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06/05/2004: "RIP Ronald Reagan"

During his presidency, I was not a Reagan fan. Never voted for him. Thought of him as an "amiable dunce," as someone once called him. I remember being genuinely worried about the future of the world when he was elected in 1980. He was no Carteresque policy wonk, but as I look back on it now, I'm thankful that Reagan was president in the 1980s. His economic policies brought short-term misery to millions, but laid the foundation for over twenty years of unparalleled prosperity, not only in the United States, but in many other places around the world. He stood for optimism about the future, and about America, when many doubted that our way of life had much if any future.

Above all, he understood freedom, and he understood tyranny, and he understood what was necessary for the former to triumph and the latter to be taken down. As the grandson of Polish and Lithuanian immigrants, I will always be grateful that Reagan, more than any other president since 1917, stood up to Soviet totalitarianism, called it what it truly was (the "evil empire"), and took steps to bring about its demise. With Pope John Paul II and Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Reagan helped the people of Eastern Europe bring about a velvet revolution that brought down an empire without a shot being fired. I can think of no greater legacy than that.

Requiescat in pace.