger on the "launch" button of the new Shahab-3 nuclear-capable intermediate range missile. Nor does he have the key to the national purse. He has no vote on whether his own dire, hopless, poverty-stricken existence is worth the billions being wasted by the government on their nuclear program.

It is FOR, not AGAINST these people that aggression against their government may be necessary.

I'll let Reagan wrap up my argument: "We can not play innocents abroad in a world that is not innocent." We must engage Iran with respect, but from a position of strength. We don't need to be the world's daddy, but we do need to ensure our own safety.

If we can serve as a global role model of freedom and respectability, we achieve dual success of furthering our own self-interests while at the same time elevating the world's lowliest and most suppressed. To that end, we should be willing to expend our own treasure and flex our own muscle. It's a long-term proposition, which makes it politically dificult. Greatness is not for the short-sighted.

Photo credits:
Rick Steves in Iran: Rick Steves Blog (http://www.ricksteves.com/blog/index.cfm?fuseaction=archives&month=6&year=2008)
Iranian Missiles: Sepah News (http://www.daylife.com/words/Sepah_News) via AFP

Talk Amongst Yourselves ...

The cure for terrorism? A middle class. Jobs. Affluence. Hope. A shift from the current sense of entitlement from the nanny-government to a sense of opportunity, responsibility, and ambition.

Reagan said "The greatest security for Israel is to create new Egypts."

What would Reagan say to the people of America Today?

He's already said it. Let's listen in as he speaks to us via actual quotes from twenty, thirty years ago ... "Before I refuse to take your questions, I have an opening statement ... My fellow Americans, I am pleased to tell you I just signed legislation which outlaws Russia forever. The bombing begins in five minutes ... How do you tell a communist? Well, it's someone who reads Marx and Lenin. And how do you tell an anti-Communist? It's someone who understands Marx and Lenin ... " "Government is not the solution to our problem. Government is the problem ... I don't believe in a government that protects us from ourselves ... Concentrated power has always been the enemy of liberty ... Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn't pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children's children what it was once like in the United States where men were free ... Above all, we must realize that no arsenal or no weapon in the arsenals of the world is so formidable as the will and moral courage of free men and women. It is a weapon our adversaries in today's world do not have. It is a weapon that we as Americans do have. Let that be understood by those who practice terrorism and prey upon their neighbors ... " "History teaches that wars begin when governments believe the price of aggression is cheap ... Of the four wars in my lifetime, none came about because the U.S. was too strong ... If it's to be a bloodbath, let it be now. Appeasement is not the answer ... We can not play innocents abroad in a world that is not innocent ... I am totally unwilling to see this country fail in its obligation to itself and to the other free peoples of the world ... We have done what we had to do. If necessary, we shall do it again ... When our citizens are abused or attacked anywhere in the world on the direct orders of a hostile regime, we will respond so long as I'm in this Oval Office ... [They] counted on America to be passive. [They] counted wrong ... " "There are no easy answers but there are simple answers. We must have the courage to do what we know is morally right ... You and I have a rendezvous with destiny. We will preserve for our children this, the last best hope of man on earth, or we will sentence them to take the first step into a thousand years of darkness ... All great change in America begins at the dinner table ... We have found, in our country, that when people have the right to make decisions as close to home as possible, they usually make the right decisions. ... We must reject the idea that every time a law's broken, society is guilty rather than the lawbreaker. It is time to restore the American precept that each individual is accountable for his actions ... I know in my heart that man is good. That what is right will always eventually triumph. And there's purpose and worth to each and every life ... " "If you analyze it I believe the very heart and soul of conservatism is libertarianism ... Whatever else history may say about me when I'm gone, I hope it will record that I appealed to your best hopes, not your worst fears; to your confidence rather than your doubts. My dream is that you will travel the road ahead with liberty's lamp guiding your steps and opportunity's arm steadying your way ... 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, and we left her in good hands. All in all, not bad, not bad at all. And so, good-bye, God bless you, and God bless the United States of America. "