Reagan Remembered

John at Marathon Pundit on Monday wrote a piece commemorating President Reagan's birthday, Feb 6, 1911.

I still have one of Reagan's pictures on my fridge. His smiling face in one picture or another has been there since my kids were little, back in the 80's----Morning in America with my orange juice.

The one that's been there the longest is the one there now, President Reagan and Prime Minister Thatcher at Camp David in 1986.

I was a Reagan Democrat.

I voted Republican for the first time for Ronald Reagan and never looked back.

Today I pulled Peggy Noonan's book on Reagan off my shelf and found again the words of one of his greatest speeches, which still resonates today:

Some would have us accept [the Soviets] at their word and accommodate ourselves to their aggressive impulses. But if history teaches anything, it teaches that simpleminded appeasement or wishful thinking about our adversaries is folly. It means the betrayal of our past, the sqandering of our freedom.......

I urge you to beware the temptation of pride---the temptation of blithely declaring yourselves above it all and label both sides equally at fault, to ignore the facts of history and the aggressive impulses of an evil empire, to simply call the arms race a giant misunderstanding and thereby remove yourself from the struggle between right and wrong and good and evil.

I think I like to remember him best, though, with this picture, when he was at home.