Reagan's Way

Mac Owens from 2001:

“The key to Mr. Reagan’s success as president is to be found in a famous 1953 essay by the British philosopher, Sir Isaiah Berlin.

In that essay, “The Hedgehog and the Fox,” Sir Isaiah categorized writers, thinkers, and human beings in general according to the dictum of the Greek poet Archilochus: “The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing.”

Ronald Reagan was clearly a hedgehog.

The one big thing that Mr. Reagan knew was that the United States was a fundamentally decent regime that constituted the only hope for freedom and prosperity in the modern world.

He knew that the “idea” of America was undermined at home by a shift away from individual effort and liberty to reliance on the government and that it was undermined abroad by ideology of communism.

The focus of his presidency was to unfetter America. The position of the United States today is a tribute to his success.” …….

The Creased-Pants Crowd of the day marveled at Reagan: “He knows so little and accomplishes so much!”

And now we have in the current “professorial” #ActingPresident Obama, a “Reagan-in-Reverse”:

 He knows so much and accomplishes so little. Except for the enemy.

Reagan’s Way:

“When a conservative quotes Jefferson that government that is closest to the people is best,
it is because he knows that Jefferson risked his life, his fortune and his sacred honor to make certain that what he and his fellow patriots learned from experience was not crushed by an ideology of empire.”

“Elected officials, their appointees, and government workers are expected to perform their public acts with honesty, openness, diligence, and special integrity.”

“Only now and then do we in the West hear a voice from out of that darkness. Then there is silence — the silence of human slavery.”

“Our party must be the party of the individual. It must not sell out the individual to cater to the group.
No greater challenge faces our society today than ensuring that each one of us can maintain his dignity and his identity in an increasingly complex, centralized society.”

“You can’t be for big government, big taxes and big bureaucracy and still be for the little guy.”

“My idea of American policy toward [tyranny] is simple, and some would say simplistic. It is this: We win and they lose. What do you think of that?”