Rising from among the ranks of Hollywood liberals to become the quintissential conservative President, Ronald Reagan is a study in contrasts.  As legendary as his life and presidency have become, it is good to consider again the character and message of this man.

Much of the road to his conservatism came from his life experience.  Starting with his leadership in the Hollywood union wars as head of the Screen Actors Guild where he became quite disturbed by Communist tactics, he further learned a conservative viewpoint by his work with G.E.  As their Goodwill Ambassador, he gave some 9,000 plus speeches over a decade of time to audiences across the U.S.  The feedback from these speeches became what he referred to as, “my post-Graduate course in Political Science.”

By 1962 he had become an active Republican and rose to national attention in politics when he gave a speech entitled, “A Time for Choosing” in support of Republican hopeful Barry Goldwater.  After that speech, he served two terms as governor of California before making a bid for President.  He won easily in the 1980 election and won re-election four years later.

Known as a great orator, he produced many memorable speeches and moments during his presidency, including his radio speech right after the Challenger explosion, his powerful speech at the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin where he asked, yea commanded, “Mr. Gorbachev, tear this wall down,” and many other instances where he brought all his talent and abilities to bear on bringing the nation to a place of celebrating and believing in personal freedom and responsibility.

During his presidency, he rallied the country to renewed confidence after the Iran hostage fiasco, brought a winning mixture of wit and optimism to the White House, showed that conservativism could work in practice, almost single handedly brought down Soviet communism, and left us many great words as “Freedom’s Bard.”