{"id":4160,"date":"2009-02-06T07:54:34","date_gmt":"2009-02-06T12:54:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=4160"},"modified":"2009-02-06T07:58:28","modified_gmt":"2009-02-06T12:58:28","slug":"reagans-birthday-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=4160","title":{"rendered":"Reagan’s Birthday"},"content":{"rendered":"

It is, of course, Reagan’s Birthday today.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Were he alive, the greatest president of my lifetime, and by far the best of the last half of the Twentieth Century, would be 98 years old today.<\/p>\n

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.\u00a0 His eight years were not perfect, and I’ll resist the urge to beatify my presidents, even if they’ve been out of office for twenty years (to say nothing of in their first month of service).\u00a0 His last term wasn’t as stellar as his first, and his last two years were very difficult.<\/p>\n

Still and all, he was the greatest president of the second half of the 20th Century.\u00a0 And it’s gotten to the point where his former opponents know it, because they’re paying him the ultimate compliment; they’re trying to co-opt his legacy.\u00a0 Obama the communicator is compared, favorably (and wishfully) to…Reagan.\u00a0 And even Hollywood is in on the act, having tried to filch Reagan’s victory in the Cold War, carefully trim context to fit their narrative, and hand it to a Democrat<\/a>.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Fortunately, the people freed by the end of the Cold War know better<\/a>.\u00a0 Hollywood makes movies; the Poles and Georgians and Czechs make statues.
\nBut 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 (and 1980 was a lot <\/em>worse than 2008), 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 slapnut predecessor – something our next president will need in 2012 or 2016.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

And the most important part?\u00a0 He did it by unleashing something that many, then as now, thought was dead – the inner, optimistic, take-charge greatness of the American spirit.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Reagan’s gone.\u00a0 But that spirit, the one he understood, almost alone among American politicans of his era, lives on in the American people.\u00a0 Most of it, anyway.<\/p>\n

NOTE:\u00a0 While this blog encourages a bumptious, raucous debate, this post is a pro-Reagan zone.\u00a0 All comments deemed critical of Reagan will be expunged without ceremony.\u00a0 You’ve been warned.<\/p>\n

You have the whole rest of the media to play about in; this post is gonna be gloriously monochrome.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It is, of course, Reagan’s Birthday today. Were he alive, the greatest president of my lifetime, and by far the best of the last half of the Twentieth Century, would be 98 years old today. I’ve been writing about Reagan – who, along with PJ O’Rourke, Solzhenitzyn, Dostoevskii and Paul Johnson is the reason I’m […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4160","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-history-and-its-making"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4160","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4160"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4160\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4160"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4160"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4160"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}