Tom Feeney: “for all Americans, Ronald Reagan was a happy warrior who fought all of his life for freedom with a gracefulness and a…”

“for all Americans, Ronald Reagan was a happy warrior who fought all of his life for freedom with a gracefulness and a confidence that inspired all of America. But for American contemporary conservatives like myself, Ronald Reagan was more than that. He was our Plato, laying the philosophical groundwork for limited government, freedom, and self-responsibility. He was our Moses. After Lincoln, republicanism had been adrift in fighting our way out of a desert filled with statist tendencies and the march towards bigger government and welfare dependency, something Frederick Hayek described as 'The Road to Serfdom.' Reagan reminded conservatives that America had a great rendezvous with destiny ahead. Reagan was our Washington, the first contemporary President to consistently lay out conservative principles and steadfastly, calmly, and timely lead us during threats to freedom from big government and taxation at home, threats from tyrannical hegemony from abroad, to secure what our first President called the 'sacred fire of liberty.' Finally, Ronald Reagan was a Churchill, warning of external threats not only to our homeland's freedom but of gathering storms building globally which endangered the aspirations of freedom fighters across the globe. And like Churchill, he then led us and led the free world in refusing to appease or coexist with totalitarian threats but instead insisting, like King Henry at Agincourt, that we wade into the enemy and win.”