A Reagan Forum with George Will — 3/3/15

well good evening to everyone but notice I've not had a chance to meet my name is John hi boys and I have the honor of being the executive director of the Reagan Presidential Foundation thanks for coming out this evening in honor of our men and women in uniform who defend our freedoms around the world if you'd please stand and join me for the Pledge of Allegiance I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God thank you please be seated before we get started there are a few people in the audience that I'd like to make sure we recognize this evening and first I'd like to welcome George Will sister Katherine Jorgenson Katherine from the Reagan Foundation Board of Trustees mr. Jerry French Oh Jerry I cannot over state Jerry's extraordinary support for the Reagan Foundation over the years this room and much of what you see the Reagan libraries do to Jerry's incredible generosity so thanks so much Jerry our great former congressman Elton Gallegly and his wife Janice finally actor Robert wool who among many other films and television shows appeared in Batman with Michael Keaton deeply Robert if you please stand it was an many shows are less bold as a movie many many things but as some of you might know we have a car show an exhibit here right now in which we have the Batmobile from the movie that he was in and Robert if you'd like to take a spin the keys are still in the car it might be of interest to all of you that our guest speaker tonight made one stop along the way from Washington DC to Simi Valley it comes to us direct from the home on st. cloud Avenue in Los Angeles where a very special woman resides you may have heard of her her name is Nancy Reagan and she sends her warm greetings to all of you this evening now the former first lady has entertained world leaders and presidents at her residence for many years but the odds that a newspaper columnist would get past the security of the Secret Service and through the front door of the home once occupied by over 40 the president or about a million to one that is unless that newspaper columnist author and television personality is George Will it is no secret to be sure that mrs. Reagan and George have had a very special relationship since President Reagan occupied the White House George a friend of the Reagan's for many years has also been at the top of their list of favorite writers as well obviously George has been a favorite for many here tonight and I dare say for millions of people around the world who have followed him for decades a pure surprise winner for commentary his wisdom and wit have extended beyond the 450 newspapers and by weekly column he wrote for Newsweek for 35 years today he's an influential voice on Fox News where he joins the likes of Bret Baier among others during primetime and week time programming then there are the books they are literally are enough that I have lost track of one or two I'm sure but I believe there are as many as eight books representing compilations of his columns three books on political theory and now three books on one of his favorite subjects that being baseball for those of you who didn't get a chance to get a signed book from George before tonight's program there are several left that you can buy in the lobby outside or in the pavilion will you be having dinner tonight finally in the interest of full disclosure before asking George to take the stage tonight I'd like to note that he is married to a charming in town woman named Mari will someone who is actually kindly mentored me for most of my career and to whom I am truly indebted she served as President Reagan's Director of Communications in the White House in his last years in office in his thought of fondly by mrs. Reagan myself and all those who work here in elsewhere to keep the Reagan legacy alive again speaking of those known fondly to mrs. Reagan ladies and gentlemen please join me in welcoming to the stage mr. George Will to get out of my abuse a huge Senate immigration bill thank you very much it's true that I only write about politics to support my baseball habit I I don't have a major league team I'm a Cub fan but it's it's been important in my life because I grew up midway between Chicago and st. Louis and at an age to tender to make life shaping decisions I had to choose between being a Cub fan and a Cardinal fan all my friends became Cardinal friends and grew up cheerful and liberal I became a gloomy conservative I want to talk to you tonight about why I'm actually not gloomy about the state of the country I'm going to talk about a lot about our problems and I talk until I can think of something cheerful to say and then I'll sit down when my friend William Buckley ran for mayor of New York in 1965 he was asked at his first press conference mr. Buckley what's the first thing you'll do if you're elected he said I will demand a recount I think a lot of people feel that way I want to draw you a kind of picture of the many forces impinging on our government I feel a little bit like the teacher who asked her classroom full of eight-year-olds to draw a picture of whatever they wanted and as they drew she circulated among their desks and she got to the desk of little Sally and said Sally what do you write in drawing a picture of him sell he said I am drawing a picture of God did you send me Sally no one knows what God looks like Sally said they will in a minute let me give you a few data points as to about artist standing thanks the I'll read from this later a character in Hemingway's novel The Sun Also Rises as asked how did you go bankrupt he said I went bankrupt two ways gradually and then suddenly we're approaching the sudden stage and I'll tell you why in a minute in 1916 on the eve of the First World War when federal spending exploded the richest man in America john d rockefeller could have written a personal check for his net worth and retired our national debt today the richest man in America Bill Gates could write a cheque for his entire personal net worth and not pay two months interest on the national debt what we are up against I'm afraid is that first of all the political class is a permanent incentive to run deficits to give people a dollars worth of government goods and services and to charge them only sixty cents for it this is decadent democracy ladies and gentlemen we used to borrow money for the future we borrowed money to fight wars to preserve freedom to build roads highways dams bridges airports for the future now we're borrowing from the future from the unborn unconsenting generation that will inherit our debts in order to finance the current consumption of government goods and services this is a kind of decadence and we are overconfident that we can continue doing it we're saying well so far so good so far so good it reminds me as everything does of a baseball story if you'll forgive me 1951 Warren Spahn on the way to becoming the winningest left-handed pitcher in the history of baseball was pitching for the then Boston Braves against the then New York Giants and the then Polo Grounds and the Giants ended up to the plate of rookie a kid who was over 12 it was clear the kid would never hit big-league pitching there was a kid named Willie Mays Spahn stood out on the mound 60 feet six inches from home plate fired to bone maize crushed it first hit first home run after the game the sports writers weren't up to spawn on the clubhouse it's Pawnee what happened he said gentlemen for the first 60 feet that was a hell of a pitch not good enough in baseball not good enough in governance let me tell you what the problem of the entitlement welfare state that we have is the welfare state that we have today exists to transfer wealth from the working young and middle-aged the retired elderly every day beginning in the 1st of January 2008 when the first of 77 million baby boomers begin to turn 7 62 and become eligible for Social Security every day from now until 2030 10,000 baby boomers become eligible every day for Social Security and Medicare demography is destiny for a welfare state the welfare state serves the elderly the problem is that the welfare state we have today that we really begin to build in 1935 with enactment of the Social Security system the welfare state exists to subsidize two things that did not exist in 1935 one is protracted retirement and the other is competent medicine let me take retirement and Social Security first because that's a simple and small problem we have to go back and learn the lesson of item a fuller of Ludlow Vermonter height of May in 1940 became the first American to receive a regular monthly Social Security check she'd worked just long enough to be vested in the system having paid the grand total of 22 dollars in Social Security taxes then an an act of very reckless citizenship she turned on the country and lived to be a hundred collecting in the process $24,000 in benefits it didn't matter at that time there were 42 workers for every retiree today there are 3.3 workers for every retiree by the time the baby boom rooms have all retired there'll be two workers for every retiree remember by the time they retire in 2030 the average age the American population coast-to-coast will be higher than it is today in the state of Florida which is justly known as God's antechamber the Census Bureau doesn't just keep track of the elderly it keeps track of a cohort it calls the very old those are Americans eighty-five years old or older in percentage terms that is the fastest growing age cohort in the country that matters because the average healthcare costs for an 85 year old are five times higher than the cost for a 55 year old I'm not against the elderly I am elderly and I can prove it I'm 73 years old and when I turned 65 the government sent me this very very attractive Medicare card I showed it to my doctor said that's wonderful George now we'll send your bills to your children which is how the welfare state works the problem is not solving Social Security is a simple problem the real problem is the average length of retirement in the 20th century expanded from two years until 20 years in 1935 retirement was a luxury of a tiny portion of the American people it was never designed for this world that's easy to fix my goodness change raise the retirement age faster than we're doing in imperceptible increments to 67 if in 1935 Congress had indexed the retirement age to life expectancy the retirement age in America today be 74 we'd have no social security crisis the real problem is medicine Mehta is swallowing the budget we have attached as a matter of entitlement the most rapidly growing portion of the population the elderly to our most dynamic science medicine longevity is a wonderful thing but competent medicine is a new phenomena in 1924 Calvin Coolidge whose picture Ronald Reagan hung prominently in the Cabinet Room Calvin Coolidge his son Calvin jr. played tennis without socks on the White House tennis court he got a blister it got infected and he died an agonizing desc Coolidge had access to the best medicine in the country medicine was not very competent until about the time I was born in 1941 in Champaign Illinois University town very good hospitals but I'm sure because it was true of almost all hospitals back then the principal expense of the hospital I was born in was clean linen this was before MRIs and cat scans and electron microscopes and laser surgery and all the rest of the pain relieving life-extending diagnostic therapeutic pharmacological Marvel's that were delighted to have and reluctant to pay for when Jack Kennedy was president we were spending 6% of GDP on healthcare today it's 18% we have a welfare state that was not designed for this work I see a show of hands how many of you drive a 1935 car okay how many of you use a 1935 cellphone personal computer ask the same questions about 1965 in 1965 we enact Medicare at least half the medical treatments now in use did not exist in 1965 when Medicare was passed you know how many coronary bypass operations Medicare paid for in 1965 is zero the same number of artificial hips and knees this year Medicare will pay for seven hundred thousand artificial hips and knees one in six artificial hips will be given to an American over 85 years old as I said longevity is a wonderful thing but it is very expensive so we have to find ways to reform the entitlement statement to give people frankly more skin in the game I can give you all the big numbers that billions in the millions important point is 12 cents 12 cents is the portion of every health care dollar paid for by the person receiving the health care someone else is paying the other 88 cents even before Obamacare was passed 50 cents of every health care dollar in this country was a government dollar the American people have become increasingly dependent there is an agenda in Washington to increase the dependency of Americans on government everywhere you look food stamps increase in the last six years from 21 million to 51 million people on food stamps that's more people than live on the west coast of the United States energy sector keystone pipeline permeated with politics but matters when you think that no less an authority on energy than Nancy Pelosi recently said Americans should use let more natural gas rather than fossil fuels we are not always governed by the brightest Crayolas in the pack well the standard answer that people give is well let's just keep raising taxes the problem is you reach a point of diminishing returns the progressive agenda is an attempt to change our national character two distinct eyes dependency on government to make us think that that's perfectly normal and by changing social norms to change national character to make us all permanent Ward's of the state thoroughly and forever from cradle to grave now those people who say well we'll just raise taxes to pay for all this don't understand that the private sector by its a vigor can must throw off the revenues to pay the bills and the more you raise taxes the more you suffocate the energies of the private sector causing a death suck viral of the welfare state I have a modest proposal and that is whenever an American is handed a ballot it should have stapled to it a graph the graph would have intersecting lines the rising line showing more and more Americans dependent on the government the declining line showing declining participation in the income tax system top one percent of American earners pay thirty nine percent of the income tax top five percent pay sixty percent of the income tax top ten percent pay seventy percent of the income tax and here's the dynamite the bottom fifty percent of American earners pay three percent of the income tax sixty percent of America's families either pay no income tax or less than five percent of their income this is what economists call a situation of moral hazard a situation in which the incentives are for perverse behavior a large and growing majority of American have no incentive to restrain the growth of a government they're not paying for now we're about to learn the truth of what Will Rogers said when he said the difference between death and taxes is that death doesn't get worse every time Congress meets we Lord knows we need tax reform why do I do not know why we have a corporate income tax corporations don't pay taxes they collect taxes passing it on as a cost of doing business we have the highest corporate tax rate in the world we're surprised that corporations have two trillion dollars worth of earnings overseas because this is the worst country in the world in which to earn a profit why why can someone explain to why is death a taxable event in this country 1980 the Philadelphia Phillies won the World Series and after the last game all the sports writers went under the clubhouse to talk to the Phillies madcap relief pitcher tug mcgraw they said tug what are you gonna do with your World Series earnings he says I'm gonna spend 80% on wine and women and I'll probably waste the rest well it makes you think you work hard in America you get to be 65 70 and you make a lot of money and you say the hell with it I'm going to Las Vegas and blow it all on wine and women go ahead it's a free country try and give it to your children the government steps in what's wrong with this picture what's wrong is our tax code looks increasingly like codified Envy an Envy is strictly speaking on American we are not traditionally an envious people were an aspirational people that's why we're the only developed nation in the world that has never had a large redistribution of Socialist Party furthermore envy is not fun by the way did you ever think that envy is the only one of the seven deadly sins that doesn't give the sinner even momentary pleasure I'll pause while you go down the list you know Mark Twain could be a great scourge of the rich he gave the name to the Gilded Age it was the title of one of his unsuccessful novels but his best friend was a hugely rich successful executive of Standard Oil the Great Satan of its day and journalist once went up to 20 and says mr. Twain don't you believe your friends wealth is tainted Mark Twain said you're damn right it's doubly tainted it ain't yours in a tank mine we are the reason our politics is the temperature of our politics is high today is that the stakes are high stakes are high because we're arguing about fundamentals we're arguing about how the citizen should be related to the central government we're talking about the actual competence and proper scope of government these are essential matters we are talking about and the parties are way divided as never before on where the creative energy of our society is is it in a government that must organize our life and make sure we're creative or is it in the spontaneous cooperation of individuals in a market society Ted Kennedy once said all change in America begins at the ballot box that's a clear statement of the progressive view that politics is central that we have a government centered society and life Joe Biden the gift who keeps on giving didn't you love it in the fall of 2008 Lehman Brothers melts down were in financial freefall Biden's as well in October 1929 when the stock market crashed President Roosevelt president Roosevelt went on television you cannot make Joe Biden up I mean Biden recently said every important idea of the last two centuries has depended on government of vision and incentive I think this government centered view of the world is refuted by every page of American history in the 1790s a young Yale graduate went south to Georgia to be a tutor on a plantation I got tired of listening to the planter sit around the kitchen table complaining about how to separate cotton seeds from cotton fibers of this young man named Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin made the plantation system profitable led to the spread of slavery brought on the civil war in the modern world which is rather a lot of change and it didn't begin at the ballot box it began in the spark of genius in one entrepreneurial mind in the 1830s in central Illinois where men are men and I am from in the town of Grand detour Illinois which I just looked up in his five point six miles from Dixon Illinois where Ronald Reagan spent his formative years in Grand detour Illinois a young blacksmith got interested in inventing a self scouring steel plow that could turn the heavy black topsoil of the Midwest he didn't his names on big green machines all over the world his name is John Deere didn't begin at the ballot box when Alexander Graham Bell's voice came down that wire and said Watson come here I want you when Ray Kroc drove into the McDonald's brothers restaurant in San Bernardino California and got an idea that became not just a great corporation to hold industry didn't begin at the ballot box this is the question we're talking about where's the creative energy what should government do to tell us how to think and act and trace things I want you to to understand what happens when this goes wrong when government gets that answer wrong I want you to come back with me to a crime scene the crime occurred at 138 Griffith Street in Jersey City New Jersey in April 1934 second year just begun of the New Deal I recently visited this neighborhood just to see the crime scene today as then it's a neighborhood of immigrants today they're from mostly Latin America and Asia then they were mostly from Eastern Europe 1:38 Griffith Street today is a barber shop then it was a man's tailoring and pressing shop owned by Joseph magadh a 49 year old immigrant from Poland father two daughters the crime he committed was he put in his shop window a sign that said he would press a man suit for 35 cents now you may well wonder how did that become a crime in the land of the free in the home of the brave I'll tell you the New Deal had a theory their first theory was that they were terribly smart and they knew everything they had a brains trust if they did say so themselves and they did so noxious ly and incessantly their theory was that when you have a depression prices fall therefore huge a non-sequitur therefore we would have a recovery if we could force prices to rise and therefore we must outlaw competition because competition lowers prices so the New Deal made price cutting and anti-social and in some ways criminal behavior so they passed the National Recovery Act to write codes of competition extra codes of non competition to stop people from competing you may remember from your high school civics textbook the symbol of the Emeth National Recovery administration was the blue eagle people were encouraged to fly the blue eagle flag over their factories are putting Blue Eagle posters in their shop windows Philadelphia Eagles football team was founded at this time and named in honor of the National Recovery administration which is why all good Americans hate the Philadelphia Eagles but the geniuses in Washington had decided that the proper price for pressing a man's suit was 40 cents maggot was guilty of a nickel economic crime for which he was fined $100 doesn't sound like much but the median family income that year was fifteen hundred dollars and sentenced to a month in jail for price cutting in America and it didn't happen in Jersey happened all over the country prosecutions like this well in in Meghan's case the judge thought this was highly amusing and a teachable moment so he canceled the fine and canceled the sentence and hauled maggot back into court where and here I'm quoting from the New York Times the judge gave him a little lecture on the importance of cooperation as opposed to individualism well Magid duly chastened left the courtroom company by the New York Times went back to his shop in Jersey city and removed from his shop wind of the offending sign promising to press the suit for 35 cents and put in its place the blue eagle the next morning the New York Times had maggot if not quite so ruggedly individualistic as formerly was a free man once more well his free man if you define freedom as embracing a government propaganda symbol under the threat of fines and imprisonment I don't that happened in this country because the government thought it knew everything thought it was wiser than markets it's sorting out prices and opportunity and wealth now I know what you're saying said well we don't do that anymore we're much smarter than that this ladies and gentlemen is the Senate immigration bill 1197 pages it has to be this long because the Senators know everything dude well smarty pants out there do you know the proper wage hourly wage of an immigrant animal sorter in 2016 what silly you it's nine dollars and 84 cents it's right here in the Senate bill that's 20 cents of more than the wage this too is in there of an immigrant nursery worker senators are really impressive aren't they they know these things did you oh did you know that Nevada is a border state I know I know the southern tip of Nevada is 164 miles north of the border but as Chico Marx said are you gonna believe me or your eyes there's another twenty billion dollars in border security pork in this and the Harry Reid of the great state of Nevada wanted Nevada to be eligible for border pork so they just declared Nevada as a border state this unimpressive little thing is the Homestead Act of 1862 by any measure one of the half-dozen most important pieces of legislation ever passed this two pages to be fair it's four pages on the parchment copy in the National Archives which means it's one thousand one hundred ninety three pages shorter than this the Homestead Act was actually our first immigration bill we had no immigration laws back then we just want people to come in get to work become Americans and populate that portion of the country west of the Mississippi that was identified on all our maps as the great American desert no one lived that there four pages it worked that's how we used to do things this is what happens and maggots prosecution when government loses sight of what makes America special loses sight of the spontaneous cooperation of Americans that Alex de Tocqueville marveled at in the Jacksonian America loses sight of the fact that freedom requires space to breathe loses sight of the fact that we built a government that's hard to move it's we did it deliberately you know people say oh we have this terrible problem of gridlock ladies and gentlemen gridlock is not an American problem it's an American achievement when the founders went to Philadelphia in the summer of 1787 they did not go to create an efficient and government the idea would have horrified them they wanted a safe government you know why because the most important word and the Declaration of Independence is secure all men are created equal endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights and governments are instituted among men to secure their rights not give them their rights the rights pre-exists government government exists to secure our preexisting natural rights and therefore is inherently limited to that end they created a complicated government three branches a government two branches the legislative branch of veto veto overrides judicial review super majorities all kinds of ways of slowing the government down but I can think of nothing the American people have wanted intensely and protracted Lee that they didn't get now look Washington it's not pretty to watch I understand that in Washington functions the way the old Washington Senators baseball team function on the Seine was Washington first in war first in peace and last in the American League they were run back then by man named Clark Griffith he said the fans like home runs and we have assembled a pitching staff to please our fans well you listen to this talk out of Washington and the complaining and all that you get pessimistic but no one ever got rich betting against the United States we are not Bangladesh we are a country that can get better by choosing to get better you know Winston Churchill who loved our country as much as he loved his American mother said the American people invariably do the right thing after they've exhausted all the alternatives we're pretty far down the list you're probably a listen to the people complaining and there's nastiness in Washington you probably feel a little bit the way Earl Weaver used to feel Earl was the Hall of Fame manager of the Baltimore Orioles he was a short irascible Napoleonic little figure and when he was out of sorts as he usually was by the third inning he was the scourge of American League umpires he'd come barreling out of the dugout stick his chin into the chest of a much larger Empire and at the top of his lungs he'd shout are you gonna get any better as this hit things are gonna get better there is an attempt of foot as I said to change social norms and change our national character to end American exceptionalism the Tocqueville said the American people are exceptional because we were born free unlike Europe we had no feudal past hence no entrenched aristocracy hence no established church we had an exceptional revolution one that didn't say we're gonna give you happiness said we're gonna set you free to pursue happiness as you define it we have an exceptional Constitution one that doesn't say what the government must do for us but what the government may not do to us and that's what we're arguing about is that Constitution still effective viable does it still limit the government or does it just permit the government to do anything it wants I think the American people still understand the depe nevolin government has not always a benefactor that capitalism doesn't just make us better off it makes us better by enforcing thrift industriousness deferral of gratification all the stern virtues of individualism that got poor Magadh sent to jail I think the American people understand that when Jack Kennedy said us not what your country can do for you but what you can do for your country one thing you can do for your country is to reserve a spacious portion of your life for which your country is not responsible I think they understand certainly what Milton Friedman meant and he said look take any three letters from the alphabet doesn't matter which ones pick them at random put them in any order you want doesn't matter you will have an acronym designating a federal agency we can do without I think they understand what Robert Frost meant when he said I do not want to live in a homogenized society I want the cream to rise and I know they understand what Ronald Reagan meant when he said I do not want to go back to the past I want to go back to the past way of facing the future that's what's at stake in our argument today whether we're gonna live in a government centered society or a market driven individualistic spontaneously cooperative society of free men and women I want to live in a society where we an individual defines excellence on his own terms and person tries to become the standard of excellence which reminds you it will not surprise you to know of a baseball story true story greatest baseball story ever told Rogers Hornsby greatest right-handed hitter in the history of baseballs at the plate and there's a rookie pitcher on the mound he was quite understandably petrified and the rookie throws three pitches and the umpire says ball one ball two ball three rookies shouts in at the young person some part those were strikes umpire takes off his mask looks out at the rookie and says young man when you throw a strike mr. Hornsby will let you know Hornsby didn't swing wasn't a strike that's to me the idea of America and that is what we can still preserve if we get busy because we're running out of time because as the government grows and this conscious engine of spreading dependency and distinct izing dependency and making us comfortable as Ward's of the government is gaining ground fortunately every few years we have things called elections and we can change the direction of things but I've tried to do to you tonight is to give you some sense of the picture all the forces demographic and otherwise that are driving us towards some moments of real decision now I've talked perhaps too long I'm pologize today you're probably feeling the way Jeff Torborg did when he was managing the White Sox you know what not one day to take a pitcher Jimmy Kern out of the game got to the mound and Kern said skipper I'm not tired Tarbert said Jimmy we know you're not tired but our outfielders are so on that note I will subside I thank you for hearing me out and I welcome your questions thank you very much thank you George as George's mentioned he's happy to take some questions to see evening we got about 15 minutes and also I asked if you have a question if you could raise your hand we'll have someone in the aisle bring you a microphone wait to the microphones in your hand and we'll go from there so if we could start right over here to our left good evening thank you for coming this morning as he heard Netanyahu's speech to date have you had any thoughts about it I did not I was on a plane coming to the Reagan Library but I've known Bibi Netanyahu personally for 35 years his country faces an existential threat Iran's supreme leader has described Israel as a one bomb country another Iranian leader has said it's good that the Jews are gathered together in a Jewish state because we can get them all at once that's what he deals with on a daily basis not intelligent public spirited men and women of goodwill can differ as to what to do about Iran but the idea that the head of America's only on our best ally in the Middle East our only ally in the Middle East should be considered a problem because he wants to give a speech explaining the perils his country lives with by day is an embarrassment to our country now I gather in the 67 years since Israel was founded on 1/6 of one percent of the land in that region it has not known a day of peace peace is more than the absence of war it is amicability and commodious living between they not on not an hour of peace Israel is known since 1948 when the war of independence was fought in the war of independence or Israel has intended so my view is this country should be glad to have someone of the experience and intelligence of Benjamin Netanyahu to come and give their point of view what are we afraid of if we're afraid of speeches unbelievable thank you for coming um I know that you discuss a little bit about the need for potential tax reform and I didn't know if you had any further comments on the need for educational reform here in America oh yeah 1983 Ronald Reagan convened a conference on the called a nation at risk produced a report that contained a very memorable line that said if a foreign power tried to impose upon us the educational mediocrity we've imposed upon ourselves we consider it an act of war well nothing improves so in 1994 Bill Clinton and Congress gave an edict to the future Congress said past goals 2000 they said by 9 by the year 2000 we would have 90 percent graduation rate from high school it's still about 78 and we would be number one in the world in math and science we're not so in 2001 we gave another edict to the future we passed a No Child Left Behind it said that by 2014 for those of you keeping score that's last year by 2014 there would be 100 percent proficient hundred percent we don't mess around 100% proficiency in reading and math the scary thing is we almost got there because we gave a financial incentive to every state to dumb down at standards of proficiency now we can keep doing this we can keep throwing money at schools we did this four years after the Second World War when the baby boom generation began going through the public schools like a pig through a Python everyone agreed that the best predictor of the school's performance is the amount of money you spend on it increased financial inputs cognitive outputs will increase so we did under both parties class sizes got smaller schools were built teachers salaries went up everything improved except test scores so we had a big the biggest social science survey in American history was conducted in the 1960s to find out what was going on produced the Coleman report know what the Coleman report said it's all families 90% of the differences in schools performance can be explained not by the money you spend on it by variables such as the quantity and quality of reading matter in the home the amount of homework done in the home the amount of television watched in the home but most of all don't tell me the pupil-teacher ratio tell me the pupil parent ratio today with family disintegration galloping this month right now is the 50th anniversary of the Moynihan report 1965 Pat Moynihan then a 38 year old social scientists in the Labor Department published a report called the Negro family the case for national action he said there is a crisis because 23 point seven percent of african-american children are born out of wedlock today at 72 percent it's 40 percent for all-american first births of all races and ethnicities today ladies and gentlemen you know I need to think about this a majority of mothers under 30 are not living with the fathers of their children a majority now we know what that means it means a constantly renewed cohort of adolescent males raised without fathers we know what that means unruly neighborhoods and schools were disciplining crowds out teaching as Pat Moynihan said from the wild Irish slums of the East Coast in the 19th century to the barrios of Los Angeles the lesson of history is unambiguous when you have a large cohort of unparent at adolescent males you have chaos there are limits to what schools can do to do the work of families families families can't teach algebra but families can teach the normal civilizing process of getting along in life a teacher in Chicago says she regularly gets 7 year-olds coming to school who don't know numbers shapes or colors no one while making dinner ever said 10 green round peas biggest problem America faces is family disintegration I don't care what any way the question was about schools I mean is it what we have to do is get the federal government out of the business of trying to make the schools as wonderful as Amtrak and the post office turn this all back to the states get rid of anything remotely like Common Core promote promote school choice so that you have a market and competition and things will get better what's practically the solution so long as government promises enough people something they'll be elected so what is necessary is that change in the people of themselves before you can change the government wait that's right you have to change some minds we have to persuade our government rests on public opinion and public opinion is shiftable sand therefore we have to go to the people say first of all Margaret Thatcher was right she's about a welfare state she said sooner or later you run out of other people's money and yet they can they come for your money we have to convince people and shouldn't be that hard that we are now so suffocated economic growth that we are pleased the president says wonderful we had a quarters growth of 5% one growth thank God Ronald Reagan in the recovery from the 82 recession Ronald Reagan's administration produced seven five quarters of 7% growth four years of 5% growth we're being asked to settle for a new normal a sluggish Japan like stagnant economy forever as the price of having a government of this weight we can't settle for that we can't dare settle for that because the welfare state will collapse how do we check how do we change the basic nature then of this country well the willingness to accept that type of government the changes that have to be we have made for to ourselves promises we can not afford to keep through the welfare state but if we if we modify those a little bit the savings or trillions Paul Ryan has shown us how to do this I strongly the Supreme Court is going to hear arguments in a case that could be the end of the Affordable Care Act of Obamacare and when when that happens the Republicans I think will have ready an alternative and this is gonna be one of the big climb downs you know we've we've had successes before the greatest legislative success of the 1990s was the welfare reform act that Bill Clinton vetoed twice before he was compelled to sign it and you know what happened aid to families with dependent children a portion of the sacrosanct Social Security Act was repealed we repealed an entitlement it was a lifetime entitlement we said it's now there's a five-year limit and to be eligible you have to go into job training and seek work what happened was anyone said although this world's gonna end what happened was sixty percent decline in welfare caseload in the country so we there is a there is precedent for beginning to dismantle parts of the welfare state let's just make some more precedence over here on a different note Ernie Banks passed away a few weeks ago would you please share your favorite memory of Chicago's most beloved baseball player yeah I mean Ernie uh actually hoes this is the saddest story fall Ernie has one record he holds the major league record for the most games played without ever playing in the postseason that's what you get for being with the Cubs what made any so wonderful was he was the only conceivable reason to go to Wrigley Field that in the old-style lager beer and that was it Ernie was of course indomitable cheerful roses are red violets are blue it's a beautiful day let's play - that was Ernie Banks there was no one betting behind him there's no reason in the world why anyone should just throw him a strike and still he hit 512 home runs you know you go to Wrigley Field you buy a t-shirt that says any team can have a bad century but Ernie Ernie was such an optimist if he were here tonight he'd say that Cubs are now in the they last won the World Series as you may know in 1908 which was before Ronald Reagan was born but that means Ernie would say we're in the 107th year of our rebuilding effort we have a question right over here we were all raised San bernandino so we appreciate the Ray Kroc reference we also feel that if you don't pass that how the hell do we know what's in it and once and for all can you tell us did Babe Ruth really call a shot a marvelous book on sale in your bookstore upstairs by me called a nice little place on the north side and it goes into some lengths and I think pretty clearly demonstrates that Ruth did no such thing Ruth's never claimed to have done it he was always coy about that I'll tell you what happened the Cubs at a shortstop named Billy Jurgis Billy George's had a girlfriend the girlfriend had a gun and Billy Jo just decided to end it and the girlfriend decided to end Billy Jurgis so she went to his hotel room shot him didn't kill him but he couldn't play shortstop for a while so the Cubs went out and got a shortstop from out here in the Pacific Coast League who had been a team rate of Babe Ruth's they'd actually fought in the clubhouse they hated each other but because he came to the Cubs in August the Cubs only got to the World Series did not vote him a full share and the Yankees thought that was pretty cheap behavior which it was and therefore the Yankees and the Cubs were yelling at each other and being bit mean to each other and being rude and it was in the midst of all of this that Babe Ruth supposedly pointed that the bleachers and hit the next ball they didn't happen but as you'll see what did happen and a Cub fans are justifiably probably Chicago Cubs won the Cold War not not enough people appreciate this they won the Cold War because Bill ring who Bigley who owned the Cubs bought Catalina Island and then he brought the Cubs out to do the spring training in Catalina Island and in the 1930s a Des Moines radio broadcaster named Dutch Reagan asked his Des Moines radio station if they would send him to California to cover the Cubs in Catalina Island which they did and while he was out here he decided what the heck I'll get a screen test he went and pictures became governor became president and ended the Cold War so the cub I'd love to say on that note we actually have time for one last question I think we have one right over here I'll stick with the Cubs real quick fellow Illinoisan I was so excited in 2003 and I'm just wondering your opinion whether Moises Alou actually had a chance to catch that foul ball probably not because I was at that game and I was sitting with Andy MacPhail was the president of the Cubs and Andy looked at he looked at the replay on the monitor in front of him said good call what he meant was the umpires were right to say that Steve Bartman when he did this that Bartman did not reach on to the field of play if he had it would have been fan interference the umpire didn't call that because he didn't reach on to the field of play which meant that Lou would have had to gone into the stands to get it and Cub fans unlike fans of 29 other teams are not smart enough to get out of the way and besides it's a high wall out there allude to this if Alou had not gone like that now to kind of mini tantrum and alou's to this day says he's very sorry he did Bartman would not be in the witness protection program today the answer's no I don't think he could have caught it with that if you all please join me you

Channel: Reagan Foundation

Views: 10,937

Rating: 4.9480519 out of 5

Keywords:

Id: W4w-p0v5xXQ

Length: 59min 6sec (3546 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 04 2015