A Better Tomorrow?
The last of three special film reports by Julian Pettifer
This year, as part of the bicentennial celebrations, a group of Americans is crossing the continent as the early settlers crossed it, by wagon train. It's a journey of rediscovery and re-dedication; made this time, not from east to west, but from the Pacific shores back east to Philadelphia where the great experiment began on 4 July, 1776.
Behind them stretches a vast country full of immense but limited wealth, populated by people of great resourcefulness and enterprise, proud of their ' can-do ' spirit which has served those precepts of Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness pretty well in the past. Two hundred years ago it was thought that the best government was the least government. Today the go-getters complain that there is just too much government interference and control; that both the going and the getting is becoming too difficult. Then, as now, personal freedom was paramount; but is it compatible with planning in a modern State? Just how far should government be involved in planning for A Better Tomorrow?
Photography DAVID WHITSON Film editor
TIMOTHY COPESTAKE
Producer FRANK SMITH