June 11, 2004
Ronald Reagan: President, Patriot, and Believer
Ronald Wilson Reagan (1911-2004)
40th President of the United States (1981-1989)
Si monumentum requiris, circumspice.
(If you seek his monument, look around you.)
- Epitaph of Sir Christopher Wren, architect of St. Paul's Cathedral, London.
"The world is ten years old." So writes Milton Friedman, the world's best-known globalization advocate, quoting from a full-page ad by Merrill Lynch, published at the height of the Asian financial crisis.
"It was born when the Wall fell in 1989. It's no surprise that the world's youngest economy - the global economy - is still finding its bearings...Many world markets are only recently freed, governed for the first time by the emotions of the people rather than the fists of the state.. From where we sit, none of this diminishes the promise offered a decade ago by the demise of the walled-off world...The spread of free markets and democracy around the world is permitting more people everywhere to turn their aspirations into achievements. And technology, properly harnessed and liberally distributed, has the power to erase not just geographical borders but also human ones. It seems to us that, for a 10-year-old, the world continues to hold great promise. In the meantime, no one ever said growing up was easy."
Yet whatever this age grows up to be, Ronald Reagan took the first steps to create it. He went against the political grain both here and abroad, seeking to replace tired old ideologies based on state control with new visions that promised freedom, brought the coercive power of the state under the control of its people, and opened the way to the future. Czech President Vaclav Havel noted about the Communist system that Reagan despised: "Communism as a system went against life, against man's fundamental needs; against the need for freedom; the need to be enterprising, to associate freely; against the will of the nation. Something that goes against life may last a long time - but sooner or later, it will collapse." Similarly, at home in the US, people began to realize, in the words of Plutarch, that "The real destroyer of the liberties of the people is he who spreads among them bounties, donations, and benefits;" more government intrusion and regulation does not create a better life. The fall of Communism created economic miracles in Eastern Europe, and America produced its own economic miracle through limiting government. And most importantly, Reagan sought to preserve the world for the future by ending the nuclear arms race that had brought the world to the brink of a nuclear apocalypse more than once, and then by rendering the ideology that gave rise to this conflict obsolete and irrelevant.
Sadly, it was only after his death that people began to appreciate Reagan for his legacy. Reagan, though he withdrew from public life after being diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease in 1994, continues to be a controversial figure. He is an icon of the Conservative Right, and a demon of the Liberal Left, credited for economic expansion, blamed for deficits, praised for his tough stance against the Soviets, ridiculed for SDI, lauded for his legacy, criticized for it as well. And yet, when his body lay in state at the Reagan Library in California and the U.S. Capitol, nearly 400,000 people, from all walks of life, waited in long lines to see the man who, in just eight years, had changed the world forever, and for the better.
What lessons, then, can we draw from Ronald Reagan's life? First, never underestimate the power and the allure that freedom holds for all human beings, and the great things people can accomplish when they have it. For a people who have always known freedom, very few Americans can understand what a life without freedom truly means. But Russians, Ukrainians, Lithuanianians, Poles, Germans, Czechs, Hungarians, and Romanians know. So too, do Chinese, Vietnamese, Koreans, Cambodians, Laotians, and Cubans. Reagan brought people freedom from abroad, freedom from a country that they had been taught from birth to despise. What the world has done with this freedom in just 15 short years is incredible: The Internet, the global market, and the most promising technologies the world has ever seen. Give people freedom and they can do anything. Second, never fear for the future. This is the ultimate legacy of Ronald Reagan. After all he, this nation, and the world had endured, the years of mistrust, the proxy wars, the posturing, the lies, the doubt, and the fear, Reagan faced the future with optimism. In his farewell to the nation after being diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease, Reagan wrote, "When the Lord calls me home, whenever that may be, I will leave with the greatest love for this country of ours and eternal optimism for its future...I know that for America, there will always be a bright dawn ahead."
Farewell, Mr. President. As you believed in the American people, may your example continue to show us that we can believe in ourselves. And that with this belief, we can change the world for the better.
If you can dream -- and not make dreams your master; If you can make one heap of all your winnings If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise:
If you can think -- and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two imposters just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools;
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on!"
Or walk with kings -- nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run --
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And -- which is more -- you'll be a Man, my son!
-- Rudyard Kipling, "If"