Ronald Reagan has died. By the power of his oratory and optimism, he restored America's faith in itself.
He was president when I was in high school and college, and good liberal Democrat that I was at the time, I did not care for him. He seemed a relic, out of touch. But this was only superficial, for he was in touch with the most important knowledge of all: that freedom is America's great promise, and if you work for that all else will follow. Not automatically, but prosperity, equality and justice become much easier to attain.
It took until after Reagan left office for that to come home to me. Brought up in public schools with the unquestioned notion that government could provide prosperity through wealth redistribution, during a time when Nixon practiced detente and Carter accomodation with Soviet leaders, who was I to say that socialism wasn't as valid an ideology as capitalism? Many of my friends believed that: that equality of outcome mandated from above could produce a society with no more, and possibly even less, injustice; that a planned society eliminated waste and provided hope to the poor lacking it in the West. Not that we would necessarily trade places, but both systems being valid the inhabitants of the Warsaw Pact must be as happy with their lives as we with ours.
Nineteen eighty-nine put the lie to that. Thousands of smiling people streaming to the west in their tiny cars, Germans dancing on the ruins of the Berlin Wall, a Velvet Revolution in Czechoslovakia, the bloody but exalted downfall of Ceausescu, all showed that Reagan understood where others did not. Given a choice between Communism and freedom, people choose the latter. Reagan was confident in that and because of him we all can be, as we are confident the sun will rise tomorrow.
Update: Of course, Lileks says it better.
Posted by awm at June 6, 2004 10:10 PM