“Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We don’t get it passed on to us in the bloodstream. We have to fight for it and defend it, then pass it on to the next generation to do the same.”
These words spoken by Ronald Reagan decades ago are just as relevant today as they were the day he spoke them. And the challenges we face in America are just as real now as they were before our 40th president took office.
I was a kid in the late 1970s, but I still remember the yellow ribbon around the tree in front of our home. It was there during the 444 days Americans were held hostage in Iran. One of them, Kevin Hermening, was a young Marine from Oak Creek, Wisconsin. It made the hostage crisis even more real for me and the other kids in my neighborhood.
America was in Jimmy Carter’s “malaise” at the time. Stagflation hit the country, with the horrible combination of high inflation and slow economic growth. Gas, food, and housing prices were rising during the late 1970s. In many ways, it sounds very much like Joe Biden’s America. It was depressing.
Thankfully, Reagan came along with a simple plan: lower taxes, limited government, and a strong national defense. He believed in the American people. He unleashed our sense of optimism and patriotism again.
In his first year, President Reagan signed the largest tax cut in American history. Before that, the top marginal tax rates allowed the federal government to take 7 of every 10 dollars earned by an individual. The impact of these tax cuts, and the ones that followed in 1986, was dramatic. The growth in the economy averaged more than 4.5% each year during the 1980s. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, nearly 19 million new jobs were created during that time.
Reagan also reined in government. His reductions in federal programs, along with help from Chairman Paul Volcker at the Federal Reserve, helped get inflation under control, slowing the increase in prices for food, fuel, and housing.
Reagan’s Peace through Strength approach was also a success. He rebuilt our military power and stood up to the old Soviet Union. His strategy was simple: “We win, they lose.” And it worked. Former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates recently said that he worries that leaders in Russia and China are more aggressive because they believe that the U.S. is weak. Perhaps the current president is weak, but the nation and its people are still strong. We just need someone in the White House who is up to the job.
Specifically, we need an optimistic vision again. After two years of the pandemic, we must have leaders who put their faith in the American people instead of the federal government. Reagan spoke of our beloved nation as a shining city upon a hill. We need that kind of a positive approach again.
Radicals on the left want to divide us and cancel us. When they disagree, they use names like racist, sexist, and neanderthal. Our message is simple: like Reagan, we love America. We do not care if you are young or old, black or white, rich or poor. We don’t care if you were born here or legally came here from somewhere else. We want everyone to have the same freedoms and opportunities we inherited from past generations.
Reagan helped us restore our American spirit years ago by making the case for common-sense conservative reforms that benefit our fellow citizens. We need that kind of leadership now more than ever.
Scott Walker was the 45th governor of Wisconsin. He currently serves as the president of Young America’s Foundation.
