Farewell Address Oval Office

On January 11, 1989, Reagan gave the following farewell address to the nation from the Oval Office. The two things I’m proudest of are the economic recovery which created 19 million new jobs and that America is respected again in the world.

In 1980 pundits said our economic policies would cause inflation and collapse while our foreign policies would lead to war. Instead, tax cuts created “the longest peacetime expansion in our history” and “an explosion in research and new technology.” We knocked “down protectionist walls abroad instead of erecting them at home.”

We rebuilt our defenses and saw a new peacefulness around the globe. “Countries across the globe are turning to free markets and free speech and turning away from the ideologies of the past.”

I went into politics to protect something precious. “Our Constitution is a document in which ‘We the People’ tell the government what it is allowed to do. In the 1960s the government was taking our freedom with rules and regulations and confiscatory taxes.

People are “not free unless government is limited. There's a clear cause and effect here that is as neat and predictable as a law of physics: As government expands, liberty contracts.”

Are “we doing a good enough job teaching our children what America is and what she represents in the long history of the world?” “America is freedom -- freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of enterprise. And freedom is special and rare.” Let’s start with more attention to American history.

I see America as a “shining city upon a hill” teeming with all kinds of people living in harmony, with ports humming with commerce, with doors open to anyone with the will to get here, a beacon and magnet for all who must have freedom.

Audio recording courtesy of the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library.

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