In the heated era of 2019, as leftist globalists take on President Trump’s proud assertion of nationalism, a hallowed voice form the past cries out for remembrance.
Thirty years ago today, Ronald Reagan addressed the nation for the last time as president. It was his 34th speech from the Oval Office, and he gave his final assessment on his two terms. Reagan reflected that the two achievements for which he was proudest were his economic recovery — which had created close to 20 million new jobs — and the recovery of America’s morale. America once again was respected in the world, and was once again looked to for leadership.
In striking similarity to the achievements of Trump in our era, in 1989 Reagan looked back upon his own Reagan Revolution; his lowering of taxes which then had led to the longest peacetime economic expansion in the nation’s history; his buildup of America’s armed forces, which resulted in agreements with the Soviets to reduce their stockpiles of nuclear weapons; his wariness and skepticism — to “trust but verify” those changes in communism; his continued push to shrink big government and, as a result, to increase individual freedom.
But Reagan then looked ahead to the world which he had bequeathed to the nation’s children and grandchildren. Reagan saw that no longer were America’s youth being taught what America was nor what she represented in the long history of the world. Reagan noted that when he was young, the nation’s youth “were taught, very directly, what it means to be an American. And we absorbed, almost in the air, a love of country and an appreciation of its institutions.” Our youth learned those lessons from family, school, and popular culture.
Reagan looked to the future and was very concerned that this love of country was not being handed down to the next generations. Reagan saw that “parents aren’t sure that an unambivalent appreciation of America is the right thing to teach modern children.” And for those in charge of media and popular culture, “well-grounded patriotism is no longer in style.”
Reagan urged parents and teachers that “we’ve got to teach history based not on what’s in fashion but what’s important … If we forget what we did, we won’t know who we are. I’m warning of an eradication of the American memory that could result, ultimately, in an erosion of the American spirit.”
He ended this section of his last speech by pushing for more attention to teaching American history and civics, which Reagan called an “informed patriotism.”
Many studies have demonstrated the shocking ignorance of students and citizens about why America was founded, its ideals, institutions, history, and even its geography. It would be wise for this next generation of our nation’s leaders, and mothers and fathers and grandparents, to heed the prescient warnings of Ronald Reagan and to inject a much-needed course in civics and American history to our school-age children, both at school and around the dinner table at home.
Making our youth into better American citizens would make Ronald Reagan, looking down from above with continued pride upon his cherished city upon the hill, very happy. Very likely, Trump and at least a few of the new Democrats in Washington D.C. could come together around this idea.
Perhaps Trump would consider making this proposal at his State of the Union address on Jan. 29. Ronald Reagan would heartily approve.
Historian Gene Kopelson is the author of Reagan’s 1968 Dress Rehearsal: Ike, RFK, and Reagan’s Emergence as a World Statesman.
