76-16-B5
- Main Page \ Reagan Radio Commentaries \ 1977
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Bulletins[edit]
Transcript[edit]Every once in a while, little tidbits pop up in a variety of journals. They don't make headlines but they offer sidelights on the things that do. For example, the Soviet Union, with great fanfare, has handed its citizens a new constitution. Who says they don't believe in human rights? "Soviet citizens", the document said, "shall be guaranteed freedom of speech. press. assembly meetings, street processions and demonstrations, abilities, training, education" and just when you think they are free, then come the last eight words of that sentence; "with due account for the need of society". In other words, they'll have those meetings and assemblies and parades when they are told to. Other constitutions may sound like ours but they don't work like ours for one simple reason. Our Constitution is a document in which we, the people, tell government what it can and can't do. Those others are documents written by government telling the people what government will let them do. On another front, the Administration has named Mozambique as one of the countries to receive a chunk of money in our Foreign Aid program. A group of refugees escaping from that "liberated" African state have told reporters there are food shortages, collapse of the educational system and of medical services. There are political arrests and "re-education" (make that concentration) camps. They say the people of Mozambique look upon the Rhodesians who crossed the border to raid terrorist bases as liberators and hope they'll keep coming. To change the subject, or at least bring it back to our shores -- a short time ago, our Federal Highway Administration told us that, beginning next year, it was converting all highway signs to the metric system and would not put equivalent miles on the speed and distance signs. The immediate response was a flood of letters, all strenuously objecting to the change. Congressman Charles Grassley of Iowa (bless him) offered an amendment to the Department of Transportation appropriation bill to torpedo the idea. The Department got the message and backed off. I don't know about you, but I like inches, yards and miles. I don't think I can get used to saying 28.349 grams of prevention is worth a .453 kilograms of cure. Energy is a headline subject these days but have you seen anything about the experts who say there are 105,000 trillion cubic feet of gas in the Texas gulf area at depths of eight to 25,000 feet. If we doubled our use of gas, 10% of that would supply the whole nation's needs for 200 years. The hitch is it can't be produced for the restricted price the government has put on natural gas, but it can be for a price lower than what we're now paying for imported liquefied gas. Time for a little comedy relief and you can count on bureaucracy for that every time. The Washington Star dug this example of gobbledygook up from the federal register. Now listen carefully and see if you gather the meaning --QUOTE -- "that the statement of Record and Property report for Briarcliff located in Travis County, Texas, contains untrue statements of material facts required to be stated therein or necessary to make the statements therein not necessary to make the statements therein not misleading." -- UNQUOTE. One last item; in Rochester, New York, a private firm has been successfully delivering letters within the downtown business area for ten cents, delivery guaranteed the same day. The Post Office and the mail carriers union are trying to get an injunction to put the firm out of business. This is Ronald Reagan. Thanks for listening. |
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