In his first inaugural address in January 1981, Ronald Reagan came out swinging. His punching bag? The very thing he was part of.
“In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem,” Reagan said. “From time to time, we’ve been tempted to believe that society has become too complex to be managed by self-rule, that government by an elite group is superior to government for, by, and of the people. Well, if no one among us is...