The words which follow come from Ronald Reagan's first inaugural address in January 1981, when the American economy was in deep trouble. They demonstrate why he was so popular, because he could relate to individual people. He believed in the power of the individual to take destiny in their own hands. Gordon Brown, on the other hands, believes the individual can only be empowered by the state. It's impossible to imagine him reassuring the nation in this way, and that's why compared to Reagan, he is a political pygmy.“The economic ills we suffer have come upon us over several decades. They will not go away in days, weeks or months, but they will go away. They will go away because we, as Americans, have the capacity now, as we have had in the past, to do whatever needs to be done to preserve this last and greatest bastion of freedom. In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem. From time to time, we have been tempted to believe that society has become too complex to be managed by self-rule, that government by an elite group is superior to government for, by, and of the people. But if no one among us is capable of governing himself, then who among us has the capacity to govern someone else? All of us together, in and out of government, must bear the burden. The solutions we seek must be equitable, with no one group singled out to pay a higher price. We hear much of special interest groups. Our concern must be for a special interest group that has been too long neglected. It knows no sectional boundaries or ethnic and racial divisions, and it crosses political party lines. It is made up of men and women who raise our food, patrol our streets, man our mines and our factories, teach our children, keep our homes, and heal us when we are sick—professionals, industrialists, shopkeepers, clerks, cabbies, and truckdrivers. They are, in short, ‘we the people’, this breed called Americans.First Inaugural Address, Tuesday, January 20, 1981
Reagan's words are particularly appropriate given the chorus, from both left and right, of politicians and journalists today saying ‘Gordon Brown should do that’ or ‘the Bank of England should do this’, as though individual people have little role and are unable to influence the course of events. Hattip to George Bathurst.
