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President, thank you for accomplishing what on January 20, 1981,
you said you would: A New Beginning.
You said on that day — I must quote your words, but if I can't
quite sing your music, I hope you will forgive me:
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 a time
to check and reverse the growth of government, which shows signs
of having grown beyond the consent of the governed…
It's not my intention to do away with government. It is rather to
make it work — work with us, not over us; to stand by our side,
not on our back.
If we look to the answer as to why for so many years we achieved
so much and prospered as no other people on earth, it was because
here in this land we unleashed the energy and individual genius
of man to a greater extent than has ever been done before….
With all the creative energy at our command, let us begin an era
of national renewal.
Mr. President, permit me also to recall the First Inaugural of an
earlier president:
Entertaining a due sense of our equal right to the use of our own
faculties, to the acquisitions of our own industry, to honor and
confidence from our fellow citizens, resulting not from birth, but
from our actions and their sense of them; enlightened by a benign
religion, professed, indeed, and
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there a Reagan Revolution?” |
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practiced in various forms, yet all of them inculcating honesty,
truth, temperance, gratitude, and the love of man; acknowledging
and adoring an overruling Providence, which by all its dispensations
proves that it delights in the happiness of man here and his greater
happiness hereafter — with all these blessings, what more is
necessary to make us a happy and a prosperous people? Still one
more thing, fellow citizens — wise and frugal Government, which
shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise
free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement,
and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned.
This is the sum of good government, and this is necessary to close
the circle of our felicities.
Thus, Thomas Jefferson in 1801. Mr. President, taking Thomas Jefferson's
words as your own, you made "a new beginning" and not only for the
United States. Many nations are now imitating your policies. As
the main source of hope for the world's poor, they too are turning
from government activists to economic activists, that is, to all
the people.
Historians tell us that what our framers meant by "revolution" was
a turning back to founding principles — in Latin, a re-volvere
— a going back to true beginnings.
Was there a Reagan Revolution? Mr. President, it was not exactly
a "Reagan" revolution. It was "the American Revolution," now well
into its third century, reestablished by you upon our founding principles.
As the founders humbly dared to hope, Mr. President, this American
Revolution heralded "a new order" of basic rights for all humanity
and for all the ages. This novus ordo seclorum was conceived
in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that every man and every
woman everywhere is created equal. All around the world today —
even in Mr. Gorbachev's USSR, if glacially — whole peoples
are turning toward these shining principles.
May this revolution last forever, Mr. President, and may your name
be linked with its renewal, at this time, in this age, for as many
generations yet to come as God sees fit to bless America.
For beginning anew the American Revolution, Mr. President, the revolution
of natural liberty, the revolution that belongs to all humanity,
we thank you.
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