Happy Reagan’s Birthday

Today would be Ronald Reagan’s 110th 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 over three decades.  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, and head, shoulders and ankles the best of my lifetime.

But in these difficult times, after two terms of a President who promoted  fear and malaise in the guise of “change” and “doing something”, and four years of another for whom “conservative principles” were a tactic to be slipped on and off like a power tie, 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 2024.

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 – something that feels largely beaten into submission as this is (re)written, in 2021.

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

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

(This post was originally written in 2017, and has been slightly touched up for 2021). 

12 thoughts on “Happy Reagan’s Birthday

  1. Hey Conservatives —what happened?

    “Lawlessness by the mob, as with the individual, will not be tolerated. We will act firmly and quickly to put down riot or insurrection wherever and whenever the situation requires.” ~ Ronald Reagan

  2. Emery Useful Idiot.
    Like a few of us on this forum, I have asked your other brother Emery, to please show us where Trump said to storm the capitol, especially since the storming began almost 30 minutes before Trump was done speaking. I won’t hold my breath.

  3. Hey Conservatives —what happened?

    Wait – you think Trump or his movement were “conservative?”

    You’ve been coming here all these years, and you haven’t retained that?

    Oy.

  4. Emery seems to think we’re as inconsistent as him /them. If someone commits a crime while protesting, they should be tried and convicted.

    Like Mitch said weeks ago, is anybody on the mainstream Right not condemning the riots?

  5. Wait – you think Trump or his movement were “conservative?

    Did you think You were?

  6. I take that back….I think you are the model of 21st Century conservatism, Mitch.

  7. Also, I’d be remiss that in the current year, Boomer adulation of Reagan smacks of the Old Guard USSR’s lament for Stalin….not relevant.

  8. MBerg: I welcome the conversation that was had in the sixties led by people like Ronald Reagan and William Buckley. Against folks at the time in the John Birch Society who were trying to do things and move our party in a certain direction. I think that’s a debate we need to have inside the GOP. And I feel confident the result will be the same as it was back then with folks like Reagan and Buckley — real conservatives winning that argument. But its an argument Republicans are going to have to have given some of the things that have happened over the past several weeks and months.

  9. Why must Liberals fart at funerals?

    Why get out of bed, realize the funeral is today, make your way over there, march to a prominent place, stand up during a solemn occasion, and start farting, ruining the occasion for the mourners . . . why do it?

    If you didn’t like the dead guy being memorialized during the funeral, DON’T GO THERE.

    This is a memorial service.

    At least, it was.

  10. I think that’s a debate we need to have inside the GOP.

    Oh, look there…so now Reek is a Republican.

    I’ve seen some real kooks, but Reek is in a league of his own.

  11. Republicans — the Party of fiscal conservatism, who spend like drunken sailors when in office. The Party of law and order that can’t criticize an attempted coup. The Party of fearless individualism with elected representatives who live in fear of their own voters. The Party of federalism and States’ Rights, which supported a Texas lawsuit which sought to disenfranchise the entirety of the voters of Pennsylvania.

    Just a complete train wreck.

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