I make no apologizes for my respect and affection for Ronald Reagan. I believe he is one of the greatest Presidents we have ever had and one of the finest men ever to occupy the White House. He passed away in 2004 and I lamented the loss then. I still lament it now. The Office of the President seems to have gotten smaller since he occupied it.
Today marks the 98th anniversary of his birth and though I’m sure there’ll be plenty of tributes around the right side of the blogosphere, I can’t help but add my own. What would you expect from a guy who voted for Reagan in his Fakey School Election back in 1976?
Yeah, I was a Reagan fan from way back. I’m pretty sure that my Dad started following him even before I was born, when Reagan was busy helping Barry Goldwater to build the modern conservative movement principle by principle. I suspect that my Dad might have seen Reagan’s “A Time for Choosing” speech when it was broadcast though I admit I’ve never asked him. All I know is that I knew Reagan’s name and what he stood for before I was in the 5th grade and that the more I learned of that exceptional man, the more I knew that his vision of conservatism was for me. That’s not changed. If anything, conservatism needs to remember its roots today more than it ever has. How relevant is this quote from that famous 1964 speech?
But beyond that, “the full power of centralized government”–this was the very thing the Founding Fathers sought to minimize. They knew that governments don’t control things. A government can’t control the economy without controlling people. And they know when a government sets out to do that, it must use force and coercion to achieve its purpose. They also knew, those Founding Fathers, that outside of its legitimate functions, government does nothing as well or as economically as the private sector of the economy.
[Emphasis mine]
Know any situation happening right now to which that quote might apply? I dropped the video in after the jump, along with some other Reagan goodies you might enjoy.
Happy Birthday, Mr. President. I miss you sorely.
I liked this tribute to President Reagan written by Bruce Walker and think it suits the day as well now as it did last year.
Ronald Reagan was conservative, but he was conservative because that was true and right. It all sounds so simple — to stand up for what is true and right — but that is the unassuming power of conservatism. When he took office, the whole world knew that the Soviet Union was an evil empire, but nearly everyone wished to somehow finesse that moral truth. Fifty years earlier, ordinary men had tried to finesse the evil which was Nazism. It does not work. Anyone with eyes can see that those who hate America, hate Israel, hate Christians and hate Jews these days is evil and loves hatred, just like Nazi Germany and just like the Soviet Union. The ultimate challenge for those who would wear the Reagan mantle is how to utterly defeat that deliberate and unapologetic evil which battles for our planet.
Truth requires defying big lies like global warming. Mockery, insinuations of stupidity, accusations of callousness — all these and more — were the price that Reagan paid every day for his stands against tax rates that actually reduced overall tax revenues. Although every thinking mind knew the truth, prejudice and passion lead people to embrace convenient lies about rich taxpayers. Reagan faced those lies without blinking.
As he did, so must we. Mia, a Twitter friend of mine said today that “he had beans and smarts” and I think that’s a perfectly delightful way of describing him. He had plenty of beans to back up his smarts, but without smarts, he would have been simply arrogant.
I also want to share this photo with you. I had not seen it before but it’s from the Life Magazine archives. There are a ton of photos there I’d not seen before and if yuo do head over there, plan to spend more than a minute or two browsing through the collection. I think you’ll get as good an insight into the plain decency of the man from those photos as you will anywhere else. And you have to admire the confidence of a man who wore a pink shirt to a photo shoot by a national magazine then went horseback riding in it!
Do you remember when it was Morning in America? I sure as heck do. I’d bet you that if we remembered now what Reagan taught us then, it’s be morning again in America in just a couple years.
And here’s the video of “A Time for Choosing”. I think that spending a few minutes watching it and steeling your resolve to resist what those who control the government want to do to you wouldn’t be a bad way to ceberate his birthday.
Tags: Conservatism, Ronald Reagan
If Reagan ran for president now, he’d lose in the primary because he was too liberal. Hell, Nixon would lose in a Democratic primary for being too liberal. We have now reached the point where a Republican congressman speaks fondly of the Taliban. No surprise there, the two organizations share a lot of common philosophy. But this shift is insane. Mussolini would be considered a moderate Republican now. And I, a former Republican, am somehow considered a radical left wing lunatic now. But if the Taliban is considered to be a good model for the Republican Party, then I’m glad to be an independent.
Yeah…right. Because that speech he gave in 1964 wasn’t in any way straight-on conservative.
Or it could be that, even after reading my blog for as long as you have, you cling to your own cherished notions of what a conservative believes.