FEBRUARY 6, 2026

“Republicans believe every day is the Fourth of July, but the Democrats believe every day is April 15.”

“As government expands, liberty contracts.”

“Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children what it was once like in the United States where men were free.”

“How do you tell a Communist? Well, it’s someone who reads Marx and Lenin. And how do you tell an anti-Communist? It’s someone who understands Marx and Lenin.”

“The most terrifying words in the English language are: I’m from the government and I’m here to help.”

“The greatest leader is not necessarily the one who does the greatest things. He is the one that gets the people to do the greatest things.”

–President Ronald Reagan

He was talented, but often overlooked and underestimated.  He was educated, well read and informed, but thought of as simple minded and ignorant.  He was gregarious, but very private and introverted.  He was born into humble circumstances, but rose to the highest office in the land, to the continued surprise of his many detractors.  Today, February 6, is the 115^th birthday of Ronald Wilson Reagan, the fortieth (40^th) President of the United States.  He was born in Tampico, Illinois, in 1911. 

It is fascinating when proponents of former Presidents Obama and China Joe claim that these men saved us from the worst recessions since the Great Depression.  In the case of President Obama, it was hyperbole.  In the case of China Joe, it was just a damn lie.

Clearly none of these advocates have any memory of 1979, with interest rates approaching 21%, inflation ravaging American incomes at 13.5%, high unemployment at 8%, and gas lines.  Moreover, across the globe, Soviet expansionism was on the march.  Then, as under former Presidents Obama and China Joe, many declared that the American people would have to adjust to this new “normal” and make do with less.  One such figure—then President Jimmy Carter—comes to mind.

Ronald Reagan rejected that view.  Ronald Reagan believed in the American people and their capacity to achieve, if only government would get out of the way.  He famously stated in his First Inaugural Address that “[i]n this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.”  President Reagan then spent the next eight (8) years implementing policies that unleashed the greatest expansion of the American economy ever. 

A man of peace, President Reagan also moved American foreign policy in a different direction.  Rejecting the defeatist policies of détente and containment, President Reagan sought to win the Cold War against the Soviet Union.  He succeeded beyond all expectations, freeing millions of people from Soviet bondage behind the Iron Curtain.  Because of President Reagan, the Berlin Wall was torn down, free democratic elections are now regularly held in Eastern European countries, the Soviet Union does not exist, and communism—the most evil ideology ever implemented—lies on the ash heap of history.  And it all occurred without a nuclear exchange or the firing of a single shot.  President Reagan achieved all this, not because he was a great man (though he was), but because he believed, truly believed, in the greatness of the American ideal and the American people.  Indeed, in his farewell address, he touted the successes of the American people and predicted that our best days lay ahead of us.  “After all, why shouldn’t we believe that? We are Americans.” 

Ronald Reagan died on June 5, 2004.  He left us all a legacy of prosperity and peace, as well as  a roadmap to freedom and prosperity; the very same roadmap that our Founding Fathers first established, and that so many have died to preserve.  We as a people only falter when we forget. 

God bless Ronald Wilson Reagan. 

GFK