LM#44--The Great U.S. Presidents--Ronald Reagan

Those are the drums of liberty. It's been over 45 years since we've had a truly great president. Let's talk about it. The last one on this Liberty Minute.

Welcome to the Theory to Action podcast, where we examine the timeless treasures of wisdom from the great books in less time, to help you take action immediately and ultimately to create and lead a flourishing life. Now here's your host, david Kaiser.

Hello, I am David and welcome back to this Liberty Minute. So yesterday the United States celebrated President's Day, and the lack of truly great presidents in our country's history should astonish most of us. The reason is because without truly great leadership, how in the world would our country continue on? How in the world, without great presidents, would our country find its way? And for most of you right now you're probably saying I'm not sure if we are going to continue to continue on as a country. Our country is in shambles right now and the reoccurring question always during these most of difficult times, when you're in the middle of it, is what happened to my country? I don't recognize it anymore and I'm sure that truth to some extent has been said since the beginning of our country. You know, those loyalists said of those American patriots back in the American Revolution probably much of the same thing, and I'm sure the same holds true for the American South. Around chattel slavery. During the Civil War those folks kept saying we want to be left alone. And the North said by 1863 we won't have and cannot have chattel slavery. And then our country adopted the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments. So I'm sure the same holds true by the time we get to the Great Depression, when we said we can't let our elderly and those without jobs not have a safety net of some sort and we have a terrible and horrific set of foreign actors on the world stage and we will eventually have to deal with them. And then we rose up as a country and found our way forward. And lastly, after Watergate and a series of bad leadership decisions, our country had lost its confidence, we had lost our way. And folks, again we're saying what happened to my country? I don't recognize it anymore. So that reoccurring theme seems to play itself out regularly in the United States Now, with all those examples I just cited, the most common theme among them is that it took presidential leadership to help us find our way out. That leader was charting a path forward, leading by example and then by the spoken word in some cases. During our revolution, our country had a Washington. During the Civil War, our country found a Lincoln. During the Great Depression and World War II, our country had FDR. And during those crazy 60s and 70s and the aftermath of a country that lost its confidence, the United States found a Reagan. All these presidents are among our country's finest. They are our country's greatest presidents. So, because we're one day removed from Presidents Day, we will take a look at our last great president, truly great president, and that would be our 40th president of the United States, ronald Reagan. And we will do so with a book from one of America's best historians writing today. Gentleman's name is Craig Shirley we have covered Craig from this microphone before and the books title the books. Today's books is titled the Search for Reagan, and so with that we will go to our first pull quote. Ronald Reagan was never as conservative as some conservatives wanted him to be, but he was as conservative as he felt comfortable being. The new Republican party I envision will not be and cannot be one limited to the country club Big business image. He said he believed in natural rights, as did the founder of the modern, of modern conservatism, john Locke. He also believed in a natural aristocracy of men who rise to their highest ambitions without the heavy hand of nobility or government interference. Allah, thomas Jefferson he quoted the founders and the framers, often much more than any recent president. Still, many books written by liberal historians during and immediately after his presidency gave short shrift to the man who won the Cold War, freed man's of people in prison behind the iron curtain, who restored American morale, who solved high inflation and high interest rates, while creating over 20 million new jobs. The net worth of families grew by 27% and the real gross national product grew by some 26%. The number of millionaires in America grew from 4,414 in 1980 to us an astounding 34,944 and by 1987. Those aforementioned books were derogatory, slanted and superficial and not considered part of real history. These meaningless books include Ronald Reagan, the movie our long national daydream, and sleepwalking through history. One of the worst books ever written about Regan, ironically, was supposed to be his official biography, dutch by Edmund Morris. It wound up being a joke with made-up characters and fake narratives. It was met with derisive reviews, sold poorly and now can't even be found in the gift shop at the Regan Library. It made a good doorstop, but that is all. Most recently, books have been more fair to Regan. Still, the left wing always knew that to destroy American conservatism they needed to destroy the most successful conservative president in 20th century American history. So that's a pretty good summary of what Ronald Regan accomplished right at the outset. But let's take a step back and see, or hear from rather let's hear from one of the most liberal presidents to ever have served in the White House, and that would be our 44th president, barack Obama. Let's hear what former president Barack Obama had to say about Ronald Regan. Going back to the book, even Barack Obama acknowledged Regan's impact on American culture and life. Quote I think Ronald Regan changed the trajectory of America in a way that Richard Nixon did not and in a way that Bill Clinton did not. He put us on a fundamentally different path because the country was ready for it. I think they felt like with all the excesses of the 1960s and 70s, and government had grown and grown, but there wasn't much sense of accountability in terms of how it was operating. I think that he tapped into what people were already feeling, which was we want clarity, we want optimism, we want to return to that sense of diamondism and entrepreneurship that had been missing. End of quote. Interestingly enough, obama communicated no new ideas as president. He simply was a continuation of the welfare state, guilty by his own indictment. Regan, by like token, was an idea man grabbing and embracing a new form of conservatism, pushing it out beyond its own previous boundaries. Regan was just not an American conservative, a believer in a system in which power flows upward, but a new idea is conservative, promoting ideas such as tax cuts for the express purpose of restoring power to the individual, and the strategic defense initiative, sdi, enterprise zones in the Caribbean Basin Initiative, helping indigenous freedom fighters, opposed communist tyranny, and much, much more. He introduced one new idea after another and in doing so transformed the transformed the grand old party into a brand spanking new party. Too many people did not grasp that Regan was not a reactionary but instead a revolutionary. Many of the ideas that came out of the 1970s conservative movement were inspired by Regan and his speech writing shop later in the White House. That was, in his essence, the brain trust or an in house idea factory. Many of his best speech writers had not been speech writers before taking the jobs, demonstrating the flexible thinking of the Reagan administration. Two of his most favorite speech writers in the 1970s and beyond were Peter Hannaford and Ken Cotigan. So there we have several nuggets of wisdom which we can take away. Even Barack Obama understood the power of Ronald Reagan, and Craig Shirley correctly nails that Reagan was indeed an idea man. His presidency was a conservative idea revolution, and Reagan didn't duplicate the policies of previous GOP presidents. He didn't care much for Ford or for Nixon, or even for Dwight Eisenhower's ideas on a whole host of policies. And here we find another golden nugget of wisdom. Let's go back to the book for this one as to why he ran for president Reagan. What often joke. If you're not the lead sled dog, your view of the world never changes. But when he got philosophical and introspective, he once said that there was a feeling it was more than one wanting to be president rather than one should be president. 1975, time magazine said Republicans now must decide whether he, regan, represents a wave of the future or is just another Barry Goldwater calling on the party to mount a hopeless crusade against the 20th century. How wrong was Time magazine in the entire left wing media establishment? Well, reagan was not a man of the past, he was a man of the future, as written in rendezvous with Destiny and another great book by Craig Shirley quote after two generations in which FDR's New Deal coalition dominated American politics, reagan had emerged as the Republican answer to Roosevelt, a larger-than-life father figure who would bring his party out of the wilderness and demoralized Americans into the sunshine. Reagan, nicknamed Dutch by his father early on and his brother, aka his brother, neil aka Moon, who was two years older, grew up living in the semi-idealic Tom Sawyer-ish life of the typical small-town boy before the strident advent of radio, television and the freeway. And here again, shirley Nails hits the nail on the head. If you want to understand the seismic shifts in the United States in terms of presidential leadership, you look first to FDR in the first half of the 20th century and then you look to Reagan in the second half. Reagan was indeed the Republican answer to Roosevelt. Now you might ask why is Reagan considered great? Because the American people validated his policies and his leadership over two elections. Let's go back to the book. Reagan's candidacy in elections in 1980 and 1984 were dismissed by the left-wing intelligentsia as mere flukes, a sleight of hand. The wool pulled over the voters' eyes. Ronald Reagan's critics derided his abilities in his presidency, referring to him as a cue card president who did little more than read lines written by others. But in fact he won by landslides both times. They were some of the most impressive campaign wins of all time, rivaling FDRs Of the 1980 election. George F Will once said he regarded it as a national emergency. Reagan was also a man of letters, maybe more so than any other American president. He wrote letters in his youth, in his Hollywood salad days as governor, as president and, right up until the time, as former president. Then he wrote one more letter, one last letter, telling the world that he has Alzheimer's disease, as his friend Paul Locksalt, former governor of Nevada, said, quote but Ronald Reagan's character, his warmth, his wisdom and his philosophy of life all shine through the letters he writes to friends, to relatives and to other national leaders and to strangers who have corresponded with him. He is a man who feels obligated to answer the appeals, request and compliments, as well as the criticisms and the differences of opinion, and to me that was part of Reagan's greatness. His ideas were withread from the framers and the founders of our country all the way to his own presidency. While I was in college, I would spend more time reading and understanding Reagan's presidency at a much, much deeper level. Thankfully, our campus library was a wealth of resources and the internet was still in its infancy then, but we had plenty of books on Reagan. And here's just another nugget about Reagan that grabbed me and shaped me and ultimately changed my life. One common story was that Reagan slept on planes, which was untrue. He'd opened up his briefcase and went right to work. He would read, write and edit. In fact, it was on a plane, according to longtime aide Mike Dever, when he had decided to run for president one more time in 1980. As he once said. All in all, as I look back, I realized that my reading left an abiding belief in the triumph of good over evil. Most men reach a point around 45 years, 40 years of age, where their politics and view of the world become fixed. They stopped growing, not Reagan. He was constantly evolving. Reagan's intellectual curiosity peaked later in life. The Reagan of the 1960s, often angry angry at student demonstrators, angry at recalcitrant college professors, angry at anti-war protesters was more hopeful, more optimistic in his outlook by the late 1970s. He also adjusted his politics from being just an aginer to being growth oriented. His eye was now on the dawn rather than the dusk, and it was noticeable. Conservatism, as defined by Reagan, was changing historically and radically. As John Patrick Diggins wrote in Ronald Reagan Fate, freedom and the Making of History. Inspired by the libertarian views of Thomas Paine, reagan saw himself as a lifeguard of American liberalism, rescuing it from the drowning in the raging currents of radicalism that inundated three generations of the 20th century history. In Hollywood in the 40s, reagan as the actor saw the old left's support of Stalin taint the New Deal. By the time he was in Sacramento in the 60s, reagan, the governor, heard the new left's peons to Castro and Mao. By the time he met came to Washington DC in the 80s, reagan, the president, watched the anti-war left's support of Nicaragua's Sandinistas sweep the Academy. By then the lifeguard had long given up on liberalism, which he concluded would always be swept away by the siren song of the left. And let's keep going, because this is a great summary. Reagan had once been a big supporter of Franklin Roosevelt in the New Deal. He cast his first vote in 1932 for FDR and voted for him another three times. He always remembered how his father and his brother got jobs from the Works Progress Administration, the WPA, a New Deal-era bureau. He considered FDR to be his inspiration and always defended him, even as he slowly turned to intellectualism. Starting in the 40s, reagan began his historic move to the right as he battled communist provocateurs in Hollywood. At that time he was in the 93% tax bracket. The government led by the Democratic Party was taking too much. The Democratic Party, once of the working man of patriotism, was steadily moving to the left, to collectivism. By the early 1960s Reagan had enough in switch party registration. Other Democrats left also, while liberal Republicans like Mayor John Lindsay were leaving the Republican Party, thus beginning the process of making the GOP almost all conservative in the Democratic Party almost all liberal. As Reagan quipped often, I didn't leave the Democratic Party, it left me. A staffer on his 1966 Gubernatorial campaign noted dozens of highlighted books in Reagan's home library on political philosophy. In later years the Democratic Party would only nominate national tickets that were left of center and the Republican Party would only nominate tickets that were right of center. Reagan, the can do optimist, would never accept collectivism as the final answer for mankind. He began his distrust of all forms of leftism, which started 30 years before his presidency. He battled them and their groups in Tinseltown. Meanwhile. These communities saw the propaganda value of Hollywood and were dead set on taking it over. Reagan, like Thomas Paine, believed in hope, experiment and freedom. But he also believed in challenging the status quo, reminding one of a letter written to Paine by Benjamin Russ, one of the most important founders, quote the American war is over, russ said. But this is far from being the case with the American Revolution. But unlike Paine, he believed God had a plan for him. Now most presidents when they come into office they create or they've. They understand they only have a limited amount of time. If they're very organized they will come up with three big, broad goals at the beginning of their presidency and they will try to make those goals. They're overarching themes, most especially through the first hundred days and then more broadly over the first term, hoping to win a second term to conclude those goals. They know most presidents have an understanding that it really is going to take a first sprint of three years Hopefully they don't lose too much in their first off year elections two years in and if they're fortunate enough to win a second term, then they get essentially another two years and then the last two years. They're essentially called lame duck. So the presidency, the US presidency and its modern form, really is only a sprint of six years If you're able to win your uh, your second term. But for Reagan, his big three goals at the beginning of his presidency and surely nails these as well, and that's why I just love this book. It's a great, well-written book. He captures all the big themes. Let's go back to Reagan's three big goals. Of his three great goals, reagan knew American morale was the most important of all. A happy people are productive people and a productive people could manufacture the weapons he needed to aid indigenous freedom fighters around the world and grow an economy Reagan could use to bring the Soviets to heal. During his grand strategy campaign in 1980, which involved the interlocking causes of American morale and American productivity, he announced that the US would defeat the Soviet empire. Reagan despised Soviet communism and did all he could do to destroy that evil empire. He made a pact with Pope John Paul II and British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher to bring it down. Reagan sent the US first ambassador to the Holy sea and shared secret CIA information with Pope St John Paul II. It helped tremendously that the Pope spoke English. Reagan and the Pope often conferred in private. We'll actually cover a book all about that relationship, a very significant relationship, most especially for the United States. Going back to the book, for the first time in years America was on offense against the Soviets. He saw it as a morality play. They were evil and the US was good. He used every means at his disposal the bully pulpit, selling the Soviet shoddy equipment and spending them into oblivion, aiding pro freedom movements such as the Katras in Nicaragua, the Mujahideen in Afghanistan, the Velvet Revolution in Czechoslovakia and other movements in Hungary and the Baltics. The development of the strategic defense initiative, which scared the hell out of the Soviets, and other forms of technology, radio Free Europe and Vatican Radio, and everything and more at his command. Why evil? The use of the word is key. No American president had ever described the Soviet Union as such, but Reagan knew what he was doing. He was marshaling his forces. Previously, the Soviets and communism had been winning since World War Two, from the Warsaw Pact countries to the building of the Berlin Wall, to Korea, to Southeast Asia, to Cuba, to the Baltics. Reagan and company stopped the Soviets dead in their tracks. For the first time in the history of the Cold War, the West, led by Reagan, was on offense and we won the Cold War. And finally, one last quote from this book. Reagan left office with high approval ratings, including an astonishing 40 plus percent approval rating among Democrats, the other party, but not before. He wrote in the diaries of the start of a new life back in California. He wrote that at 77 years of age. It is just another example of his boundless optimism. He received his optimism from his mother and his faith. After all, according to the word of God, the righteous will be rewarded. He is also ranked among the greatest presidents in American history by historians and, most importantly, by the American people, as evidenced in poll after poll. So again, ronald Reagan is among our greatest presidents to ever have served in the office and, as Craig Shirley points out, he was never as conservative as some conservatives wanted him to be, but he was always true to his self. He was as conservative as he was comfortable in being and his character shined forth and boy. Our country badly needs another great president, badly needs one. So we will continue to study Our study of the four big and great presidents, and later Liberty Minutes Washington, lincoln, fdr and Reagan. So in today's Liberty Minute, if we have learned anything as our country Over this past 45 years since Ronald Reagan became president, let's remember these words. He gave to us just two quotes that enshrine the essence Our 40th president, the great Ronald Reagan. Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn't pass it to our children in the bloodstream Must be fought for, protected and handed on to them to do the same. That quote hangs on my wall, just to the left here at my desk and this one, trust me, government ask that we concentrate our hopes and dreams on one man, that we trust him to do what's best for us. My view of government places trust not in one person or one party, but in those values that transcend persons and parties. And those last two quotes are the essence and the fabric and the character of our last greatest president, ronald Wilson Reagan.

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