The Great Souled Man

Today is the 93rd birthday of the greatest American of the 20th century: Ronald Reagan. More than any other American of our day, he embodied the moral ideal personified by Aristotle as the man of Megalopsychia, the Great-Souled Man

The Great-Souled Man had a character of such integrity, inspiration, and achievement in the real world that his life expressed, for Aristotle, the Kalon, Moral Beauty.

Five years ago, I wrote the following tribute to this extraordinary man. It will be published in To The Point on every February 6th from now on.

THE GREATEST
A Tribute to Ronald Reagan
February 1999

This coming Sunday, February 6th, will be the 88th birthday of the greatest president of the 20th century: Ronald Reagan.

That Reagan’s achievements far exceed those of any president since Washington and Jefferson will unquestionably be the judgment of future historians. They will recognize that America was at the bottom of the barrel by 1980, after Vietnam, Watergate, and Jimmy Carter.

We were losing the Cold War. The Soviets had added 14 countries to their empire in the previous decade, were targeting Mexico via Castro and the Sandinistas (their embassy in Mexico City was the largest Soviet embassy in the world), while our hostages were helplessly imprisoned in Iran.

Defeatism and declinism dominated American thinking. Stagflation, the Rust Belt, 21% interest rates, 27% inflation, 11% unemployment, and stock prices falling through the basement. Carter complained of a “malaise” in America, never comprehending that depressed and dejected Americans elected a pathetic little nebbish like him as an expression of malaise, as a projection of their crushed self-image.

Ronald Reagan changed all that. He gave Americans their pride and confidence in their country back to them. He crushed inflation along with left-wing Keynesian economics, and launched the longest economic expansion in US history. Starting in 1982, the Reagan Boom is now in its 18th year — with only a short 8-month shallow interregnum caused by the oil-price spike following Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait in August 1990.

At the same time he was saving the US economy, Reagan was saving world freedom. He initiated a comprehensive strategy to maximize the Soviet Union’s weaknesses and vulnerabilities, culminating in the fall of the Berlin Wall, the disintegration of the Soviet Union itself, America’s complete victory in the Cold War, and her emerging as the world’s sole uncontested superpower.

And on top of all of that, he was an extraordinarily loveable, likeable, good and decent human being, a man whom Aristotle would have said possessed a “great soul.” Take the time this Sunday to reflect on the achievements of Ronald Reagan, on how much you and all Americans owe him a debt of thankfulness and gratitude.

America was truly blessed to have a man such as him to come to her rescue, and to raise her from despairing depths to the pinnacle of historic success we all stand upon today.