Ten days ago, President Reagan admitted
that although some people in this country seemed to be doing well nowadays,
others were unhappy, even worried, about themselves, their families, and their
futures. The President said that he didn't understand that fear. He said, "Why,
this country is a shining city on a hill." And the President is right. In many
ways we are a shining city on a hill.
But the hard truth is that not everyone
is sharing in this city's splendor and glory. A shining city is perhaps all the
President sees from the portico of the White House and the veranda of his ranch,
where everyone seems to be doing well. But there's another city; there's another
part to the shining the city; the part where some people can't pay their
mortgages, and most young people can't afford one; where students can't afford
the education they need, and middle-class parents watch the dreams they hold for
their children evaporate.
In this part of the city there are more
poor than ever, more families in trouble, more and more people who need help but
can't find it. Even worse: There are elderly people who tremble in the basements
of the houses there. And there are people who sleep in the city streets, in the
gutter, where the glitter doesn't show. There are ghettos where thousands of
young people, without a job or an education, give their lives away to drug
dealers every day. There is despair, Mr. President, in the faces that you don't
see, in the places that you don't visit in your shining city.
In fact, Mr. President, this is a nation
-- Mr. President you ought to know that this nation is more a "Tale of Two
Cities" than it is just a "Shining City on a Hill."
Maybe, maybe, Mr. President, if you
visited some more places; maybe if you went to Appalachia where some people
still live in sheds; maybe if you went to Lackawanna where thousands of
unemployed steel workers wonder why we subsidized foreign steel. Maybe -- Maybe,
Mr. President, if you stopped in at a shelter in Chicago and spoke to the
homeless there; maybe, Mr. President, if you asked a woman who had been denied
the help she needed to feed her children because you said you needed the money
for a tax break for a millionaire or for a missile we couldn't afford to
use.
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