Thank You, Ronald Reagan
November 1984, I ran across a cold North Dakota college campus to cast my first vote. Age 18, I entered the first time through the front doors of the gymnasium, waited in a short line to vote for Ronald Reagan. Four years earlier at his first presidential election I was a disinterested young teen knowing little of politics. Oh how the next four years would change that.
My decision to vote for Reagan was made months before this November election day. I remember taking a date to a dance in my father's car, and hearing on the radio about the airliner shot down over soviet airspace. If memory serves it was KAL flight 007. We talked in the parking lot for a long time before entering the school. We contemplated this starting world war three. Frankly, it scared the crap out of me. All of the sudden world politics touched ME. Not just some anonymous person half a world away.
I began paying more attention to politics. The next president could get me drafted and sent to die on some foreign shore. This was personal. As I looked at the president and Mr. Mondale I cared about what they would each do domestically, but I most studied what foreign leaders thought. The prime minister of England loved Reagan. While the Soviets hated him, they also feared him. Mutually Assured Destruction only works when you know the other guy will push the button to assure your own destruction. I had my candidate.
As the next years passed we witnessed the dismantling of the U.S.S.R., due more to the efforts of one man, than any other in the world. The world, owes President Reagan a huge debt for the security we have in a post cold war world.
Reagan was more than a brilliant (cold) wartime leader. He personified the heart and soul of America. No matter how bleak things seemed he could give a speech with such optimism in America's ability to overcome, that he convinced America to overcome, seemingly, by simply talking us into it. With his infectious smile, one simply felt proud to be an American with President Reagan as its face for the rest of the world.
The world is a much brighter place for Ronald Reagan having lived, and it is just a bit dimmer now, with his passing.
May God bless America. And if God wants to know what ways are best to do that, he can simply turn and ask the Gipper himself.
My decision to vote for Reagan was made months before this November election day. I remember taking a date to a dance in my father's car, and hearing on the radio about the airliner shot down over soviet airspace. If memory serves it was KAL flight 007. We talked in the parking lot for a long time before entering the school. We contemplated this starting world war three. Frankly, it scared the crap out of me. All of the sudden world politics touched ME. Not just some anonymous person half a world away.
I began paying more attention to politics. The next president could get me drafted and sent to die on some foreign shore. This was personal. As I looked at the president and Mr. Mondale I cared about what they would each do domestically, but I most studied what foreign leaders thought. The prime minister of England loved Reagan. While the Soviets hated him, they also feared him. Mutually Assured Destruction only works when you know the other guy will push the button to assure your own destruction. I had my candidate.
As the next years passed we witnessed the dismantling of the U.S.S.R., due more to the efforts of one man, than any other in the world. The world, owes President Reagan a huge debt for the security we have in a post cold war world.
Reagan was more than a brilliant (cold) wartime leader. He personified the heart and soul of America. No matter how bleak things seemed he could give a speech with such optimism in America's ability to overcome, that he convinced America to overcome, seemingly, by simply talking us into it. With his infectious smile, one simply felt proud to be an American with President Reagan as its face for the rest of the world.
The world is a much brighter place for Ronald Reagan having lived, and it is just a bit dimmer now, with his passing.
May God bless America. And if God wants to know what ways are best to do that, he can simply turn and ask the Gipper himself.
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