Ronald Reagan was what they call a conviction politician. He often described himself as “a citizen in politics.” And if you look at his long, successful life, you see only two eight-year periods of office holding: theCaliforniagovernorship (two terms) and the presidency (two terms).

Ronald Reagan did not play by the playbook described on the front page of Sunday’s Washington Post. The liberal voice of the nation’s capital headlined this thought:

Tricky pivot for Romney to the center.

Senior reporter Karen Tumulty led off the story with this:

“The playbook for Republican presidential contenders goes at least as far back as Richard Nixon: Run hard to the right in the primaries; steer back to the center for the general election.”

In other words, be as cynical as Nixon and take our advice: Sucker the voters of your own party into backing you. Then, once you’ve gulled enough of them to gain a first-ballot nomination at the convention, tack to the left to attract the broad middle of the electorate. 

Reporter Tumulty did not list Ronald Reagan in her widely-read story because he did no such thing and, gee, he only won two back-to-back landslides, carried only 44, then 49 states, and won only a total of 1,014 Electoral Votes. Of course, reporter Tumulty’s friendly advice on tricky pivoting is given to candidates she would never back in any event.

Why didn’t Reagan pivot? Why wasn’t he tricky? I remember a staff meeting at the U.S. Department of Education early in his second term. Five different proposals were on the table for discussion. “Well, we know we can’t do numbers 3 and 5,” said Patricia Hines, one of my favorite colleagues. “Why not?” I asked innocently. “Because,” she patiently explained to this slower student in the class, “the platform on which Ronald Reagan was twice elected specifically condemned those policies. President Reagan may not be able to achieve all he endorsed in that platform, but he would never, never go against his platform.”

I soon learned the high ideals and the deep commitments of the Reagan movement from Mrs. Hines and many other Reaganauts.  We never called ourselves “Reaganites.” (Leave “iting” for the Trostkyites and the Castroites).

President Reagan had a strong sense that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed. And it was not only dishonorable to “pivot,” or to engage in tricky maneuvers to gain that consent of the governed under false pretenses. Worse, it was corrosive of free government to do so.

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Everyone’s grabbing at the Reagan mantle these days.

Under the Wikipedia entry “What would Reagan do?” one can find the following summary:

The phrase on occasion has been used by iconoclastic conservatives to claim the mantle of Reagan as they criticize mainline conservatives, by some liberal commentators as a way of chastising Republicans whom also they believe fall short of Reagan’s ideals and also by non-partisan public policy organizations that seek to emulate aspects of Reagan’s leadership.

But one Reagan historian doesn’t find that surprising at all. Professor and author Paul Kengor notes that Reagan won the presidency in 1980 by defeating an incumbent in a landslide, winning 44 of 50 states, and then got reelected in 1984 by sweeping 49 of 50 states. Few presidents enjoyed such decisive success at the ballot box and, more broadly, in changingAmerica and the world for the better.

Tomorrow, Dr. Paul Kengor will address the question, “What did Ronald Reagan believe?” Or, even more specific: What would Reagan do if he were president right now?

Dr. Kengor will lay out the underlying thinking that formed the basis of Ronald Reagan’s political philosophy and the policies (foreign and domestic) that he pursued. Dr. Kengor will share what he calls his “Reagan Seven;” that is, seven beliefs that undergirded Reagan’s actions as president and as a public figure. These core principles get us closer to the crux of what Ronald Reagan’s conservatism was about, and what his GOP emulators today might take to heart.

To RSVP for tomorrow’s event, click here: What is a Reagan Conservative?

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“We who hate your gaudy guts salute you”

William Allen White

Republican William Allen White, editor of Kansas’ Emporia Gazette, was often exasperated with President Franklin Roosevelt, but he recognized his great qualities of leadership. Recently, one of the callers to a popular conservative talk show was especially angry at Newt Gingrich: “Why, he said FDR was the greatest president of the twentieth century!”

A highly acclaimed recent book, The Forgotten Man, by Amity Shlaes, argues that Roosevelt’s famous New Deal did not improve the stricken economy in the 1930s, and may even have slowed the recovery. It’s a commonplace among conservatives to argue—against the New Deal’s vast public works projects—that it was really the military buildup leading into the Second World War that got us out of the Great Depression. But that leads us inevitably to look at FDR’s wartime leadership. Columnist Pat Buchanan agrees with libertarian Ron Paul that we should never have entered the war against Hitler in 1941. Both of those gentlemen seem to have forgotten that it was Nazi Germany that declared war on the U.S.

As a conservative, I would not defend many of FDR’s New Deal policies, although we should note that his Labor Secretary, Frances Perkins, the first woman of Cabinet rank, fought tirelessly to protect women from the hazards of coal mining, tunnel construction, and lumbering. Why? Because such jobs were hazardous to mothers. FDR’s backing of union demands was always linked to “a living wage” for the working man. It was assumed he was working to support a wife and children.

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Defense Sec. Leon Panetta has issued a commemorative message to the survivors of Pearl Harbor. It might better be called “Leon’s Amazing Whodunnit.” The secretary waxes poetic, calling the generation that fought World War II “the greatest generation” and lauding their heroic sacrifice. He thanks them for their courage and steadfastness. This is entirely appropriate.

There’s only one thing missing: Nowhere in Panetta’s paean to the vets does he mention why this date, which President Roosevelt called “a date which will live in infamy,” should be remembered. He never mentions that the attack was staged by air and naval forces of Imperial Japan.

Now, if you are a modern Secretary of Defense, you must remember always that America has had a close and cooperative alliance with democratic Japan for more than half a century. You doubtless recall as well that we have U.S. armed forces stationed in various bases in Japan today. You will also want to keep in mind the fact that Japan looks to us for military assistance in the event that North Korea attacks South Korea, or China attacks Taiwan. And we rely on Japan for vital intelligence about movements in Asia.

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A glittering panel was assembled this week on Washington’s EYE Street, the home of the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA). They had come to discuss Ronald Reagan’s career in the movies and how that influenced his political life. Before Reagan, people asked: “How can an actor be president?” After Reagan, people recognized his joke: “How can you be president if you haven’t been an actor?”

The panel was chaired by Politico’s John Harris. He led off by telling the 40-50 attendees that he graduated from high school in 1980 and cast his first presidential vote in 1984. Mr. Harris was too tactful to mention that it probably wasn’t cast for RR. That’s OK, 59% of the votes cast that year were cast for the Gipper; he carried 49 states.

The panelists included NBC News’ Andrea Mitchell, ABC News’ Sam Donaldson, former White House Chief of Staff Ken Duberstein, and, of course, former Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) Dodd left the Senate in January to assume the presidency of the MPAA. I counted one likely vote for President Reagan of the five panelists. Fair and balanced.

Sen. Dodd was most charitable. He spoke of having gone to the White House early one morning for a meeting. The night before, President Reagan had “lost” the Louisville debate to challenger Walter Mondale. Fritz even got a baseball bat from his admirers in the press titled “The Louisville Slugger.” Dodd expected to find Reagan down in the mouth, or at least tired.

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It was Ronald Reagan, my hero, who stood at the Brandenburg Gate and cried out: “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!” But it was President George H.W. Bush who, two and a half years later, quietly and skillfully guided the process of German Reunification. So, today, 21 years later, we can take note of the national day of Germany, or, Tag der Deutschen Einheit. And give credit where credit is due.

West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl in 1990 wanted desperately to unite his country with the East. It had been divided since the end of World War II. But Kohl was the only other world statesman who wanted this.

The Polish Pope, John Paul II, was all for ending Communism’s iron grip, but he was not overly eager about the Germans coming together. Poland had suffered horribly at the hands of the old Germany. The Iron Lady, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, remembered the Blitz of World War II.  She was cool to the idea of Germany becoming Europe’s premier economic and political giant. France’s Francois Mitterrand was unexcited about a new next-door neighbor reunified and rejuvenated. France had been overrun three times in a hundred years by Germany. He had reason to fear.

Back in the USSR, with the Communist regime spinning out of control, party chairman Mikhail Gorbachev was dealing with the inevitable consequences of his decision in November 1989 not to shoot as demonstrators danced on the crumbling Berlin Wall.

The German Democratic Republic (DDR) was the name of the rump state created by Stalin. It was never a democratic republic. And, as became obvious once the Wall came down, it wasn’t German either.

TIME Magazine, of course, and the Nobel Peace Prize Committee would credit Gorbachev for the peaceful end of the Cold War. Well, they certainly couldn’t give credit to Ronald Reagan and George Bush! As my friend Morton Blackwell says, is there any other example of giving credit to the hostage taker for not shooting his hostages?

Actually, there is. It’s called the Stockholm Syndrome. There’s probably no better description of the mindset of Western liberalism than this bizarre situation—where the hostages began to identify psychologically with their own captors.

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Last week, Frank Carlucci (who served as Secretary of Defense under Ronald Reagan from 1987-1989 and, before then, had played very prominent roles in every administration since Nixon’s) sat down for an informal lunch with a few students from his alma mater, Princeton University.  After providing many anecdotes and insights from his decades of service, he closed with an unexpected but deeply profound assessment of what ultimately differentiated Reagan from Nixon.

He felt that, while Nixon was considerably more intelligent and cunning than Reagan, the fundamental reason that Reagan will go down in history as one of America’s greatest presidents, “whereas Nixon will always have somewhat of a question mark next to his name,” was that Reagan was profoundly guided, in all of his actions, by his deep faith in God.

In Nixon’s case, faith was very much in the background, and his lack of faith caused him to develop a great cynicism towards other people. This caused him to lose respect for the truth, and led him to do what he found expedient, rather than what he knew to be morally right; in the end, this got him into serious trouble.

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Check out an op-ed that was written by FRC’s Bob Morrison that appeared on American Thinker.

President Reagan spoke of the unborn in his Inaugural Addresses. He appealed for their lives in his State of the Union Addresses. These are the most august ceremonies in this Great Republic. By bringing the fate of unborn children into those state occasions, he said he knew and he cared. He said we must all know and must all care. He would not be silent about what he called “the slaughter of innocents.”

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This week’s State of the Union Address brought reminders of those long ago. TIME Magazine compared President Obama’s polished delivery to Ronald Reagan. Reagan had suffered a down economy and mid-term losses in the House of Representatives. Yet, Reagan bounced back and won a smashing victory in 1984. One thinks the wish is father to the thought.

President Reagan in 1982 created a great tradition by introducing American hero Lenny Skutnik in the family section of the House Visitors Gallery. Mr. Skutnik two weeks before had risked his life to dive into the icy Potomac waters to rescue passengers from the Air Florida crash. It was a dramatic, and thrilling moment.

I know, because my young wife and I watched it live. We watched all of President Reagan’s State of the Union Addresses. Like this week, there would often be heavy snow during, or in the week of, the address. Outside, the weather might be frightful, but inside it was warm and intimate.

It was the Reagan equivalent of FDR’s Fireside Chats.

I recall when President Reagan would speak of the abortion crisis. The fate of unborn children has not been mentioned in any State of the Union Address since Reagan’s last one in 1988. My great chief described abortion as “a wound in America’s soul.” He condemned no one but he appealed to Americans to rise above self-interest and embrace the right to life of innocent human beings.

There was no hint of the fate of unborn children last Tuesday night. Fifty-three million Americans have been denied the first of all inalienable rights.

Might we consider what those fifty-three million could have contributed to the State of our Union? We face a crisis of illegal immigration. Obviously, we don’t have enough workers. We face a government spending crisis. We don’t have enough workers paying taxes to support the government we demand.

Government projections tell us the Social Security System will go broke in 2037, just twenty-five years from now. When it began in 1935, there were 17 workers for every American receiving Social Security. Today, there are only three.

And yet our government continues to sluice billions of dollars to organizations like Planned Parenthood. This outfit has given us 53 million abortions, 65 million STDs, and an out-of-wedlock birth rate of 41%. Still, Mr. Obama tells us funding for this group is essential. To do what, further depress America’s population? To further spread anti-family doctrines? To ensnare more young men and women in its web of deceit?

We face an economic crisis that began in the housing market. Wall Streeter David Goldman wrote in “Of Demographics and Depressions” (First Things, January, 2009) that the meltdown was bound to start in the housing market.

Young marrieds with children are the drivers of the housing market, he says.

And we have no more of these young families today than we had in 1969.

David Goldman says we may not come out of this severe economic crisis until we address the problem of family formation.

There was surely no such addressing in the president’s address this week. His administration is far down the path of abolishing marriage altogether.

And, because the vast majority abortions are done on unmarried women, an attack on marriage is always an attack on unborn human life itself.

President Obama has thoroughly committed himself to the Planned Parenthood agenda. He may yet express shock at Kermit Gosnell’s little hell in Philadelphia. Some pro-abortion folks have. They even argue that Gosnell is why we need his health care law–to make sure that these things are done right.

Gosnell has apparently been snip-snipping spinal cords for years in a filthy, vermin-infested abortion mill by night that doubled as an oxycontin den by day. Gosnell doesn’t kill unborn children and, allegedly, newborn children in the trim and tidy fashion of Planned Parenthood, but he, too, is a beneficiary of Roe v. Wade’s unlimited abortion license. And that’s a license President Obama defends–to the deaths.

President Reagan understood that we could not have a more perfect Union without attending to the plight of the unborn. He saw all of society—as the great Irish statesman Edmund Burke saw it: As a compact, a union between the living, the dead, and those yet unborn. He would also have agreed with Burke that in order for us to love our country, our country must be made lovely.

And President Reagan knew that America needed more men like Lenny Skutnik–someone willing to risk his life that others may live. President Obama wants us to rise to a “Sputnik Moment.” President Reagan asked us instead to rise to a Skutnik Moment.

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President Ronald Reagan took the oath of office thirty years on the West Front of the Capitol thirty years ago today. Reagan wanted his Inauguration to symbolize a break with the past. This most outspokenly conservative president believed that the journey West had been the most significant part of our national character. He had himself taken New York editor Horace Greeley’s advice: Go West, Young Man.

As he looked out on that fine, clear afternoon, he spoke of the scene before him:

This is the first time in history that this ceremony has been held… on this West Front of the Capitol. Standing here, one faces a magnificent vista, opening up on this city’s special beauty and history. At the end of this open mall are those shrines to the giants on whose shoulders we stand.

Directly in front of me, the monument to a monumental man: George Washington, Father of our country. A man of humility who came to greatness reluctantly. He led America out of revolutionary victory into infant nationhood. Off to one side, the stately memorial to Thomas Jefferson. The Declaration of Independence flames with his eloquence.

And then beyond the Reflecting Pool the dignified columns of the Lincoln Memorial. Whoever would understand in his heart the meaning of America will find it in the life of Abraham Lincoln.

Unlike today’s leaders, Reagan was in no doubt about American exceptionalism. He thought an overweening government threatened America’s exceptionalism. He said so plainly:

Now, so there will be no misunderstanding, it is not my intention to do away with government. It is, rather, to make it work — work with us, not over us; to stand by our side, not ride on our back. Government can and must provide opportunity, not smother it; foster productivity, not stifle it.

If we look to the answer as to why, for so many years, we achieved so much, prospered as no other people on Earth, it was because here, in this land, we unleashed the energy and individual genius of man to a greater extent than has ever been done before.

Reagan went to Hollywood as a young man. There, he built a career and a family and a modest family fortune. He came to understand that under liberal tax laws, it made no sense to work harder, to make that extra movie, or host that extra few TV programs if Washington was going to claim all that income in higher taxes.

Liberal Speaker of the House Tip O’Neill thought Reagan terribly selfish for his opposition to higher marginal tax rates. And Tip thought he was about to unleash a “decade of greed” upon the country. Reagan thought a man could be counted as truly liberal who gave away his own money, not if he voted to have the government take away his neighbor’s money. Reagan was extremely generous with his own money. In the decade of the 1980s, under his leadership, we saw an unprecedented avalanche of private charitable giving.

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I’m pro-life because Thomas Jefferson was. What’s that, you say? Jefferson never spoke about abortion. Of course not. Surgical abortion was so dangerous prior until about 1800 that it killed the mother as well as the unborn child. But Jefferson was assuredly pro-life.

“The care of human life and happiness is the first and only legitimate object of good government,” he wrote when he was president. They had a balanced budget then, because the president had his priorities straight. In 1774, young Jefferson had written “the god who gave us life gave us liberty at the same time.” That was his ringing phrase in the Summary View of the Rights of British America. God gives us life; God gives us liberty. Pretty clear. Later, of course, Jefferson would give us his best lines: “…all men are created equal, they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” Under the misrule of Roe v. Wade, 52 million Americans have been denied their inalienable right to life. It is, as it has been from the beginning, wholly illegitimate. Jefferson thought there should be more Americans, not fewer. When he purchased the Louisiana Territory, he said there would be room enough on those fruited plains for Americans to the hundredth generation.

I’m pro-life because Benjamin Franklin was. Well, if you were the tenth son of your father, you’d probably be pro-life, too. Franklin, we know, was not always chaste. He had a child out of wedlock. And he immediately brought him into the family circle, where he raised his son as his own. When that son also had a son out of wedlock, Benjamin loved and cherished this grandson and kept him close to his heart. I don’t recommend this as a way of enlarging a family, but it is surely a pro-life sentiment to love and guide your flesh and blood. Franklin, too, welcomed more Americans. In 1762, before we were even a nation, he calculated what our population might be one hundred twenty years thence.

He predicted that America would be home to 162 million people in 1882. The U.S. Census of 1880 showed Old Ben to have been off by less than one percent! When Dr. Franklin served in Paris, he rode out in his carriage to see the first manned ascent in a hot-air balloon. Fashionable French women fainted to see the balloon rise high above Versailles. (Well, maybe it was those tight corsets or those heavy hairpieces.) Four hundred thousand Frenchmen had come out to see the great event. Someone in the crowd was skeptical, however. They asked Dr. Franklin of what practical use the manned balloon was. With a twinkle in his eye, the most practical man in the world replied: “Of what practical use is a newborn baby?” Now, that’s pro-life!

I’m pro-life because George Washington was. He spoke often of his hopes for America, for millions yet unborn. He noted, in words that were not included in his First Inaugural, but which revealed his heart, that he and Martha had not been blessed with children.

One of Washington’s successors seems to think of children—at least those born out of wedlock as Franklin’s son and grandson were—as “punishments.” Washington knew that children are a blessing from the Lord, and said so. Washington looked West, as Jefferson did, so that America could have room to expand, room to become “the haven for the oppressed of many lands.” No one comes to America to do away with their unborn children.

In signing the Constitution, Washington joined with the childless James Madison in seeking “the blessings of liberty for ourselves and our posterity.” Now, just who might these men have been thinking about if they did not have children of their own? Us. They thought of us as their posterity. Pro-lifers care about our posterity. We welcome every child in life and work to see them protected in law.

I’m pro-life because Lincoln was. He rejoiced that America’s population was growing—even in the dreadful days of civil war and slaughter—Lincoln welcomed the swelling chorus of the Union. He had put the slavery issue in this context: “Nothing stamped in the divine image was sent into the world to be trod upon.” FRC welcomed President Obama to Washington with those words and this most civil and respectful question: Are not unborn children so stamped?

I’m pro-life because Ronald Reagan, my great chief, was pro-life. In fact, Reagan was the first president to use the term pro-life. He wasn’t just anti-abortion, as the liberal media constantly said. He understood that being pro-life inspired us to oppose abortion and euthanasia—as well as standing up to an evil empire that killed to keep itself in power.

It was Reagan who said “abortion is a great wound in the soul of America.”

And, yes, I’m pro-life because, more than any of these, Jesus is pro-life: “I came that they might have life and have it abundantly.” His Word tells us “therefore choose life.”

Do we need a better reason?

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“If we forget what we did, we will forget who we are.” So said President Reagan in his Farewell Address to the Nation in 1989. That year would see the collapse of the evil empire that Reagan fought all his adult life. When confronted by the fact that the Catholic Church would surely oppose his occupation and rule over Poland, Soviet dictator Joe Stalin had cynically asked: “How many divisions has the Pope?” In 1989, the world found out how many divisions the Pope had. Millions of Poles cried out “We want God.” Poland became the fulcrum for Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, and the Polish Pope John Paul II to move the world.

The good folks in Bedford, Virginia, are trying desperately to make a go of their troubled D-Day Memorial. They have just put up a statue to Josef Stalin. They claim, defensively, that they are merely trying to complete a quartet of Second World War “leaders” which includes Franklin D. Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, and Charles de Gaulle.

Minus the frosty Frenchman, the Big Three did meet–at Tehran, at Yalta–to map out grand strategy for the allied victory against Hitler. The Anglo-American allies worried all the while they dealt with dictator Stalin that he might change sides once again and team up with Hitler. Stranger things had happened. It was Stalin’s 1939 Nazi-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact, after all, that allowed Hitler to launch the Second World War just weeks after the pact signatures had dried. It was at that time that the young Karol Wojtyla, the future Pope John Paul II, fleeing eastward with his ailing father, would turn back to live under the Nazi occupation rather than risk life under the Soviets. Stalin’s NKVD henchmen captured some 22,000 Polish army officers and shot them, each one with a single bullet to the back of his skull, and buried their bodies in the Katyn Forest.

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My good friend Tom McClusky had the wit and the heart to remind us all of Ronald Reagan’s speech on the occasion of the Challenger disaster in 1986. Tom circulated the video clip of Reagan speaking to the nation that very night.

The morning had been clear and cold–in Washington as it was in Florida. I was working at the U.S. Department of Education then. We were all watching on TV as the rocket launched the Space Shuttle into the skies over Cape Kennedy. We were more interested in this flight than in many shuttle flights because a teacher was on board. In fact, we had seen Krista McAuliffe and her fellow astronauts in the elevators of F.O.B. 6–our department’s office building. That’s because NASA occupied the top three floors of our building.

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This week marks the 21^st anniversary of President Reagan’s Farewell Address to the Nation. It’s especially appropriate to recall it today, for the wisdom he shared, for the good feeling he evoked. There are many parts to the address I could recommend. I especially liked the part where he warned about a loss of national memory. He wanted Americans to remember their history. “If we forget what we did, we will forget who we are.”

One part of that January 11, 1989 address jumps out at us—or should. That decade began with great tension between the U.S. and the Soviet Union. Reagan was heavily criticized. Liberals feared he would get us into a war. They feared World War III. They didn’t want him to take tough action against the Soviets and their aggression. They nearly wilted when he called the Soviet Union “an evil empire.” Yet, at the end of the decade, the Cold War was over. The tensions had eased. And everyone breathed a great sigh of relief. President Reagan had a warning here too:

We must keep up our guard, but we must also continue to work together to lessen and eliminate tension and mistrust. My view is that President Gorbachev is different from previous Soviet leaders. I think he knows some of the things wrong with his society and is trying to fix them. We wish him well. And we’ll continue to work to make sure that the Soviet Union that eventually emerges from this process is a less threatening one.

What it all boils down to is this. I want the new closeness to continue. And it will, as long as we make it clear that we will continue to act in a certain way as long as they continue to act in a helpful manner. If and when they don’t, at first pull your punches. If they persist, pull the plug. It’s still trust but verify. It’s still play, but cut the cards. It’s still watch closely. And don’t be afraid to see what you see.

Don’t be afraid to see what you see. How many times have we recently heard people from the current administration referring to Abdulmutallab as the “suspect,” or the “accused.” They say he “allegedly” tried to bomb the incoming Northwest Flight 253 on its final approach to Detroit.

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Ronald Reagan brought two things to Washington that were very much out of fashion, I enjoy telling student interns at Family Research Council: brown suits and freedom for a hundred million people in Eastern Europe. When Reagan swept into office in a landslide in 1980, the reigning view of Washington’s foreign policy elites toward Eastern Europe was that expressed in the Sonnenfeldt Doctrine. State Department Counselor Helmut Sonnenfeldt in the 1970s was a disciple of Henry Kissinger. TIME Magazine explained Sonnefeldt’s ideas:

He was quoted as saying that U.S. policy in Eastern Europe should “strive for an evolution that makes the relationship between the Eastern Europeans and the Soviet Union an organic one.” The use of the word organic seemed to imply that he was advocating that the Soviet Union and its satellites should form one whole—a position calculated to infuriate not only G.O.P. conservatives but also ethnic groups with roots in Eastern Europe.

In simple American English, the U.S. policy toward Eastern Europe should not rock the boat.

Ronald Reagan’s view could not be further from those espoused by the Kissingers, Sonnenfeldts, and the foreign policy establishments of both political parties. Reagan had told Richard Allen, who would one day serve in the White House as Reagan’s National Security Adviser, that his idea of East-West relations was simple: We win. They lose.

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In Ronald Reagan’s 1989 farewell speech he inspired the youth in America to dream of change and pursue active leadership for the good of America.  “All great change in America begins at the dinner table,” Reagan told America. And he was right.

Yet as a college student, I am aware of how many of my contemporaries across this nation see little reason to devout themselves in the world of politics.  Millions of college students around the country would rather stay in their comfortable safe havens of youthful apathy then dare to engage the complex political world surrounding them.

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