25 Years of Reaganism

James Taranto:

The assassination of John F. Kennedy on Nov. 22, 1963, marked the end of an American political era: the age of confident liberalism. Lyndon B. Johnson carried forward JFK's legislative legacy, cutting taxes and pushing through landmark civil rights laws. But LBJ's overambitious wars in Vietnam and on poverty were damaging to America and shattering for liberalism. The late 1960s and the 1970s saw skyrocketing crime and illegitimacy, American humiliation in Vietnam, and the tragedy of Watergate.

Finally, with the presidency of Jimmy Carter, the country hit rock bottom: malaise, gas lines, the Soviets in Afghanistan, the invasion of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran. Blessedly, 25 years ago today, it came to an end with the election of Ronald Reagan and the dawn of the age of confident conservatism. The ensuing two decades saw unprecedented economic growth, victory in the Cold War, and a gradual diminution of the timidity about employing U.S. military force overseas that is known as the "Vietnam syndrome." By the mid-1990s, a Democratic president was even undoing the worst excesses of LBJ's Great Society.

...History will reveal itself in due course, but for today let us remember how, on Nov. 4, 1980, America began to reverse its decline by electing a man who shared the country's faith in itself.

Well put.

25 years ago today, the country changed for the better in a multitude of ways. We became confident in democracy again, we again realized that military power can be used for good and as a country, we beat the Soviet Union into submission, which in turn ended a government whose ideologues murdered tens of millions.

Was Reagan perfect? Of course not, no president is. The few stains on his legacy include the sham that is the war on drugs.

He was, however, a man who made Americans proud to be Americans. For that he deserves our everlasting gratitude.