Ronald Reagan's Path for American Renewal

[corbe]

Ronald Reagan's Path for American Renewal

Column: How to build a 'Creative Society' today

Matthew Continetti
June 9, 2023

On January 5, 1967, Ronald Reagan delivered his first inaugural message as governor of California. To read his speech is to be reminded that some problems recur throughout history. And that lessons of a previous era often apply to our own.

The first topic Reagan mentioned was crime. Then he discussed welfare reform and education. He brought up radicalism on campus. He called for lower taxes and fiscal discipline.

What strikes the contemporary reader is Reagan's rhetorical framework. All these individual issues, he said, were aspects of a general relationship between government and the people. As today's Republicans and conservatives grapple with inflation, crime, illegal immigration, and a culture of repudiation, they might take note of how the most popular and successful GOP president of the last century thought about the social contract.

For Reagan, the American government was not omnipotent. The Founders did not mean for government to be fickle or arbitrary. They did not intend for it to lord over subjects. They wanted the law to reflect the consensus of self-governed citizens. Rather than build a "Great Society" engineered by politicians and bureaucrats in Sacramento or Washington, D.C., Reagan evoked a "Creative Society" where "government will lead but not rule, listen but not lecture."

Reagan seems to have dropped the "Creative Society" tagline not long after taking office, but the principles behind the slogan continued to inform his rhetoric and politics. Reagan saw public officials as intermediaries between voters and government. Their job is to keep government in check. They represent taxpayers and must ensure that "no permanent structure of government ever encroaches on freedom." The tasks of office include fulfilling the basic duties of government—rule of law, administration of justice, and national defense—as well as removing obstacles to human flourishing.

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https://freebeacon.com/columns/ronald-reagans-path-for-american-renewal/

[Fishrrman]

"Ronald Reagan's Path for American Renewal..."

... is over and done, one that cannot be walked.

Sorry. If America -- or at least, a substantial portion of it -- is to be "renewed", it's not going to happen that way.

Mr. Reagan was the greatest president of the Twentieth Century.
But those days are past.
And so is Mr. Reagan's "America"... much of which simply doesn't exist any longer.