"In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem. 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 capable of governing himself, then who among us has the capacity to govern someone else?" — Ronald Reagan, First Inaugural Address, January 20, 1981
Reagan's anti-government message built most directly on which earlier conservative current?
- A
Franklin Roosevelt's Four Freedoms speech
- Bcheck_circle
Barry Goldwater's 1964 critique of federal expansion and Great Society liberalism
- C
Woodrow Wilson's progressive regulatory agenda
- D
Theodore Roosevelt's New Nationalism
Explanation
Goldwater's 1964 campaign and Conscience of a Conservative laid the ideological groundwork for Reagan's small-government conservatism that came to power in 1980.