The Greatest President...

Mike from Mike's America has invited me to participate in a celebration of Ronald Reagan's Presidency, and I have thought long and hard about how to do this.

I have decided to explain the effect that President Reagan had upon me in my formative years.

I first became politically aware during the Carter Presidency.

I remember the Gas lines, the Hostage Crisis, and the word "Inflation" being discussed in every single conversation that I overheard between the adults in my life.

I turned 10 in 1976, and there was a lot going on in my little world. I had a brand new baby sister, (Hi, Daffy!!) My Dad took a new church that year, and we moved to a new town, so I had no friends (yet...) and we had absolutely no money. Life seemed very hard during that period of time.

When you are the "New kid in town" at 10, you get picked on. A LOT. How you handle yourself under this assault has everything to do with how long the abuse continues, how severe it is, and how popular you will eventually be. I had to learn to stand up for myself, and fast, and I had a brother who was 16 months younger than me, who was going through the same things that I was going through, only he was a lot more timid and shy than I was.

I did okay. I learned to fight when I had to, both for myself, and for him, and I also learned how to diplomatically diffuse a situation when such a solution was possible.

I learned that when diplomacy will not work, then you have to fight. And if you have to fight, then get busy fighting. And use whatever you can get your hands on to defeat whoever you are fighting against. Fight as dirty as you know how. Stick your fingers in your adversary's eyes, or in his nose. Scratch him. Bite him. Pick up the heaviest thing that you can heft, and hit him in the mouth with it. Twice.

WIN THE FIGHT.

When it's over, you will be respected.

If you lose the fight, then forever you will be picked on and abused, you will be regarded as a loser, and the torture will never ever stop, until you stop it.

I knew this at the age of 10.

It was on the tail end of the process of my learning this important lesson that the Iran Hostage Crisis occured.

And America, the most powerful Nation on Earth, led by the Democrat President Carter, tucked our collective tails between our legs, and begged for the mercy of a ragtag bunch of Islamic thugs, in the tiny, powerless, jerkwater Country of Iran.

I was about twelve at that time, and even then, I believed that the lives of 66 people were not worth the amount of ridicule and disrespect that our Country suffered because of President Carter's unwillingness to deal forcefully with the situation.

For 444 days this atrocity continued, and the Democrat President Carter would not commit to solving the problem. He did try one half-hearted attempt at rescuing the hostages, which ended in disaster.

Carter begged the Iranian Terrorists to let the hostages go. He begged the U.N. to intervene. He begged everyone for everything, and all of his begging just made America seem weaker to the whole World.

Then the 1980 elections came around, and a former actor and Governor of California was in the News an awful lot. His name was Ronald Reagan.

He was a Republican, a straight talker, and a forceful man. He seemed to understand the lessons that I had learned over the last few years, and the whole World knew that he was not going to take any crap. From ANYONE.

He was elected President, and it snowed on his inauguration day. I was home from school, and watched him being sworn in, and on that day, the hostages were released.

This was a very powerful message to me. The Left would like to give the credit for the release of the hostages to Jesse Jackson because he took it upon himself to go over there and try to appease the Terrorists on the behalf of America. But real, thinking Americans know that the reason that the hostages were released was because Ronald Reagan was now the President, and he would not put up with that type of nonsense.

This one incident made it okay to be proud to be an American again. America was through taking crap from the likes of little podunk Countries like Iran, and the whole World knew it.

Over the next 8 years I watched as the Left in America demonized him, disparaged President Reagan, called him stupid, unrefined, and incompetent. And all the while, he moved America to the right, both economically and geo-politically.

And the further to the right America went because of President Reagan, the better off my family became.

He cut taxes drastically, and not even his Vice-President, George H. W. Bush understood what he was doing. (G.B. 41 called the "Trickle Down Economics" theory "Voo-Doo Economics". But President Reagan created an economic boom for America that it took G.B.41 and Bill Clinton twelve years to dismantle.)

Ronald Reagan was a rare genius in the world of Presidential Politics, and one of the reasons that the Left hated him so much was because they could not, and still cannot, produce anyone who even approximates his combination of wisdom and effectiveness.

I tried ever since Mike invited me to participate in this celebration of the Reagan Presidency to think of Ronald Reagan quotes to include in my post.

The best one I can think of is this one.

"Aw, shut up!!"

This one phrase may have been what won him the Presidency in the first place, and it is still timely today. I find that it comes in handy when confronted with the nonsense presented by the Left in the guise of Political discourse. Sometimes it is absolutely the most appropriate response.
When Ronald Reagan came along, the American People were desperate for a real leader.

A MAN. One who would unapologetically say what should be said.

Ronald Reagan was that man.

He was the Greatest President that America has had since George Washington.

We need another Republican exactly like him in 2008.

I know that there is one out there...