 and certainly all the distinguished guests here present. I must say that it's a very high honor and a great privilege for me to welcome all of you to the inaugural event of the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation. Our purpose this evening, as most of you can imagine, the guest is to begin a process that will lead to the creation of a presidential library and a center for public affairs that will memorialize in my very objective opinion, one of the greatest presidents in American history. I figured you needed that, Mr. President, after last week. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. Indeed, it is a fitting tribute to President Reagan that a program be undertaken to create a center for the study of public affairs and a library for the preservation of the records of his administration. The library will be the ninth in the presidential library system. It will preserve all the documents of the president, provide public access to presidential records, and enhance research opportunities for scholars and students through the generosity of private philanthropy. The Ronald Reagan Center for Public Affairs will encourage and facilitate the advanced study of public affairs in the United States. To support this program, the foundation seeks to build and operate the finest research center in all the world. President of the United States. Thank you, thank you very much, please. I have been quite surprised in the last few moments, and every bit of show business instinct in me tells me how to keep my mouth shut and sit down. But Nancy and I want to thank all of you for being here tonight and tell you how grateful we are for your kind efforts on behalf of the foundation. Paul Axholt mentioned the other day how fitting it was that so many old friends there from the beginning should be associated with a project that someday will mark the formal end to eight years of government. Though we pray not an end to the idea and principles for which we stood. Now, like the good chairman that he is, I think Paul also said something about creating a proper mood for fundraising. Entrepreneurial leverage, I think he called it. Shame on you, Paul. You're talking bureaucrates. That's a language peculiar to Washington and there are no interpreters of it. Let me give you an example. Some of you've heard this before, but I'm gonna tell it anyway. One day early in my first term, a native bureaucrat stood in front of my desk and said, action-oriented orchestration of meaningful indigenous decision-making dialogue focusing on multilinked problem complexes can maximize the vital thrust toward non-alienated and viable urban infrastructure. Now that's pure basic bureaucrates. So I took a chance and said, well, why don't we try busing and hope he'd go away? But I look out here tonight and I see so many old friends. I'm gravely tempted to reminisce. I could tell a few stories that I think would interest future historians, but there isn't time for that this evening, except to say the moments that we've spent together are locked away forever in our memory and our hearts. Nancy and I want you to know that we looked forward to this dinner for a special reason. We thought this a particularly good time to extend our thanks, first because of the season and we wanted to share the joy of it with you. And second, through this foundation, you're helping to guide future generations of Americans to a deeper appreciation of our nation's past. Now in that film you just saw, I mentioned how living in the White House can overwhelm you with a sense of the past, so many events, so many presidents. I know all of you share this sentiment, this attachment to history, so I think we're here for a good cause and a noble work. But I can assure you in one century or 10, scholars and students looking through these records will find an anecdote of heart or humor or a detail of warmth and width that will not so much tell the story of one man's presidency as the story of an entire people, a good and generous people, proud of their heritage of freedom, determined that America shall be, as it was said on that tiny ship, the Arabella off the Massachusetts coast some three centuries ago, a light unto the nations, a shining city on a hill. And you know what we've done as friends and fellow citizens, to keep faith with those who came before us, those who won for us the blessings of liberty is at the heart of our purpose here this evening. Have we had some success? Well, I believe we have. We haven't won all the battles, just these last few days we lost a skirmish, but the battle goes on. And it's the nature of this battle and the other battles in these last five years that has changed. We're no longer the embattled few trying to stem the tide of ever increasing government growth, fighting to halt the adoption of new programs and the increase of government interference in the people's lives. No, today the debate has switched. It's over how much government should be reduced, which programs should be eliminated and how best to make government less intrusive in people's lives and less costly. You know, in a play some years ago called Benjamin Franklin in Paris, Franklin sits alone in the final act and wonders what he would find if after 200 years, quote, I too should rise up and stand once more on Pennsylvania land and walk and talk and breathe the free air. For I know in my heart it will be free. I know it, I know it even now. What a dream, 200 years. And I wonder, I wonder how I should find them then. Those Americans to whom the name American will not be new. Will they love liberty, being given at outright in the crib for nothing? And will they know that if you are not free, you are, sir, lost without hope? And will they who reap this harvest of ideas be willing to strive to preserve them as we so willingly strove to plant them? That all men are created equal and that they are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights. Well, they have in me makes me think I would have loved to have had a speech like that in a theatrical production. But I think old Ben were he to make such a visit might be a little proud of what he would find. And he might even have a word or two of praise for what the American people have achieved. It is those inalienable rights that were threatened not too long ago. And tonight I believe they're safe. Made so by we the people. My every instinct is to turn to you for answers to our problems. And you have always responded. As long as I'm here, I'll turn to you. In one of the Geneva meetings, I spoke of having read the constitutions of a number of countries, including that of the Soviet Union. And in each, the government enumerated the privileges granted to the citizenry. For the most part, they were very much the same as the privileges that we take for granted here. But I pointed out to the general secretary that there was one difference between those other constitutions and ours, a difference that's often overlooked. And yet a difference so great that it tells the entire story. Those other constitutions are grants to the people by government. Our constitution says we the people grant to government the following powers and government shall have no power or privilege that is not granted in that document by we the people. This administration, which you have so generously helped as one guiding thought, I have said it very often to the people surrounding me in the administration. That guiding thought is when we start talking about government as we instead of they, we've been here too long. For that and for helping through this foundation to record a part of the American saga, Nancy, and I extend to you tonight our heartfelt thanks and wish you the best of the season and a joyous new year. And thank you all more than I can say and God bless you all. Hasn't this been a lovely evening? I'd be remiss indeed if prior to the departure of the president and his lady, if I didn't propose a toast to the president of the United States, the president. Relax. Mm-hmm.