Ronald Reagan

[Mark Kisla]

I liked Ronald Reagan, he represented the values my parents held dear: respect of God, love of family, love of country, hard work and never back down from a bully.

[summer007]

I remember seeing him at Bel -Air Presbyterian when he was Govenour of California. I always admired him..And as his former secretary said this A.M. A  man with no Guile. What an amazing thing to be said of someone...I was just in Bel-Air last week truly a beautiful place to live behind the gates which are now on lock down due to the press.

[BeckyW]

"Information is the oxygen of the modern age.  It seeps through the walls topped by barbed wire, it wafts across the electrified borders."

                                                            -Ronald Reagan


Phill sent this quote to me today with a note underneath:
'PTL for the web site',
and I would add, all the truth-tellers.
BW

[outdeep]

I remember walking by the student union at CSULB in 1981 and seeing a picture of Reagan with a cowboy hat during that election year.  I didn't know much about him (other than the fact that he was governor of California for most of my life and had served one term as president) and didn't think much about it as I was completely focused on campus ministry and didn't have any interest in politics.

Over the years since that time, I have read of Reagan and was very impressed at his character.  The CDs "Reagan in his Own Voice" is worth listening to.  They were daily commentaries he recorded before he won the Presidency which outline his thinking and positions on many issues of the day.

He is the only President to write a book while in office - it was a pro-life book.

He wasn't flawless - he had a divorse which he swept aside in his autobiography and had struggles with his children.  However, his approach to the Cold War ("I got an idea," said Reagan to an advisor, "How about we win and they lose?" - This was a radical difference than the commonly accepted Mutually Assured Destruction and Detente ideas that were being explored) exemplified a man who had a clear idea of right and wrong, believed in the good things about America and acted out of strong conviction.

[Mark C.]

  Very well said Dave!

  I have wanted to say something about Reagan, but have felt too emotional to get anything out; I truly loved the man!

  All those speeches before his presidency that Dave mentioned were written by Reagan himself.  It wasn't just the wisdom of his policies, but his belief that God had called America to be "a shining city on a hill" that had such a powerful effect.  He recognized evil as evil and good as good, and was not afraid to say so.

  I know that nobody is saved by faith in America, but nations that have faith in God can do enormous good for the world, and I think this is what Reagan believed--- and he was able to infuse others with that same optimistic spirit!

  I pray that his death will inspire this nation to think about the God who values every human being so much that He sent His Son to die for them.

                          God Bless,  Mark C.

[Oscar]

I remember Ronald Reagan very well.

He was governor of Calif. during my college years.  All the leftist professors hated him, as he didn't hand out the cash as liberally as Governor (Fat Pat) Brown had done.

Of course I now realize that they hated him because he wasn't a leftist.  They vilified him constantly, and they have never stopped.

I had served in the USAF before entering college, so I had some understanding of the issues facing our country in those days.  The left was shrieking about disarmament and peace, (nothing new there), at any price.

I remember watching in horror as the left abandoned the people of SE Asia to communist tyranny...and being sickened and ashamed of my government as the reports of the sufferings of the Boat People who tried to escape came in.

I remember Pol Pot and his Khmer Rouge whackos killing somewhere between 1 and 4 million Cambodians.  The US did nothing. They had been abandoned by the self-righteous left, babbling of "peace."   The country went through the depressing Watergate era and the resignation of  Nixon.  

Ford was an improvement, but Carter won the next election.  He immediately cut military spending and cancelled many weapons programs so he could divert money to welfare programs.  While he was in office LA teachers could get paid $75 dollars for attending a four hour session on multi-culturalism, and do it every saturday for 10 weeks.

But we had broken down warships tied to docks, and entire squadrons of inoperative planes sitting on runways.  They were forced to cannibalize parts off ships and planes to keep some working!

Then the Iranians, percieving us as weak and indecisive, invaded our embassy in Tehran.  An embassy is considered the territory of its country, and attacking it is considered an act of war.

Carter did very little.  A hostage rescue attempt failed when the worn out equipment failed and one of the planes crashed.

Carter's speeches were filled with references to "unsolveable problems" and "national malaise".  Inflation was 15% a year, and the econonmy was in deep recession.  The delusions of John Maynard Keynes were being exposed in the sufferings of the American people.  

The leftists didn't know what to do.

Ronald Reagan did.

Reagan blew onto the scene like a fresh breeze.  The Iranians released our people from prison the day he took office.  They knew what he would do if they didn't.  

Just ask the Libyan leader...Khadaffi.

Reagan communicated a tremendous optimism.  He immediately went to work on the military and the economy.  He strengthened our military, and stopped runaway inflation cold.  

The conservative economists had been saying this was necessary for years...but no one, Democrat or Republican, had the guts to actually do it before Reagan.

He did it and the left hated him for it.  They have hated him ever since, and vilified him just like they do Pres. Bush.   He ignored the shrieks of the peace at any price gang and forced the Soviet Union to its knees.  Millions are free today in large part because of him.

Yes, the Soviets would have collapsed anyway....but who knows what evils they would have perpretrated before that day came.  They had considered a limited nuclear strike on Germany at one time.  Reagan told them that If they did, he would "push the button."   They believed him....and its good they did.

Reagan called them the Evil Empire.  The leftists shrieked some more.  How dare he actually speak of the religious ideas of good and evil in public!  What an ignoramous! What a fundamentalist bigot!

Time proved Ronald Reagan right again and again.  We sing "God Bless America".  

He did.  One of His blessings was named Ronald Wilson Reagan.

God bless,

Thomas Maddux

[M2]

http://www.time.com/time/columnist/krauthammer/article/0,9565,646538,00.html
 

He Could See for Miles by Charles Krauthammer

Reagan had a vision and the courage to endure all the doubters

Monday, Jun. 07, 2004

What made Ronald Reagan the greatest President of the second half of the 20th century? Well, he certainly had the one quality Napoleon always sought in a general: luck. Luck in his looks, luck in his voice, luck in his smile, luck in his choice of mate (although for Reagan the second time was the charm).

And the greatest luck that any President can have: trouble, serious trouble. An acquaintance of Bill Clinton's has said that he felt frustrated that Sept. 11 did not happen on his watch. That is understandable (if characteristically self-centered) because the best chance any President has for greatness is to be in power during war or disaster. Apart from the Founders, the only great President we have had in good times is Theodore Roosevelt. Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt were the "luckiest" of them all, having had the opportunity to take the country triumphantly through the two greatest wars in U.S. history.

Reagan's luck was to find a nation in trouble — in post-Vietnam retreat and disorientation. His political genius was to restore its spirit. And his legacy was winning the longest war in American history, the long twilight struggle of the cold war.

He achieved all that with two qualities: courage and conviction. Conviction led him to initiate economic shock therapy to pull the U.S. out of the stagflation of the 1970s. Courage allowed him not to flinch when his radical economic policies (and those of a merciless Federal Reserve) initially caused the worst recession since the Great Depression — and during a congressional election year (1982) to boot.

Reagan didn't waver, and by 1984 it was morning in America. The new prosperity gave a lilt to the rest of his presidency. But you don't get called great for lilt. You get called great for victory. And Reagan won the cold war.

Conviction told him that the proper way to deal with this endless, enervating, anxiety-ridden ordeal was not settling for stability but going for victory. Courage allowed him to weather the incessant, at times almost universal, attacks on him for the radical means he chose to win it: the military buildup; nuclear deployments in Europe; the Reagan doctrine of overt support for anticommunist resistance movements everywhere, including Nicaragua; and the piece de resistance, strategic missile defenses, derisively dubbed Star Wars by scandalized opponents. Within eight years, an overmatched, overwhelmed, overstretched Soviet Union was ready for surrender, the historically breathtaking, total and peaceful surrender of everything — its empire and its state.

Reagan won that war not just with radical policies but also with a radically unashamed ideological challenge, the great 1982 Westminster speech predicting that communism would end up in the "ash heap of history" and the subsequent designation of the Soviet Union as the "evil empire." That won him the derision of Western sophisticates, intellectuals and defeatists of all kinds. It also won him the undying admiration of liberation heroes from Vaclav Havel to Natan Sharansky. Rarely does history render such decisive verdicts: Reagan was right, his critics were wrong. Less than a year after he left office, the Berlin Wall came down.

The ungenerous would say he had a great presidency but was not a great man. That follows the tradition of his opponents who throughout his career consistently underestimated him, disdaining him as a good actor, a Being There simpleton who could read scripts written for him by others. In fact, Reagan frustrated his biographers because he was so complex — a free-market egalitarian, an intellectually serious nonintellectual, an ideologue with great tactical flexibility.

With the years, the shallow explanations for Reagan's success — charm, acting, oratory — have fallen away. What remains is Reagan's largeness and deeply enduring significance. Let Edward Kennedy, the dean of Democratic liberalism, render the verdict: "It would be foolish to deny that his success was fundamentally rooted in a command of public ideas ... Whether we agreed with him or not, Ronald Reagan was a successful candidate and an effective President above all else because he stood for a set of ideas. He stated them in 1980 — and it turned out that he meant them — and he wrote most of them not only into public law but into the national consciousness."

There is no better definition of presidential greatness.

[/size]

Highlights by Marcia.
Courage and conviction - two qualities that made him a great president.

[al Hartman]

Thanks Marcia.

al

[Oscar]

Hi folks,

"Conviction told him that the proper way to deal with this endless, enervating, anxiety-ridden ordeal was not settling for stability but going for victory. Courage allowed him to weather the incessant, at times almost universal, attacks on him for the radical means he chose to win it "

Heard the news this week?


"The ungenerous would say he had a great presidency but was not a great man. That follows the tradition of his opponents who throughout his career consistently underestimated him, disdaining him as a good actor, a Being There simpleton who could read scripts written for him by others. In fact, Reagan frustrated his biographers because he was so complex — a free-market egalitarian, an intellectually serious nonintellectual, an ideologue with great tactical flexibility. "

Seems I have heard something like this recently...let's see...

God bless,

Thomas Maddux

[Uncle Buck]

The following is a statement from
Dr. Billy Graham on the death of Ronald Reagan:

    Ronald Reagan was one of my closest personal friends for many years.  Ruth
and I spent a number of nights at the White House and had hundreds of hours of
conversation with the President and First Lady.
    Mr. Reagan had a religious faith deeper than most people knew.  Nancy is
one of the strongest and most dedicated women I have ever known.  She and the
children have my love and prayers.
    The President was a man of tremendous integrity, based on his religious
belief.  I visited him and Nancy on numerous occasions in recent years and
always had prayer with them.  Though her husband was unable to communicate at
times, Nancy would say, "When you prayed, I think he knew you were here."
    The love between Ronald and Nancy Reagan was an example to the nation.  No
man ever had a more loyal and loving wife and no children ever had a more
loving and faithful mother than Nancy.