Prepare yourselves for many excellent retrospectives of Ronald Reagan this week. For you conservatives born after 1980, listen, read and learn.
Joseph J. Sabia writes:
“The greatest American President of the 20th Century is gone. Ronald Wilson Reagan — the man who revitalized America’s spirit, shaped modern conservatism, and won the Cold War — is now in God’s arms. Jesus told his followers, “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the sons of God.” Ronald Reagan was the greatest peacemaker of our time. We shall never see his kind again.”
Dinesh D’Souza writes:
“I am part of a generation of young people who became interested in politics because of the Reagan revolution. We saw Reagan as a cheerful, forward-looking guy. We loved his self-deprecating humour. Yet we also saw that, beneath that jocular exterior, Reagan was a determined man who was making some big and important claims. In fact, he was taking on the big idea of the 20th century: collectivism. Reagan wanted to halt the growth of the welfare state at home, and he wanted to dismantle the Soviet empire abroad. These were massively ambitious goals. Many people, including most conservatives, considered Soviet communism to be basically irreversible. So, too, previous Republicans like Eisenhower, Nixon and Ford had made their peace with the welfare state. Reagan was the first person to say: ‘Government is not the solution. Government is the problem.’”
From a Washington Times editorial:
“Even more important than teaching conservative politicians how to be successful, he taught about 60 percent of the voting public that it was OK to vote conservative. The great sea change in modern American politics, which is still at high tide, occurred in 1980, when, for the first time in six decades, a majority of the nation voted for a self-described conservative for president.”
Reagan changed Andrea Peyser’s life. She writes:
“Like most of my privileged pals attending Northeastern universities, I spent sober days ingesting a rich diet of Marxism and Feminism 101, and late nights spewing inanities about America’s appalling lack of equality and opportunity.
The answers to our vast problems — other people’s problems — lay on the left, we were certain.
Then, it changed.”
James G. Lakely quotes from a book on Reagan by Paul Kengor.
“Reagan truly believed that even something that negative could be part of God’s plan,” he [Kengor] said. “We don’t quite appreciate how eternal his optimism was.”
Some of us know that negative things are part of God’s plan. He’s decreed all.
By the way, have you seen this map? It’s amazing.
