Happy 99th Birthday Ronald Reagan

by the Left Coast Rebel

Today marks the birthday of the greatest President in my lifetime and perhaps my parent's lifetime as well. Today is Ronald Wilson Reagan's 99th birthday, he was born in Tampico, Illinois. The setting was hardly lavish - his mother Nelle Wilson Reagan, gave birth to him in an apartment on the second floor of a commercial building in Tampico.

Nelle Reagan instilled her religious values in the young man that Reagan turned into - she played a key role in Ronald Regan's sense of the basic decency and goodness of people. Reagan carried this sense throughout his life, all the way to the White House. This sense showed through in policy. This general belief showed through in his persona. This ethos shone in his optimism.

Contrast that to our current president (and it nearly breaks my heart to think of it), who considers individuals to be shepherded and used for a means to an end. For the life of me, I cannot see why any American would look to Obama as anything inspiring and optimistic. I find him cold, calculating, impersonal.

Optimism towards America. Perhaps that is truly the key differences between Reagan and Obama, and perhaps between Reagan and other Presidents as well. Reagan understood the essence of what America stands for - the sanctity and dignity of the individual. From that concept, all else flows.

To think that Ronald Wilson Reagan was governor of the Once Golden State (1967-1975) is a nugget of history almost forgotten here. To think that he wouldn't stand a chance of being elected governor of California ever again tells the tale of where this state has headed.

Instead of pointing you to Reagan policy this and historical standing that, I will point you to a section of Reagan's Farewell Address, uttered on January 11, 1989. It sums up what the man stood for, what America should stand for, and what we can achieve when the ship is set back on it's proper course:

I've spoken of the shining city all my political life, but I don't know if I ever quite communicated what I saw when I said it. But in my mind it was a tall proud city built on rocks stronger than oceans, wind-swept, God-blessed, and teeming with people of all kinds living in harmony and peace, a city with free ports that hummed with commerce and creativity, and if there had to be city walls, the walls had doors and the doors were open to anyone with the will and the heart to get here. That's how I saw it and see it still.