June 7, 2004

A Job Well Done

Mark Steyn has a brilliant column on the legacy of Ronald Reagan. Hugh Hewitt has good stuff re Reagan too.

My mind is swirling with thoughts about Reagan, about how he was the first presidential vote I ever cast (in 1984, and I can still remember the day perfectly), about how I wanted him to win the nomination in 1976, and was sad I wasn't old enough to vote for him in 1980. About how he took a country whose economy was circling the drain, whose helicopters were still burning in the desert while hostages languished in Tehran, whose self-confidence had been shattered by the ineptness of Carter and the corruptness of Nixon, while Soviet communism was on the march around the world and enslaving millions of people, and we all slept each night under the dark threat of nuclear annihilation - and in eight brief years he saved America. Eight years later, the American economy was booming, and it was communism that was circling the drain while America's ideals of freedom and liberty and democracy were on the march globally. Reagan spoke the truth - the Soviet Union was evil, and had to die - and the American Left and the Democrats called him simplistic and arrogant and dangerous for saying it. But he was right and they were wrong. And Soviet communism died, the wall was torn down, the Cold War and its implied threat of nuclear holocaust ended, and millions of people in Eastern Europe were freed.

Scan the list of countries helping the United States liberate Iraq and build democracy there. You'll find many of them are nations in Eastern Europe, nations Ronald Reagan liberated from under the Soviet boot. They grasp what it means to be enslaved and what it means to be liberated. So did Reagan.

Reagan's presidency wasn't perfect, and neither was he. But he was more right than wrong, and America and the world were far better off for him being President.