The President's Message

Dear Colleagues,

Newly inaugurated President Reagan’s speech to CPAC in March 1981 is often cited as his quintessential intellectually-oriented address.

Ronald Reagan hailed the influence of Whittaker Chambers, James Burnham, Russell Kirk, Friedrich Hayek, Henry Hazlitt, Milton Friedman, Ludwig von Mises, and Frank Meyer as intellectual leaders “who shaped so much of our thoughts.” No other speech by President Reagan cited as many writers or gave such prominence to intellectuals as the CPAC speech.

It was a triumphant speech in some ways, and it is the inspiration of the “Road to Freedom” seminar series we sponsor at the Reagan Ranch Center.

The President was eloquent in highlighting the Conservative Movement’s intellectual roots. Yet, this was a call-to-action address, not just a reminder of our first principles.

The President ended his address with the words we inscribed on Freedom Wall at his beloved Rancho del Cielo. The President said, “[C]onservatives, our time is now. Our moment has arrived. We stand together shoulder to shoulder in the thickest of the fight. If we carry the day and turn the tide, we can hope that as long as men speak of freedom and those who have protected it, they will remember us, and they will say, ‘Here were the brave and here their place of honor.’”

Fortunately, there were leaders who answered the President’s call. Ronald Reagan witnessed the activism he called for and that he was so willing to lead.

Soon, Lech Walesa climbed over a fence in a distant “Lenin” shipyard as a symbolic act of defiance against an overreaching, totalitarian state. Courageous men, including Vaclav Havel, Mart Laar, Vytautas Landsbergis, and Adolfo Calero, stepped forward to challenge socialist and communist regimes in their homelands. Other leaders championed freedom within their constituencies including Margaret Thatcher, Brian Mulroney, and John Paul II.

Phil Gramm left the Democrat Party to promote tax reduction alongside Jack Kemp and Bill Roth. Together with President Reagan, they cut the top federal tax rates from 70 to 28 percent and helped launch the longest peacetime prosperity in American history.

Thirteen years later, President Reagan generously told Young America’s Foundation, “Together we accomplished much of what has come to be known as the Reagan Revolution…I know Young America’s Foundation was active in those efforts, and I congratulate you on your vigilance.”

As Young America’s Foundation celebrates our own 40th anniversary, we watch as a new administration seeks to impose a far different agenda in Washington. Let us recall a few other points Ronald Reagan made in that historic speech.

He warned that reform “will not be achieved by those who set people against people, class against class.” Reagan knew the right ideas were insufficient.

President Reagan cautioned, “[W]e must understand there’s much work before us: to gain control again of government, to reward personal initiative and risk-taking in the marketplace, to revitalize our system of federalism, to strengthen the private institutions that make up the independent sector of our society, and to make our own spiritual affirmation in the face of those who would deny man has a place before God. Not easy tasks perhaps.”

Are these not the same tasks we face today? Freedom is in danger. And freedom will not be won just because Americans know its principles. Those principles must be defended by well-informed activists.

As we begin our second 40 years, I call upon our student leaders to increase their activism, our supporters to renew their sacrifices, and our leadership to act boldly. We must stand shoulder to shoulder in the thickest of this fight when our current President is openly hostile to freedom’s principles. We pray this time of challenge may be brief. If we are active, if we all do what we are able, then God willing, it will be so!

Sincerely,

Ron Robinson
President