77-23-B6
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People Power[edit]
Transcript[edit]Years ago an Englishman wrote a terrifying book entitled 1984. Now an American has written about an alternative. I'll be right back. 27 years ago, British author George Orwell wrote a famous book, a fictional projection of the world of 1984. Orwell wrote of a totalitarian state that rewrote history, relentlessly punished non-conformity and rigidly controlled the lives of its miserable subjects. That terrible vision of 1984 has haunted us ever since. We have seen our own national government intrude ever further into our schools, workplaces and homes, and we've had as an ever-present model the brutal and oppressive regimes of the Soviet Union and other communist nations. Now comes an important new book called People Power: The Alternative to 1984. It's written by Morgan J. Dalton, a one-time president of the U.S. Jaycee's, who has devoted his life to encouraging people power at the grassroots. People Power is not an answer to Orwell's dismal prophecy, at least not directly. Indeed Orwell's work is scarcely mentioned in the book. What Dalton sets out to do is to explain to Americans how grassroots self-help efforts can deal effectively with problems, provided however, that those efforts are not stifled or gobbled up by some blundering government program. Dalton's examples are many and detailed. He tells how Detroit's positive neighborhood action committee won victories for a black neighborhood. In recreation, housing, education and job training he tells how a private volunteer effort called Placement Services in that same city was able to place hundreds of unemployed black men and women in jobs with no help from the many government agencies supported by the taxpayer for that same purpose. Dalton tells how a group of unskilled workers at Houston's Diamond Alkali company determined to improve their skills at their own expense and climbed from a dead-end labor pool into far more rewarding and better paying jobs. He tells how Dr. Cleo Blackburn generated 400 self-help homes in an Indianapolis ghetto, not by seeking government money, but by relying on the potential inherent in as many poor people who had the desire to become homeowners and improve their children's lot. In life these and many other stories emphasize Dalton's point. If the dead hand of government can be lifted or ignored, groups of citizens can and will come together to deal effectively with problems facing them. The key is in devising a system in which power and responsibility are dispersed at the grassroots, instead of being concentrated in a hierarchy of bureaucracies and institutions. The key is what people themselves can do, not what others can do for them. Unleash that spirit and America need have no fear of 1984. And you know what? I think he's right. This is Ronald Reagan. Thanks for listening.
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