"A Vision for America" by Ronald Reagan

Election Eve Address, November 3, 1980

"There is something more, much more, that needs to be said tonight.

 That's why I want to talk with you—not about campaign issues—but about America, about us, you and me. Not so long ago, we emerged from a world war. Turning homeward at last, we built a grand prosperity and hoped—from our own success and plenty--to help others less fortunate. Our peace was a tense and bitter one, but in those days the center seemed to hold. Then came the hard years: riots and assassinations, domestic strife over the Vietnam War and in the last four years, drift and disaster in Washington. It all seems a long way from a time when politics was a national passion and sometimes even fun. 

 A popular novel of the ‘60s ended prophetically with its description of a "kindly, pleasant, greening land about to learn whether history still has a place for a nation so strangely composed of great ideals and uneasy compromise as she." That is really the question before us tonight: for the first time in our memory many Americans are asking: does history still have a place for America, for her people, for her great ideals? There are some who answer "no;" that our energy is spent, our days of greatness at an end, that a great national malaise is upon us. They say we must cut our expectations, conserve and withdraw, that we must tell our children…not to dream as we once dreamed.

  Last year I lost a friend who was more than a symbol of the Hollywood dream industry; to millions he was a symbol of our country itself. And when he died, the headlines seemed to convey all the doubt about America, all the nostalgia for a seemingly lost past. "The Last American Hero," said one headline, "Mr. America dies, " said another. Well, I knew John Wayne well, and no one would have been angrier at being called the "last American hero." Just before his death, he said in his own blunt way,

"Just give the American people a good cause, and there's nothing they can't lick."

Duke Wayne did not believe that our country was ready for the dust bin of history, and if we'll just think about it, we too will know it isn't.".......