360 How it played out in 1957

Erin Moriarity of CBS News is the graduation speaker for 7,000+ graduates at The Ohio State University today. In 1957, Ronald Reagan spoke to the graduates of Eureka College in Illinois. I reviewed that speech today and was amazed at how "right on" he was, even then. In 1957, I don't think anyone thought he was too special--sure, he was a graduate who had made good, but his movie career was over and he was a spokesman for General Electric Theater on TV. He reminded the class of 1957 that when he was a student there in the Depression, the teachers often went without pay, and most of the students were poor. And even in 1957, he sounded like the President he became:

Now today as you prepare to leave your Alma Mater, you go into a world in which, due to our carelessness and apathy, a great many of our freedoms have been lost. It isn't that an outside enemy has taken them. It's just that there is something inherent in government which makes it, when it isn't controlled, continue to grow. So today for every seven of us sitting here in this lovely outdoor theater, there is one public servant, and 31 cents of every dollar earned in America goes in taxes. To support the multitudinous and gigantic functions of government, taxation is levied which tends to dry up the very sources of contributions and donations to colleges like Eureka. So in this time of prosperity we find these church schools, these small independent colleges and even the larger universities, hard put to maintain themselves and to continue doing the job they have done so unselfishly and well for all these years. Observe the contrast between these small church colleges and our government, because, as I have said before, these have always given far more than was ever given to them in return.