President Ronald Reagan's Farewell Address to the Nation. January 11, 1989

My fellow Americans, this is the 34th time I have spoken to you from the Oval Office and the last time we have been together for eight years and it will soon be time for me to leave, but first I wanted to share some thoughts. some of which I have been saving for a long time. It has been the honor of my life to be your

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. Many of you have written in the last few weeks to thank you, but I could tell you the same thing, Nancy and I, we are grateful for the opportunity you gave us to serve.

One of the things about the presidency is that you are always somewhat apart, you spend a lot of time going. too fast in a car that someone else is driving and you see people through tinted windows the parents are holding a child and the wave you saw too late and you couldn't turn back and many times I wanted to stop and reach out from behind the glass and connect well, maybe I can do a little of that tonight people ask me how I feel about leaving and the fact is that leaving is such a sweet pain, the sweet part is California and the ranch and the freedom, the pain, the goodbye, of course, and leaving this beautiful place, you know, down the hall and up the stairs from this office is the part of the White House where the

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is. and his family lives, I have some favorite windows up there and I like to stand and look out early in the morning, the view is over the grounds here to the Washington Monument and then the mall and the Jefferson Memorial, but in the mornings , when humidity is low, you can see beyond the Jefferson to the river, the Potomac, and the Virginia coast.

Someone said that's the view Lincoln had when he saw the smoke rising from the Battle of Bull Run, but I see more prosaic things, the grass on the banks. morning traffic as people head to work occasionally a sailboat on the river I've been thinking a little about that window I've been reflecting on what the last eight years have meant and mean and the image that comes to mind like a chorus is nautical a little story about a big ship with a refugee and a sailor it was the early 80's in the heyday of boatmen and the sailor was working hard on the aircraft carrier Midway patrolling southern China.

Sea the Sailor, like most American servicemen, was young, intelligent and fiercely observant. The crew saw a small leaky boat on the horizon and inside were refugees from Indochina hoping to reach the United States. Midway sent a small boat to take them to the ship and be safe if the refugees made their way through the rough seas one saw the sailor on deck and stood up and called to him he shouted hello American sailor hello liberty man a little moment with a great meaning one moment the sailor who wrote it in a letter couldn't It didn't get out of my head and when I saw it I couldn't either because that's what it has to be: being an American in the late 1980s we went back to defending the freedom.

I know we always have, but in recent years the world has turned again and in a way, we have rediscovered it ourselves, it has been quite a journey this decade and we stuck together through stormy seas and in the end together we reached our desti

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. , the fact is from Grenada to the Washington and Moscow summits from the recession of '81 to '82 to the expansion that began in late '82 and continues to this day, we have made a difference the way I see it, there was two great triumphs, two things that I am most proud of, one is the economic recovery that created the people of the United States. and covered 19 million new jobs, the other is the recovery of our morale.

The United States is respected again in the world and is sought for leadership. something that happened to me a few years ago reflects some of this it was back in 1981 and I was attending my first major economic summit which was held that year in Canada the meeting venue rotated between the member countries the opening meeting was a formal dinner for the Heads of Government of the seven industrialized

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s well, I sat there like the new kid in school and listened and it was all Francois this and Helmut dropping titles and talking to each other by first name, well, at one point I I bowed and said my name is Ron, but that same year we began actions that we felt would ignite an economic comeback cut taxes and regulation began to cut spending soon the recovery began two years later another economic summit with more or less the same cast at the big opening meeting we all got together and suddenly for a moment I saw that they were all just sitting there looking at me and then one of them broke the silence he told us about the American miracle he said well back in 1980 when I was running for president everything was so different some experts said our programs would result in catastrophe our opinions on foreign affairs would cause a war our plans for the economy would cause inflation to skyrocket and cause an economic collapse.

I even remember a well-respected economist saying back in 1982 that the engines of economic growth have died down here and are likely to remain that way for years. Well, he and the other opinion leaders were wrong. The fact is that what they called radical was right. What they called dangerous was simply desperately necessary. And in all that time I want a nickname of Great Communicator, but I never thought it was my style. Of the words I used that made the difference was the content. I was not a great communicator, but I communicated great things and they did not spring fully from my forehead, they came from the heart of a great nation, from our experience, from our wisdom and our belief in the principles that have guided us for two centuries, they called it the Reagan Revolution, well, I accept it, but to me it always seemed more like the great rediscovery, a rediscovery of our values ​​and our common sense, common sense told us. that when you put a big tax on something, people will produce less, so we lowered people's tax rates and people produced more than ever before the economy flourished like a plant that had been pruned and could now grow faster and stronger.

The economic program caused the longest peacetime expansion in our history. Real family income increased the poverty rate. The rise of entrepreneurship and an explosion slowed. We are exporting research and new technologies more now than ever because the American industry has become more competitive and at the same time we are calling. the national will to tear down protectionist walls abroad instead of erecting them at home; Common sense also told us that to preserve peace we would have to become strong again after years of weakness and confusion, so we rebuilt our defenses in this new year, we toast to The new peace throughout the world not only from the superpowers has begun to reduce their nuclear weapons arsenals and the hope for even greater progress is bright, but the regional conflicts that torment the world are also beginning to cease.

The Persian Gulf is no longer a war zone. The Soviets are abandoning Afghanistan, the Vietnamese are preparing to withdraw from Cambodia, and a U.S.-brokered deal will soon send 50,000 Cuban troops home from Angola. The lesson of all this was, of course, that because we are a great nation, our challenges seem complex, they always will be. be so, but as long as we remember our first principles and believe in ourselves, the future will always be ours and something else we once learned should start a great movement, there is no telling where it will end, we intended to change a nation and instead , a changed world, countries around the world are turning to free markets and freedom of expression and moving away from the ideologies of the past, for them the great rediscovery of the 1980s has been that the low moral form of government is the practical form of democratic government. profoundly good is also deeply productive when you get to the point where you can celebrate your 39th birthday anniversaries, you can sit back, sometimes you review your life and see it flowing before you, for me there was a fork in the river and I was right at Half of my life.

I never had the intention of going into politics. It wasn't my intention when I was young, but I was raised to believe that you had to pay for the blessings bestowed upon you. I was happy with my career in the world. entertainment world, but I finally got into politics because I wanted to protect something precious. Ours was the first revolution in human history that truly reversed the course of government and with three little words we the people, we the people, tell the government what to do. It doesn't tell us, the people are the driver, the government is the car and we decide where it should go, by what route and at what speed.

Almost all the constitutions in the world are documents in which governments tell the people what their privileges are. , our Constitution is a document in which we, the people, tell the government what it is allowed to do, we, the people, are free. This belief has been the underlying basis of everything I have tried to do these last eight years, but back in the 1960s, when I started, it seemed to me that we had begun to reverse the order of things that through more and more rules and regulations and confiscatory taxes the government was taking more of our money, more of our choices and more of our freedom.

I entered politics partly to defend my hand and say enough is enough. I was a political citizen and it seemed like the right thing for a citizen to do. I think we have stopped a lot of what needed to be stopped and I hope I have reminded people once again that man is not free unless the government is limited. There is a clear cause and effect here that is as clear and predictable as a law of physics as the government expands freedom contracts. Nothing is less free than pure communism, and yet in recent years we have forged a new and satisfying closeness with the Soviet Union.

They asked me if this is not a bet and my answer is no because we are basing our actions not on words but on deeds. The day when this 1970s was not based on actions but on promises that they had promised to treat their own people like the people in The World Was Better, but the gulag was still the gulag and the state was still expansionist and they still fought wars by proxy in Africa, Asia and Latin America. Well, this time so far it's different. President Gorbachev has introduced some internal democratic reforms and has begun the withdrawal from Afghanistan.

He has also freed prisoners whose names I have given him every time we have met, but life has a way of reminding you that we were big things through small incidents once during the heady days of the Moscow summit. Nancy and I decided to break up with him. One afternoon we went with an entourage to visit the shops on our Bad Street, which is a small street right next to the main shopping area of ​​Moscow, although our visit was a surprise, all the Russians there immediately They recognized us, they shouted our names and took us by the hand, they almost dragged us. from the warmth you could almost feel the possibilities and all that joy, but within seconds a KGB detachment made its way towards us and began pushing and shoving people through the crowd.

It was an interesting moment that reminded me that while a man on the street in the Soviet Union prays for peace the government is communist and those who run it are communists and that means that they and we see issues like freedom and human rights in a different way. very different, we must maintain our guard, but we must also continue to work together to reduce and eliminate tension and mistrust. My opinion is that President Gorbachev is different from previous Soviet leaders. I think he knows some of the things that are wrong in his society and he is trying to fix them.

We wish him the best and will continue to work to ensure that the Soviet Union that eventually emerges from this process is less threatening; It all comes down to this: I want the new closeness to continue and it will as long as we make it clear that we will continue to act a certain way while as they continue to act helpfully, if and when they don't pull their punches at first, if they persist, pull the plug, still It's confidence, but check that you still play, but cut the cards, still, watch closely and don't be afraid. Look what you see I've been asked if I regret anything.

I do. The deficit is something I've been talking about a lot lately, but tonight is not for discussion and I'm going to keep quiet, but for an observation. I've had my share of victories in Congress, but what few people noticed is that I never won anything. You didn't win for me. They never saw my troops. They never saw Reagan's regiments. The American people. You won every battle with every call. I made a letter you wrote demanding action. Well, action is still necessary if we are to finish the job of Reagan's regiments. Soon they will have to become the jungle brigades.

He will be the boss and he will need you as much as I do. Finally, there is a great tradition of warnings in presidential

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s and I have one that has been on my mind for a long time.some time, but it is not enough and it begins with one of the things I am most proud of in the last eight years: the resurgence of national pride. What I called the new patriotism, this national sentiment is good, but it won't count for much and it won't last unless it's based on thoughtfulness and knowledge, and what we want is informed patriotism and are we doing a good job of teaching our children? what America is and what it represents in the long history of the world those of us who are over 35 grew up in a different America, we were taught very directly what it means to be American and we became almost absorbed in the It conveys love for the country and appreciation for their institutions.

If you didn't get these things from your family, you got them from the neighborhood, from the street dad who fought in Korea, or from the family who lost someone in Anzio, or you can get them. a sense of patriotism from school and if all else failed, you could get a sense of patriotism from popular culture, movies celebrated democratic values ​​and implicitly reinforced the idea that America was special. Television was like this in the mid-60s too, but now we're about to enter the 90s and some things have changed. Younger parents are not sure that an unequivocal appreciation of America is the right thing to teach modern children and as for those who create popular culture, well-grounded patriotism is no longer the style, our spirit has returned but we have not re-institutionalized it, we have to do a better job of conveying that America is freedom freedom of speech freedom of religion freedom of enterprise and freedom is special and rare it is fragile it needs production so we have to teach history based not on what is fashionable but what's important why the pilgrims came here who Jimmy Doolittle was and what 30 seconds over Tokyo meant, you know, four years ago, on the 40th anniversary of D-Day, I read a letter from a young woman who wrote to him to his late father who had fought on Omaha Beach.

Her name was Lisa Sonata N and she said we will always remember her. We will never forget what the Normandy boys did right Let's help her keep her word If we forget what we did We won't know who we are I warn of an eradication of American memory that could ultimately result in an erosion of the American spirit Let's start with some basics: more attention to American history and a greater emphasis on civic ritual and let me offer lesson number one about America. All the big changes in America begin at the dinner table, so tomorrow night in the kitchen I hope the conversation begins and, kids, if your parents haven't been teaching you what it means to be an American, let them know and notice, that That would be a very American thing to do, and that's all I have to say tonight except one thing.

Over the past few days, as I stood in front of that upstairs window, I thought a little about The Shining City on a Hill. The phrase comes from John Winthrop, who wrote it to describe the America he imagined. What he imagined was important because he was a The first pilgrim and the first man of freedom traveled here in what we today call a small wooden boat and, like the other pilgrims, he was looking for a home that was free. I've talked to the bright city all my political life, but I don't. I know if I ever communicated what I saw when I said it, but in my mind it was a tall, proud city built on rocks stronger than the oceans, windswept, blessed by God, and filled with people of all kinds living in harmony. and peace, a city with a pre-port that was overflowing with commerce and creativity and if there had to be walls in the city, the walls had doors and the doors were open to anyone who had the will and the heart to get here, that is how I saw it and I still see it and how the city is this winter.

The night is more prosperous, safer and happier than eight years ago, but more than that, after two hundred years and two centuries, it remains firm and faithful on the granite ridge and its brightness remains constant no matter the storm, and still a beacon, still a magnet for all who must have freedom for all the pilgrims from all the lost places rushing through the darkness towards home, we have done our part and as I walk the streets of the city a last word to the men and women of the Reagan Revolution, the men and women across America who for eight years did the work that brought America back, my friends, we did it, we weren't just marking time, we made a difference , we made the city stronger, we made the city freer and we left it well. hands, overall, not bad, not bad at all, so goodbye, God bless you and God bless the United States of America.