The American Spectator

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Streetcar Line

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That's what conservatism's greatest modern champion, Ronald Reagan, always did. In 1980 the American economy was an absolute shambles of high unemployment, high interest rates, high gas prices and long gas lines, and high inflation, all at the same time; the Soviets were dominating Afghanistan; the Marxists were on the move in El Salvador and Nicaragua and Angola and Grenada; Americans were in the midst of being held hostage in Iran for 444 days; Moammar Ghadafi and Saddam Hussein were building terrorist-sponsoring dictatorships; and Communist Parties were making headway in Western European countries while the Soviets massed huge armies and weapons in Eastern Europe; and (horror of horrors) Teddy Kennedy was making what seemed to many at the time like a seriously achievable run for the American presidency.

And Ronald Reagan (on whose birthday I write these words) looked at all this and said, in effect: "What if we Americans remember our better selves and our highest principles and actually fix all these things?"

And the conservative movement of Buckley and Rusher and Tyrrell and Blackwell and Weyrich and Viguerie and Kemp and Friedman, soon to be bolstered by Jeane Kirkpatrick and William Bennett, and allied with Thatcher and Pope John Paul II and a union leader named Walesa, along with thousands of other conservatives who kept the faith, all joined behind Reagan and, yes, used their power to start the world over again.

If they did it then, so can we do it now. The better angels of our nature call us forth, and the job before us is hard but achievable. It is achievable, because we are Americans -- Americans, under God.

topics:
Harry Reid, Hillary Clinton, Supreme Court, Iraq, Iran, Conservatism, Energy