The Timeless Wisdom of Ronald Reagan in the 21st Century

by

       M. Richard Maxson



      The last great president of the United States was undoubtedly Ronald Reagan. His patriotism and wisdom can be seen as right up there with Benjamin Franklin and the other Founding Fathers. We have stitched together his observations on our country as it approached the end of the twentieth century and the guidance and warnings of the future that are not to be seen on today's political landscape. If he were alive today he would be repulsed at our country's condition. Here, in his own words..........



      "Those of us who are over 35 or so years of age grew up in a different America. We were taught, very directly, what it means to be an American. And we absorbed, almost in the air, a love of country and an appreciation of its institutions. If you didn't get these things from your family you got them from the neighborhood, from the father down the street who fought in Korea or the family who lost someone at Anzio. Or you could get a sense of patriotism from school. And if all else failed you could get a sense of patriotism from the popular culture. The movies celebrated our values and implicitly reinforced the idea that America was special. TV was like that, too, through the mid-sixties. But now... some things have changed. Younger parents aren't sure that an unambivalent appreciation of America is the right thing to teach modern children. And as for those who create the popular culture, well-grounded patriotism is no longer the style. Our spirit is back, but we haven't reinstitutionalized it. We've got to do a better job of getting across that America is freedom-freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of enterprise. And freedom is special and rare. It's fragile; it needs protection."

      "Informed patriotism is what we want. And are we doing a good enough job teaching our children what America is and what she represents in the long history of the world?  We've got to teach history based not on what's in fashion but what's important-why the Pilgrims came here, who Jimmy Doolittle was, and what those 30 seconds over Tokyo meant. If we forget what we did, we won't know who we are. I'm warning of an eradication of the American memory that could result, ultimately, in an erosion of the American spirit. Let's start with some basics: more attention to American history and a greater emphasis on civic ritual."



      "I have seen the rise of Fascism and Communism. Both philosophies glorify the arbitrary power of the state... But both theories fail" -  Ronald Reagan - Beijing, China, April 27, 1984

       "I have spent most of my life as a Democrat. I recently have seen fit to follow another course. I believe that the issues confronting us cross party lines. This is the issue of this election: whether we believe in our capacity for self-government or whether we abandon the American revolution and confess that a little intellectual elite in a far-distant capitol can plan our lives for us better than we can plan them ourselves. Well, I, for one, resent it when a representative of the people refers to you and me, the free men and women of this country, as "the masses." This is a term we haven't applied to ourselves in America. But beyond that, "the full power of centralized government" -- this was the very thing the Founding Fathers sought to minimize. They knew that governments don't control things. A government can't control the economy without controlling people. And they know when a government sets out to do that, it must use force and coercion to achieve its purpose. They also knew, those Founding Fathers, that outside of its legitimate functions, government does nothing as well or as economically as the private sector of the economy."
 

      "I think we're for telling our senior citizens that no one in this country should be denied medical care because of a lack of funds. "One of the traditional methods of imposing Socialism on a people has been by way of medicine. It's very easy to disguise a medical program as a humanitarian project...But I think

we're against forcing all citizens, regardless of need, into a compulsory government program, especially when we have such examples, as was announced last week, when France admitted that their Medicare program is now bankrupt. They've come to the end of the road. If you don't(stop it), this program I promise you will pass...and behind it will come other federal programs that will invade every area of freedom as we have known...until, one day...we will awake to find that we have Socialism."

     James Madison in 1788... said ... "There are more instances of the abridgment of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachment of those in power, than by violent and sudden usurpations"... Ronald Reagan - 1961

     

      "As a former Democrat, I can tell you the Socialist candidate, Norman Thomas isn't the only man who has drawn this parallel to Socialism with the present administration, because back in 1936, Mr. Democrat himself, Al Smith, the great American, came before the American people and charged that the leadership of his Democratic Party was taking the Party of Jefferson, Jackson, and Cleveland down the road under the banners of Marx, Lenin, and Stalin. And he walked away from his Party, and he never returned til the day he died -- because to this day, the leadership of that Party has been taking that

Party, that honorable Party, down the road in the image of the labor Socialist Party of England  Now it doesn't require expropriation or confiscation of private property or business to impose socialism on a people. What does it mean whether you hold the deed to the -- or the title to your business or property if the government holds the power of life and death over that business or property? And such machinery already exists. The government can find some charge to bring against any concern it chooses to prosecute. Every businessman has his own tale of harassment. Somewhere a perversion has taken place. Our natural, unalienable rights are now considered to be a dispensation of government, and freedom has never been so fragile, so close to slipping from our grasp as it is                                                          at this moment."   

      "Those who would trade our freedom for the soup kitchen of

the welfare state have told us they have a utopian solution.... They call their policy "accommodation." All who oppose them are indicted as warmongers (or racists). They (Democratic Socialists) say we offer simple answers to complex problems. Well, perhaps there is a simple answer -- not an easy answer -- but simple: If you and I have the courage to tell our elected officials that we want our national policy based on what we know in our hearts is morally right...not the flavor of the month.

Otherwise, you and I are going to spend our sunset years telling our children and our children's children, what it once was like in America when men were free."