REAGAN I

I’ll write more tomorrow. He was the greatest president since FDR, a man who did more than restore America’s self-confidence and defeat the great lie of Communism. He re-conjured our understanding of the central, animating role of liberty in human affairs. He saw that what was strangling America was the suffocation of big government and high taxation; he paid respect to religion but never turned Republicanism into what it is today – a repository for sectarian scolding; he saw that the use of military force was sometimes necessary to defeat tyranny; and that the greatest weapon against the creeping march of cynicism was self-confidence and optimism. With Margaret Thatcher and Karol Wojtyla, he changed the course of world history for the better. He was the towering figure of my adolescence, a beacon of hope in what was a brutally debilitating time. I’ll be lucky if I live to see another political leader of his stature, grace or fortitude. May he rest in the peace he brought to so many others, and in the joy he so richly deserves.

REAGAN II: “It takes time to recognize greatness and it sometimes appears in the oddest of forms. A B-actor from Hollywood, a cold fish, a man unknown even to his own children at times, a hack-radio announcer for General Electric, and easily the finest president of the last fifty years. When he dies, this country will go into shock. For Americans know in their hearts that this unlikely man understood the deepest meaning of their country in a way no-one else has done for a generation. He gave them purpose again, and in return they still give him love. For what it’s worth, let me now add my own.” – from my appreciation of the great man in 2001.