Ronald Reagan's 1981 Inaugural Address Paved the Road to DOGE
Little did we realize then, but his words were a call to action and ultimately our destruction.
On a cold morning in January 1981, Ronald Reagan spoke words that now no longer mean anything to Republicans and the right in the United States.
To a few of us here today this is a solemn and most momentous occasion, and yet in the history of our nation it is a commonplace occurrence. The orderly transfer of authority as called for in the Constitution routinely takes place, as it has for almost two centuries, and few of us stop to think how unique we really are. In the eyes of many in the world, this every-4-year ceremony we accept as normal is nothing less than a miracle (Inaugural Address 1981).
Those were solemn words in 1981 — solemn words in 2016. By 2020, four long, hard years after the rise of Donald Trump, those words became asterisked. (*If a Republican wins the election.) This historical anomaly, however, is not why I chose today to look at Reagan’s inaugural. I just thought how ironic it is that the president most Republicans think they idolize would be considered a RINO if not a “never Trumper.”
Mr. President, I want our fellow citizens to know how much you did to carry on this tradition. By your gracious cooperation in the transition process, you have shown a watching world that we are a united people pledged to maintaining a political system which guarantees individual liberty to a greater degree than any other, and I thank you and your people for all your help in maintaining the continuity which is the bulwark of our Republic (Inaugural Address 1981).
Reagan’s words then, which seem gracious today, were standard fare in 1981. He did not tell the world that Jimmy Carter was a loser or had doomed the nation to despair. He didn’t once say that “only I can fix this.”
Reagan, however, did reach for rhetorical highs in his apparent giddiness when he gave the rest of his speech. He decided to lay down a gauntlet and tell Americans that the enemy was not so much external as but internal. The enemy was not them; they were God’s chosen ones because they were born in the United States.
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’re not bound by that same limitation? We must act today in order to preserve tomorrow. And let there be no misunderstanding: We are going to begin to act, beginning today.
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’ve had in the past, to do whatever needs to be done to preserve this last and greatest bastion of freedom (Inaugural Address 1981).
The rationale for why the American people are more intelligent, and so more worthy to determine the direction of the nation’s journey, is laid out in these words. Hinting at “good old commonsense,” that two plus two will never equal six, it was time to tame the out-of-control bucking bronco.
In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem. From time to time we’ve 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. Well, 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 (Inaugural Address 1981).
It is in these words that we find the beginning of the end. Ronald Reagan’s speechwriter crafted this little ditty, and little did we know that a thousand ships were set asail as a result. What we also didn’t fully understand was that on many of those ships were cargo bays filled with jackasses, racists, libertarians, white Christo-nationalists, and eventually M’gidiots. There is a silly notion that the United States could be managed in a way similar to the junkyard on Sandford & Son — or in New Jersey, the Pinelands of Jackson before the developments took over — where anything goes, and anything can be salvaged and sold for buck or two, has led us to this day where Americans think that planes will stay in the air, trains on the tracks and diseases will behave just because that’s we expect to them do.
The policies of Ronald Reagan today would be rejected by most M’gidiots. Nonetheless, he remains the original primate for them, the way monkeys are for humans. They view his rhetorical talent as the story’s beginning — the ultimate “Once upon a time in America.” Regrettably, Reagan was clueless as to what he was uncorking. Had someone told him that his words and philosophy of governance for the United States would lead to Trump 1.0 and 2.0, and then DOGE, he would have been inspired enough to write his speech, and he would have delivered in the way only Reagan could.
As a coming-of-age teenager, I despised him because he could see he was running roughshod over our emotions, but I also envied his ability to make any spoken words sound absolutely magical.
So, as we begin, let us take inventory. 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.
Now, so there will be no misunderstanding, 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 ride on our back. Government can and must provide opportunity, not smother it; foster productivity, not stifle it (Inaugural Address 1981).
These sentiments seem genuine, if not even oddly relevant today as we watch Elon Musk and his zit-faced bros hack away the federal bureaucracy like it was a vast overgrown hedge. Unfortunately, one of Reagan’s greatest mistakes was to do away with the Fairness Doctrine, which paved the way for Rush Limbaugh and, ultimately, Fox News. Thanks to Fox News, more than a generation of Americans, and over half the nation, are mentally handicapped. They are stupid — ignorant, even. They don’t know the truth but instead hold onto the vapidness of fantasy. Just pop over to a Fox News site and read some of the comments on articles praising the genius of Trump. The Foxifiied are told that Democrats are against DOGE so they can maintain their control of America through the deep state — this is what Fox actually tells people.
The deep state!
Ronald Reagan would never have accepted this madness. If he had ever seen an hour of reporting done by Tucker Carlson, Laura Ingraham, or Sean Hannity, he would summon the leaders of Congress to the Oval Office the next day and demand that laws be passed to end this lunacy. The fantasy that the 1st Amendment should protect Fox is like saying the rapist should make his victim pay for an STD he might have gotten during the committing of his crime.
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 (Inaugural Address 1981).
No matter how much damage Ronald Reagan did. No matter that his “revolution” launched the greed, race-hate, and corruption that today has turned Congress, the Executive Branch and SCOTUS into tools for the construction of fascism, Reagan never once lost sight of the powerful beauty that used to be the United States of America: Once, we stood for freedom — governed by laws. Today, we stand for Trump, the oligarchy, and wealth creation for a tiny minority.
I dare you to tell me I am wrong.
Rise up! Get a T-shirt and let them see what you think!