A real President, a Real American, God how I miss him!

[RPBrown]

Yes, he is dearly missed. Sad part is there is no one up and coming that could even be close to his caliber of president.

[Charles L. Cotton]

The video behind Reagan's speech has changed since I put it up. I like the original version better because it has less Hollywood footage and because it shows war in the middle east. Here's the original version on my Facebook page. I guess you can substitute a video on Youtube, but not Facebook.

Chas.

[sjfcontrol]

The video behind Reagan's speech has changed since I put it up. I like the original version better because it has less Hollywood footage and because it shows war in the middle east. Here's the original version on my Facebook page. I guess you can substitute a video on Youtube, but not Facebook.

Chas.

That version is much better than the first one I saw. I was disappointed with the obvious movie clips, and felt it cheapened the message. (Even though Reagan WAS an actor! )

[Charles L. Cotton]

The video behind Reagan's speech has changed since I put it up. I like the original version better because it has less Hollywood footage and because it shows war in the middle east. Here's the original version on my Facebook page. I guess you can substitute a video on Youtube, but not Facebook.

Chas.

Since the original version of the video was changed to substitute a bunch of Hollywood clips, I've linked a different version. It's the same Reagan speech, with more appropriate video footage. It's different from the one on my Facebook account.

Chas.

[mamabearCali]

It is so much better with the new footage. Made me want to cry with pain that there is no one, no one on the scene with that level of courage and character anymore. Heaven help us all for the enemies we face today are if anything even more brutal than the ones he faced.

[VoiceofReason]

There will never be another like Ronald Reagan but when times have been bad, someone has stood up, taken charge and got the train back on the tracks. It will happen again.

There will never be another like Ronald Reagan but then there has never been another country like The United States of America. We must persevere. We must triumph. To do otherwise would be traitorous to those that fought for this country, those that died for this country and to President Reagan.

[The Annoyed Man]

Unlike all of you, I can only look back in fondness and think, "if only I had...." I was raised in a pretty far left of center home. I cast my first vote in the 1974 election.... for Jimmy Carter. I remained a died-in-the wool democrat until 1996, when I cast my first vote as a republican for Bob Dole. I cast my last vote as a Republican Party member in 2012.

Reagan was for sure The Great Communicator, and he refused to let America think that she was anything less than that shining city on a hill. He stared down the soviets, and they blinked. I note that even though Reagan graciously credited the Carter administration for working tirelessly to free the hostages in Iran, the Iranians didn't release them until Reagan took office. I think they understood the risks of screwing around with Reagan, and they knew there very few risks to screwing around with Carter. There is no doubt that we were all safer in our beds at night because he was POTUS.

But, in retrospect, Reagan also gave us some mistakes too. We got immigration amnesty with a promise to enforce the new immigration law and to close the border. Didn't work any better than LBJ's version, or Bush's, or anybody else's. FOPA got his signature despite the Hughes Amendment. After he left office, he lent his support in favor of passage of the Brady Bill. He was a sunny optimist and a great man, but flawed and human too.

Because of my own political journey, it wasn't until after I turned the corner into conservatism that I read a compilation of Reagan's radio addresses, all of which he wrote himself, and all of which were brilliant. Back in my democrat days, it was easy to dismiss him as an intellectual lightweight, but he had the gift of distilling complex issues into symmetrical webs of simple and true interconnected statements, framing them such that the common man could completely understand them. In that regard, he was much like Jefferson and Madison and other founders, who deliberately used language understandable to the average person when drafting the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. I now wish that I had not been so dismissive of him when he was in office.

[ssnstump]

I served in the US Navy under two CICs. The first was a waste (Carter) and was blessed with this man as the second.
They were as different as night and day. While Carter was in office, we were poorly treated in foreign ports. That
changed once Reagan took office. Our military began to regain the respect of our allies and enemies alike.
I was proud to serve, but more proud to serve under Ronald Reagan.

Thanks Chas for bringing this up.
By the way, tomorrow is 9/11 - Never Forget!

[VMI77]

I served in the US Navy under two CICs. The first was a waste (Carter) and was blessed with this man as the second.
They were as different as night and day. While Carter was in office, we were poorly treated in foreign ports. That
changed once Reagan took office. Our military began to regain the respect of our allies and enemies alike.
I was proud to serve, but more proud to serve under Ronald Reagan.

Thanks Chas for bringing this up.
By the way, tomorrow is 9/11 - Never Forget!

And the pay got a lot better too.

[VMI77]

What TAM said.

[MeMelYup]

During that time didn't some of our legislators try to pass a law or amendment about , to be president one had to be a lawyer or have a background in law. Their theory being, Reagan was an actor and didn't know anything about law.

[gljjt]

I'm very proud to say I used my very first vote on this great man.

He made sense to me then and even more now.

My first vote as well!

[jmra]

I'm very proud to say I used my very first vote on this great man.

He made sense to me then and even more now.

My first vote as well!

Mine also. Turned 18 a few months before the '84 election.

[Charles L. Cotton]

This thread was intended to be a tribute to the greatest American President, not a platform for discussing the current Republican Party. I'm moving those posts to a new thread. If you want to discuss the Republican Party or candidates, please post in this thread: viewtopic.php?f=83&t=74340" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Chas.

[Bolton Strid]

The text of his words to go with the video. The power of his speech is not diminished in the written word. Not one iota.

Via http://www.reagan.utexas.edu/archives/r ... osing.html


Now let's set the record straight. There's no argument over the choice between peace and war, but there's only one guaranteed way you can have peace—and you can have it in the next second—surrender.

Admittedly, there's a risk in any course we follow other than this, but every lesson of history tells us that the greater risk lies in appeasement, and this is the specter our well-meaning liberal friends refuse to face—that their policy of accommodation is appeasement, and it gives no choice between peace and war, only between fight or surrender. If we continue to accommodate, continue to back and retreat, eventually we have to face the final demand—the ultimatum. And what then—when Nikita Khrushchev has told his people he knows what our answer will be? He has told them that we're retreating under the pressure of the Cold War, and someday when the time comes to deliver the final ultimatum, our surrender will be voluntary, because by that time we will have been weakened from within spiritually, morally, and economically. He believes this because from our side he's heard voices pleading for "peace at any price" or "better Red than dead," or as one commentator put it, he'd rather "live on his knees than die on his feet." And therein lies the road to war, because those voices don't speak for the rest of us.

You and I know and do not believe that life is so dear and peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery. If nothing in life is worth dying for, when did this begin—just in the face of this enemy? Or should Moses have told the children of Israel to live in slavery under the pharaohs? Should Christ have refused the cross? Should the patriots at Concord Bridge have thrown down their guns and refused to fire the shot heard 'round the world? The martyrs of history were not fools, and our honored dead who gave their lives to stop the advance of the Nazis didn't die in vain. Where, then, is the road to peace? Well it's a simple answer after all.

You and I have the courage to say to our enemies, "There is a price we will not pay." "There is a point beyond which they must not advance." And this—this is the meaning in the phrase of Barry Goldwater's "peace through strength." Winston Churchill said, "The destiny of man is not measured by material computations. When great forces are on the move in the world, we learn we're spirits—not animals." And he said, "There's something going on in time and space, and beyond time and space, which, whether we like it or not, spells duty."

You and I have a rendezvous with destiny.

We'll preserve for our children this, the last best hope of man on earth, or we'll sentence them to take the last step into a thousand years of darkness.

October 27, 1964