OT: Ronald Reagan Dies

[BST]

Folks,

This is truly a sad day for me -- the Gipper is gone. He represented and communicated those ideals which made me proud to be American and I was honored to be a citizen, under his watch.


For ABC's story about his death:

http://abcnews.go.com/sections/SciTech/US/reaganobit040605-1.html


Rest in Peace, "Dutch"

:salute: :salute: :salute:

[julix]

I just saw that too............it was on msn home page.




Julix

[Eric Paddon]

Godspeed, Mr. President, and thank you for what you gave to our country and to the world.

[braxiss]

:salute: :salute: :salute: :salute: :salute: :salute:

[Dawg]

Truly a piece of history is gone; a grand story that ended sadly.

Rest in peace, Mr. President.

I am
Dawg
:warrior:

[amberstar]

Hail to the Cheif.......you will be missed :salute:

God speed, may you rest in peace..........and may God also be with your loved ones during this difficult time.

[jewels]

Godspeed, Mr. President, and now that you've slipped the surly bonds of earth and touched the face of God for yourself, I'm sure He has brought your mind the wholeness it missed these past many years. We'll be keeping Nancy and your kids in prayer--but we know that where you are now is a finer, better place. At last there is rest for a true leader that was in the right place at the right time and not afraid to do the tasks at hand.

[ojai22]

:salute:



:warrior:

[bsg1fan1975]

Rest in Peace Mr. President, the world has lost a true icon and a great leader. I was glad to see the Cold War end under his guidance.

[emerita]

Same here. I grew up with his movies and voted for him for president........

[bsg1fan1975]

at least he showed that America stood up to bullies!

[LadyImmortal]

God Bless you, Mr. President.

You will be missed!

--Rhonda

[unowhoandwhy]

He came a long way: from "Bedtime With Bonzo" to helping end the Cold War. :salute: I wasn't old enough to vote for him, but he struck me as a good and decent man. A life that is long and well-lived deserves another :salute: :salute: :salute: :salute: :salute: :salute: :salute: :salute: :salute: :salute: :salute: :salute: :salute:

Requiescat in pace, Mr. President.

[bsg1fan1975]

watched the procession from the funeral home to the library on tv and I was very moved. Almost cried as I know someday that it will be me going through that.

[Laura]

watched the procession from the funeral home to the library on tv and I was very moved. Almost cried as I know someday that it will be me going through that.
All of us are going there some day . . .

[unowhoandwhy]

watched the procession from the funeral home to the library on tv and I was very moved. Almost cried as I know someday that it will be me going through that.

As you are getting married this weekend I am confident that it will be someday many years in the future, surrounded by children, grandchildren and great grandchildren.

[Eric Paddon]

Ronald Reagan was a giant among leaders of the last half-century, whose chief legacy that trumps all others is that he won the Cold War and ended a period of 45 years that all of us who came of age as late as the early 1980s, thought would be the norm for our lives well into the 21st Century, in which we would constantly live with the state of tension and the idea that nuclear war could happen in our lifetimes or at some point before it was all over.

The genius of Reagan is that he dared to suggest something that all the so-called intellects of both Left and Right refused to consider. The idea that the Cold War could be won, and that communism, not America, represented the side in inevitable decline and decay. The Left saw communism as the wave of the future and something that would always be able to somehow more instinctively appeal to the rest of the world, and that the Soviet Union had actually come up with something workable. Pessimists of the Right tended to focus too much on Whittaker Chambers' dour warning that when he broke with Communism, he "feared he was leaving the winning side for the losing one." They supported Reagan's peace through strength intiatives not because they believed that communism's demise was being accelerated in the process, but because they saw it as the best kind of holding action that could be done in a permanent state of Cold War that would be around forever.

But in 1989-91, we saw all of Reagan's instincts vindicated, and communism went into the ash heap of history, just as he had dared to predict in 1982, at a time when his words were dismissed and his policies were falsely portrayed as ones that would accelerate us into nuclear war.

Scholars of all sides are now becoming more and more forced to acknowledge that Reagan was the key player in setting these events in motion. In the past they tried to sidestep the matter by giving all credit to Mikhail Gorbachev, but Gorbachev's policy actions and decisions were keyed directly in response to Reagan's policies and the tough bargaining positions that Reagan took (especially when Reagan refused to abandon SDI at Rekyevik). Some suggested that Reagan was not a deep thinker on these matters and merely acted as a front for the ideas of top advisers. But the emergence of Reagan's handwritten radio commentaries from the late 1970s has shattered this old mythology of Reagan as someone who only read other people's scripts as President, and what has now emerged instead is the greatest committment to principled beliefs of any leader of the post-WWII period.

It was Reagan's optimism, and his faith in the simple greatness of America and her place in the world that enabled this nation to move out of its darkest period in the history of the Cold War experience and turn things around in dramatic fashion that helped win the Cold War. The domestic legacy can be debated with a bit more vigor between those of us on the Left and the Right, but the foreign policy legacy is one that now has passed into the realm of what should be consensus on all sides.

Even the senior Senator from Massachusetts is forced to admit this.

"He will be honored as the president who won the Cold War."

[bsg1fan1975]

I had a chance yesterday to pop over to the webiste for his presidential library and sign the condolence book.

I know that someday I am going to be in Nancy's shoes as my sweety is part of the military and will want a military burial.

[Eric Paddon]

Today's service in the National Cathedral provided a fitting a goodbye to President Reagan. Margaret Thatcher's eulogy summed his accomplishments up best.

[BST]

...found a nice website with loads of information about Ronald Reagan:

http://reagan2020.com


:thumbsup:

[shiningstar]

...found a nice website with loads of information about Ronald Reagan:

http://reagan2020.com


:thumbsup:

Thanks for posting the site Bst!

I really appreciate it!