Reaganmas 2005

Today is the 94th anniversary of the birth of Ronald Reagan.

Why do I make a fuss about it? Two reasons:

1. It irritates the bejeebers out of my liberal friends
2. There are things about the history of the last thirty years that I'm fairly certain my kids will never be taught in school. Like so many of those things, it's my job to fix that.

And so we celebrate Reaganmas.

Why does it matter?

For starters, he is the soul of "Red", Serious America. He was born in rural western Illinois, went to an obscure college in the middle of nowhere, and did not play the academic paper chase that obsesses so much of the chattering class. He was no Ivy Leaguer - something his critics treated like a scarlet "A", but was irrelevant to his supporters. He was not unlike most Americans, when he started. He made a career of parlaying not a lot of raw material - academic "credentials", formal acting training, or political obsession - into great things. This is the heart of Red America - function beats form.

And then there's the Cold War, his greatest legacy.

I've related the story before; I grew up in North Dakota during the Cold War, not far from the missile silos. I wondered - why have kids when they're all going to get blown up anyway? I started the eighties as a Democrat - although I detested Jimmy Carter, and would have voted for John Anderson (a "Republican" the likes of Nick Coleman would love) had I been a month older and able to vote. I was mortified by Reagan; I bought the left wing bilge machine's tripe about Reagan (the liberal media is not a product of the nineties), how he was going to take us into a war for oil and destroy the economy even worse than Carter had.

And yet, I watched - and was, along about 1983, converted. It took me a while to realize that another key tenet of the fantasy-based community's liturgy, "We're Smarter!", is dubious at best. Conservatism is counterintuitive. We're raised from childhood to care for others, share, help the unfortunate, give the shirt off your back to the needy; it takes conscious thought to realize that people are better at this than governments.

And I saw Ronald Reagan embody Churchill's great lesson - fascism and totalitarianism must be faced with strength, not supplication. I watched the Cold War end. And as my daughter was born, in 1991, I saw the bombers come off alert, and the missiles start getting decommissioned.

So every year I take the kids out to dinner at a little diner down the street, and talk about the lessons of Reagan's life and presidency and their impact on their lives - they who were both born years after Reagan left office. Tomorrow I'll put a bowl of jelly beans on top of my credenza, for people to grab as they go by.

Happy Reaganmas!

Posted by Mitch at February 6, 2005 12:09 PM | TrackBack