In 1976, before he was elected president, Reagan was asked to write a letter for a time capsule, to be opened in 100 years.
His son Michael Reagan recently found a yellow pad with his father’s personal notes about that letter. Here are some of the things Michael found in those notes — the words of Ronald Reagan in 1976, on the fate of America and the world.
In Michael’s words, “He had been asked to mention in the letter some of the most serious problems confronting the United States in 1976. In case you’re too young to have been alive then, that’s when the Soviet Union Empire was truly dangerous and America was suffering from the effects of stagflation, high taxes, social unrest, weak leadership in Washington and a spiritual malaise that fostered a sense of national pessimism.”
Michael hardly needs to point out how similar these problems of 45 years ago are to today’s problems. But here are some of the things Reagan wrote in his yellow notepad.
"Think about it for a minute; what do you put in a letter that’s going to be read 100 years from now — in the year 2076?
The people who will read it, the future president said, "will be living in the world we helped to shape. Will they read the letter with gratitude in their hearts for what we did, or will they be bitter because the heritage we left them was one of human misery?"
Reagan said the greatest problem the United States faced in 1976 was the choice "between continuing the policies of the last 40 years that have led to bigger and bigger government, less and less liberty, redistribution of earnings through confiscatory taxation… or trying to get back on the original course set for us by the Founding Fathers. Will we choose fiscal responsibility, limited government, and freedom of choice for all our people? Or will we let an irresponsible Congress set us on the road our English cousins have already taken? The road to economic ruin and state control of our very lives?"
He continued, "On the international scene two great superpowers face each other with nuclear missiles at the ready — poised to bring Armageddon to the world. Those who read my letter will know whether those missiles were fired or not. Either they will be surrounded by the same beauty we know or they will wonder sadly what it was like when the world was still beautiful."
The future president writes that he concluded his letter to the future thus —
"If we here today meet the challenge confronting us, those who open that time capsule 100 years from now will do so in peace, prosperity and the ultimate in personal freedom. If we don’t keep our rendezvous with destiny, the letter probably will never be read — because they will live in the world we left them, a world in which no one is allowed to read of individual liberty or freedom of choice."
I hope, and pray to God, that we are able to read that letter when it is opened, IF it is opened, in 2076. But… it’s not looking good for that kind of freedom of thought.