Ronald Reagan's Childhood Inspiration

Over this past week, I had the pleasure of reading a book that Ronald Reagan referred to as his childhood inspiration. The book, titled "That Printer of Udell’s" by Harold Wright Bell, is an uplifting story that contains many of life’s important lessons. Although when The Gipper first read it, he was only eleven years old and was most likely too young to recognize the true political principals in the book, and indeed, the message I took from the book may have been unintentional. Completed in 1903, the book was written about an America as it was then, which by itself, is a political statement to the modern citizen. It’s a story about a community overcoming adversity, and ironing out the social inequities on their own, by themselves, without government help. It was a time when people came together to tackle the local problems and how they, without government assistance, solved their challenges with prudence and practicality far more effective than any distant, out of touch bureaucracy which runs contrary to today’s American who has been brain washed to believe in complete government reliance.

The story takes place in a Midwestern mining town at the turn of the century, where George Udell, the local printer, takes a poor starving young drifter into his care, by the name of Richard Falkner. In the book, the predominantly Christian town of Boyd City has reached a moral dilemma about how to care for the poor tramps that roam into the booming town, and the citizens are deeply split in their opinions regarding the community’s responsibility to the needy. On one end, there are the wealthy aristocrats who view drifters and vagabonds as a lower class virus, and they fervently reject any effort of humanitarian relief to them. And then there are the young Christian Society, with their noble Christian ideals, they want to provide a practical system to shelter and feed those in need. The main character is Richard Falkner, a young man who is judged by many in the town as a drifting vandal, but to the contrary of many prejudgments, he emerges as a smart, hard working gentleman of deep conviction who shows leadership in the town and cares deeply for the roaming poor. In a town hall meeting, he proposes a noble solution to help the men in need and below he outlines the brutal realities of implementing a social effort:

"That there are in this city as in every city, two classes who present their claims for assistance; the deserving and undeserving. Any plan which does not distinguish between these two classes must prove a failure, because it would encourage the idle in their idleness, and so prove a curse instead of a blessing. It would make fraud profitable by placing a premium rather than a penalty on crime; and it would make the sufferings of the truly unfortunate much keener by compelling them to yield their self-respect as the price of their succor. The only test that can succeed in distinguishing between these two classes is the test of work."

This statement, by itself, runs in stark contrast to the “Great Society” solutions of the LBJ era and of many on the left in public office today. It is a statement rooted in skepticism of those who receive the social benefits because it acknowledges that some will try to take advantage of the system. A statement such as this can only be made by someone who has some “skin in the game,” so to speak. In essence, policies implemented by a community with the community’s money will always be more practical and far less wasteful than anything the central government could create, in every regard. And the community, by nature, is more likely to ensure a competent policy in its matters because it is their money that is at work. Do you think the federal government is capable of taking the same kind of care about their policies? Just this week, reports came out on the government spending for the 2010 consensus and detailed how it is wrought with waste and carelessness. The federal government just spends our money with complete negligence to their constituency. This comes natural to them because it’s not their money that their spending. Just a few months ago, Nancy Pelosi was called in to question for spending $3000 on flowers. She justified her spending because the majority of the costs went to the funeral of Jack Kemp, as if that makes it ok. The fact that she chose this reasoning to defend her actions clearly reveals how out of touch these politicians are with regard to public money. The fact is we live in a country where politicians promise the citizens that they can fix anything for them and when the uninformed citizen casts their vote and elects that person into office, that representative feels they need to make good on that promise, so they start spending. But in the end, that problem would be better solved had the local citizenry fixed it themselves, which would be far less expensive and more effective than any federal legislative initiative.

"That Printer of Udell’s" reminds us of the American community before big government started its never-ending encroachment into our lives. It was a time when communities upheld an “all for one, one for all” philosophy. It was a day in age when one couldn’t afford to be too selfish because the community relied on each others efforts for a better future. People assembled in a common cause unseen today because we have the government to do everything for us now, so local assemblies are less needed and almost completely irrelevant. Sociologist have claimed, in recent years, that our culture has evolved into a mindset where we only care about ourselves, and everything is about “me” as oppose to the selflessness of previous generations. Why has this change occurred? The answer lies in the realities of our political culture. There is just no need to be helpful to my fellow man because the government has taken that job. And in almost every way, the government has failed in its social policies since it started recklessly enacting them after The Great Depression. This country desperately needs to move away from the addiction of federal government help and funding and begin to embrace the nurturing fellowship of the neighborhood again.

Many skeptics of this thought don’t think we as citizens can do as much as the federal government and that government help is necessary to centralize efforts for certain needed services. My answer to that critic is that they greatly underestimate how much people can do on their own. They forget that private effort is what has created just about everything that is worth anything in this world today, and they greatly overestimate the effectiveness of the central government. Take, for example, the child obesity bill that was signed into law by President Obama last week. Just stop and think about this for a second, President Obama thinks he can fix the child obesity problem by enacting some legislation from Washington. This idea is absurd. He will just hire more federal employees and throw more of tax payer dollars at something he can not make an impact on. This is a perfect example of the government thinking they can do more than they can. And in the end, citizens look proudly at him while he signs his newest social legislation into law and proudly adds to his record of social causes, the child obesity bill.

But no one is saying, NO! STOP!! It is not your place to fix this problem. It is the place of the people to fix it themselves. The parents, the community, the schools ect… So as citizens we need to incorporate a new mindset so that when the federal government wants to come in and help, we need to protest it and say, “get out of our business” and “we don’t need your help or your money.” Until the localities of this country can restrain themselves from accepting help and funding, federal politicians will continue to campaign on empty promises that will prove to be expensive and ineffective in order to get themselves elected. We as citizens need to say, we don’t want your help, we can do it ourselves better and less expensive than you can do it for us. This country needs to reexamine the role of the central government and we need to start working our way back to when this country was great.

-- Justin D. Kaechele