"Conqueror of communism, sworn enemy of statism, leader of unshakable conviction and contagious optimism, embodiment and culmination of conservative hopes, Ronald Reagan is one of history's heroes."
Ronald Reagan's accomplishments truly were heroic. "He transformed conservatism from an intellectual movement into a political revolution," observes Edwin Feulner of the Heritage Foundation. "He exposed the bankruptcy of modern liberalism and proved that true liberty is still a fighting faith. He saw the momentum of freedom in the sweep of history, and through the power of his words and the determination of his deeds placed the last shovel of dirt on the grave of Leninism."
Feulner credits Reagan for giving America "a transfusion of his own optimism and hope. He diagnosed our nation's worst problem as a loss of 'faith in itself.' He rejected a historical hypochondria that found the essence of America in its sickness, faults, and failures." Feulner says that Reagan "restored a soaring sense of the possible and led a revolution of rising confidence and expectations -- a revolution that rescued America from defeatism and much of the world from tyranny."
The current debate in Congress over welfare reform is but one of many Reagan legacies. "Since the 1930s, our ruling political assumption had been that a growing government was necessary to tame the business cycle and move society closer and closer to equality," Feulner recalls. "Both Democrats and Republicans seemed to accept these ideas as inevitable. Reagan attacked them root and branch, and transformed American politics in the process. He argued that we had crippled democracy by empowering bureaucracy -- that the government's desire to help us had become an excuse to rule us. He condemned reckless spending, endless tax increases, an overgrown establishment, and a grasping judiciary."
Thanks to Reagan, we need never doubt that one person can make a difference. "Reagan's inauguration marked the final, exhausted end of the Great Society," says Feulner. "In place of the Great Society, he set out on a new path, still being traveled by American politics. He moved toward a tax system that rewards accomplishment and effort rather than punishing these things. He started the shift from federal paternalism to true federalism. And he initiated true welfare reform, not because of welfare's cost, but because of welfare's casualties -- measured in illegitimacy, fatherlessness, crime, and despair."
Ed Feulner credits Reagan with creating "an American economic miracle. After a three-stage tax cut and a reduction in government growth, the American economy began to expand -- by 31 percent from 1983 to 1989 in real terms. Americans of every class -- rich, middle-class, and poor -- saw their wealth increase. It was our nation's longest peacetime expansion in a long and prosperous history."
Ronald Reagan may not have crossed into the promised land himself, but he surely did lead us through the desert of modern liberalism. "When Reagan left office," Feulner notes, "a strong plurality of Americans described themselves as conservatives. Our politics has never been the same."
