The Creative Society Speech
For years Reagan had given speeches promoting liberty and criticizing Big Government for its stultifying effects on a free society. He summed up his views in a gubernatorial campaign address at USC on April 19, 1966, entitled “The Creative Society”:
“And that is the basis of the Creative Society–government no longer substituting for the people, but recognizing that it cannot possibly match the great potential of the people, and thus, must coordinate the creative energies of the people for the good of the whole.
The Creative Society must return authority to the local communities–give them the right to run their own affairs….The Creative Society, in other words, is simply a return to the people of the privilege of self-government, as well as a pledge for more efficient representative government…
Those who talk of complex problems, requiring more government planning and more control, in reality are taking us back in time to the acceptance of rule of the many by the few. [It’s] time to look to the future. We’ve had enough talk–disruptive talk–in America of left and right, dividing us down the center. There is really no such choice facing us. The only choice we have is up or down–up, to the ultimate in individual freedom consistent with law and order, or down, to the deadly dullness of totalitarianism.”
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The Human Scale Speech
This is an excerpt from Gov. Reagan’s address to the Economic Club of Chicago, September 26, 1975. To some it was known as the “human scale speech”, but it was more widely known as the “$90 billion speech”, because the Governor’s call for restoring $90 billion of federal spending to the States attracted the most widespread attention.
“Jefferson believed the people were the best agents of their own destinies, and that the task of government was not to direct the people but to create an environment ort ordered freedom in which the people could pursue their destinies in their own way. But he also knew that from the beginning the tendency of government has been to be players as well as umpire, ‘What has destroyed liberty and the rights of man in every government that has ever existed under the sun?’ Jefferson asked. ‘The generalizing and concentrating all cares and powers into one body.'”
“If Jefferson could return today, I doubt that he would be surprised either at what has happened in America or at the results. When a nation loses its desire and ability to restrain the growth or concentration of power, the floodgates are open and the results are predictable…”
“Thousands of towns and neighborhoods have seen their peace disturbed by bureaucrats and social planners, through busing, questionable education programs, and attacks ion family unity: Even so liberal an observer as Richard Goodwin could identify what he called ‘the most troubling political fact of our age: that the growth in central power has been accompanied by a swift and continual diminution in the significance of the individual citizen, transforming him from a wielder into an object of authority.'”
“The truth is that people all over American have been thinking about all of these problems for years. This country is bursting with ideas and creativity, but a government run by bureaucrats in Washington has no way to respond. If we send the power back to the states and localities, we’ll find out how to improve education, because some districts are going to succeed with some ideas and other districts are going to fail with others, and the word will spread like wildfire.”
“The more we let the people decide, the more we’ll find out about what policies work and what policies don’t work. Successful programs and good local governments will attract bright people like magnets, because the genius of federalism is that people can vote with their feet., If local or state governments grow tyrannical and costly, the people will move, If the federal government is the villain, there is no escape.”
“I am calling for an end to giantism, for a return to the human scale – the scale that human beings can understand and cope with: the scale of the local fraternal lodge, the church congregation, the block club, the farm bureau. It is the locally owned factory, the small businessman who personally deals with his customers and stands behind his product, the farm and consumer cooperative, the town or neighborhood bank that invests in the community, the union local.”
“In government, the human scale is the town council, the board of selectmen, and the precinct captain. It is this activity on a small, human scale that creates the fabric of community, a framework for the creation of abundance and liberty. The human scale nurtures standards of right behavior, a prevailing ethic of what is right and what is wrong, acceptable and unacceptable.”
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Building Strong Neighborhoods
(The following remarks were cleared for delivery by Gov. Reagan on October 17, 1980 in Lincoln Square neighborhood in Chicago, but at the last minute the speaking was cancelled..)
“The neighborhood scale is a human scale – a place where a real spirit of community can develop. This is a place where you can have and cherish your roots. It is a place where families can live near their retired parents, and bridge the gap of generations.
It’s on this scale that the people of our cities have their familiar institutions – the neighborhood merchant and the Chamber of Commerce, the church or synagogue, the deli, the corner pub, the street festival, the Fourth of July celebration.
Here, at the neighborhood level you have an arena for civic action, and for creative self-help. In city after city across this country, I have seen people working together in their neighborhoods to make them better in a hundred ways.
I’ve seen block watch programs, where people report suspicious activities to the police. I’ve seen housing rehab and community gardens and some home-made energy technologies. I’ve seen day care centers and tool libraries and community development corporations, and merchants’ associations. I’ve seen the wonderful work so many of our churches are doing in meeting both the social and the spiritual needs of their congregations.
This is the real strength of urban America – its people working together in the neighborhoods where they live. But that strength is in jeopardy today. For we have, year by year, transferred responsibility and resources away from neighborhood people to government – City Hall, the state capitol, and Washington.
And what happens? Well, first of all a lot of bureaucrats have to be paid with the money taken from your pockets. Then they design programs that are supposed to benefit your community. The programs may be something none of you really want, but the only way you can get your own money back is to accept what the government hands out.
Take the Community Development Block Grant program. Next year it will take $3.8 billion of your tax dollars. Washington gives those dollars, minus a hefty handling charge, back to City, Hall. Then City Hall decides how to spend it. It is usually spent in ways that please City Hall and comply with Federal regulations. Whether it is spent in a way that produces something of value in the neighborhoods of our cities is a good question.
I have long believed that problems should be solved by the people most directly concerned , not by vast, impersonal bureaucracies many miles away. Who knows best about the problems of Lincoln Square? City Hall? HUD? I doubt it. I think you know better right here. And I’d like to see community development proceed under your control.
After all, it’s your money that’s paying for it, and you ought to
Get what you want, not what somebody else thinks is good for you.
When I’m President, I’m going to try an experiment. I’m going to ask my Secretary of Housing and Urban Development to do something a little unusual with a little bit of that $3.8 billion community development budget.
I’m going to work with some city government to distribute some of those funds not to City Hall, and not to organizations favored by City Hall, but directly to every citizen of a neighborhood. Each citizen would get a voucher. It would say, for example, “Ten dollars of your money plus this voucher will produce $50 for the neighborhood improvement project of your choice.”
The citizen could then choose from among dozens of neighborhood projects – some run by city government, others run by churches or fraternal societies, others by a wide variety of block clubs and other improvement groups.
Now that is really returning power to the people. It’s giving them, not the bureaucrats, the money and letting them, not the bureaucrats and politicians, decide how that money should be spent.
For after all, whose money is it? It’s your money, and I’m convinced you can do more for your own neighborhood with it than Washington can!
There will be some who will say that giving power back to the people is a wrong idea. They may say that neighborhood people lack the big picture, that they will squander the money on projects of little value. They may say that only through city government or through state government or through the federal government can your tax dollars be wisely spent.
Well, I think they’re wrong. And when you look at the ridiculous things that the bureaucrats have spent your tax dollars on – and when you look at all the times that neighborhoods have been overrun by federally funded urban renewal or freeways or other projects that destroy homes and businesses and places of worship and the rich and varied culture of our communities — you will realize, I think, that the people themselves could hardly have done any worse.
And I’m convinced that you would do a lot better. Because you’ll use the money the way you want it spent – for your benefit, for your family’s benefit, for your neighborhood’s benefit. You’ll make sure it’s used that way because you live here in the neighborhood and you know what works and what doesn’t, and who you can trust to do the job, and who you can’t trust because they owe their allegiance not to you but to the politicians downtown or the bureaucrats in Washington.
That’s the kind of creative new approach I’m going to try when I become your President. I don’t want to be President so I can boss an army of bureaucrats who want to run your life. I want to be President so I can reverse the progress of power to Washington, and unleash the power of progress in Lincoln Square and in every neighborhood and town across this great land of ours.”
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Selected Radio Broadcasts
“They [the people] told me that the things they fear most are Big Government, Big Business, and Big Labor. Bigness robs the citizen of his rightful voice… Often these three powers play their own political game, for high and important stakes, as if the rest of us did not notice.” (1976)
“If the dead hand of government can be lifted – or ignored – groups of citizens can and will come together to deal effectively with problems facing them. The key is in devising a system in which power and responsibility are dispersed at the grassroots, instead of being concentrated in a hierarchy of bureaucracies and institutions. The key is what people themselves can do, not what others can do for them.” (“People Power”, 2/21/77)
“[I criticize] not bigness as such, but bigness unjustified by any claim to efficiency – bigness for the sake of exercising monopoly power – bigness to extract special privilege from government – bigness working to destroy competitive free enterprise. Concentrated power has always been the enemy of liberty. Power widely diffused among the people means freedom. [Forward America’s program] aims at encouraging a widespread distribution of capital and property ownership, and discouraging the concentration of economic and political power in the hands of Big Business, Big Labor, and Big Government alike.””(“Forward America”, 1978)
“Leave people alone with enough wealth after they pay their taxes, and they will invent, develop, trade with each other and do a good job of solving their problems.” (“Alternative Energy and Uncle Sam”, 9/14/78)
“The real issue can no longer be discussed in terms of Left and Right. The real issue is how to reverse the flow of power and control to ever more remote institutions, and to restore that power to the individual, the family, and the local community.” (“Left and Right”, 9/27/78).