Happy Reagan’s Birthday!

The jelly beans are on my desk, to greet passersby.

I’ve got a pot of stew in the crock pot, ready for the traditional family dinner, when I tell my kids how unlikely it is they’d have been born but for today’s birthday boy, and why.

It’s time for the official Shot In The Dark holiday.  Today would be Ronald Reagan’s 114th birthday.

I’ve been writing about Reagan – who, along with PJ O’Rourke, Solzhenitzyn, Dostoevskii and Paul Johnson is the reason I’m a conservative today – as long as this blog has been in existence.  His eight years were not perfect, and I don’t beatify my presidents, even if they’ve been out of office for twenty years (to say nothing of in their first month of service).  His last term wasn’t as stellar as his first, and his last two years were very difficult.

Still and all, he was the greatest president of the second half of the 20th Century.

But in these difficult times, when a President is promoting fear and malaise in the guise of “change” and “doing something”, it’s worth remembering Reagan’s example; when times seemed at their most dire, Reagan walked onto the scene with a smile and a vision, and a backbone of steel, and cleaned up the mess lefty by his failed predecessor – something our next president will need even more of in 2016.

And the most important part? He did it by unleashing something that many, then as now, thought was dead – the inner, optimistic, take-charge greatness of the American spirit.

Oh, there are those who say “today’s GOP wouldn’t nominate Reagan!” – to which I respond with a contemptuous sign, before telling the critic to listen to “A Time for Choosing”, and tell me who is more resembles; Arne Carlson, or Scott Walker?

Reagan’s gone. But that spirit, the one he understood, almost alone among American politicans of his era, lives on in the American people. Most of it, anyway.

So Happy Reagan’s Birthday, everyone!

NOTE: While this blog encourages a raucous debate, this post is a hagiography zone. All comments deemed critical of Reagan will be expunged without ceremony. You’ve been warned.

You have the whole rest of the media to play about in; this post is gonna be gloriously one-note.

5 thoughts on “Happy Reagan’s Birthday!

  1. the 2 greatest presidents of the last half of the 20th century were in effect bookends to each other. Eisenhower established: the Interstate highway system, NASA, DARPA, NDEA, Atomic Energy Act, and his New Look Policy all laid the ground work/built the infrastructure for Reagan’s successful confrontation of communism. People underestimate Ike and they shouldn’t because much of the politics of the last 50 years were driven by his policies.

  2. Government’s view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it.

    Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same.

    I badly miss his presence!!

  3. I always miss Ronnie, but when I think of the bag of liquid shit sitting in the Oval Office now I feel despair.

  4. I was able to visit the Reagan Library over the holidays and one thing that the Reagan Library people stress in the museum exhibits is the amount of time Reagan spent preparing for his moment. During the long years he was in the employ of General Electric, he took a lot of cross-country train trips and he spent that time studying history and political science, especially the philosophical underpinnings of the great political thinkers of the West. He understood the big picture arguments better than just about any politician in the last 100 years.

  5. Politics desperately needs more people who are brave and wise enough like Ronaldus Maximus to say “folks, this ain’t working.”

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