This past week, a great American President, to use some of his own words,  “slipped the surly bonds of earth” and passed into eternity. As I watched the news reports and different people recalling their most memorable encounters with President Reagan, my awareness of his impact on America, and the world, was raised to a new level. It is as if, in his death, our nation got its first unbiased look at this man, as the media reports (for the most part) gave him the credit he deserved without the spin of the radical left. 

President Reagan held an unshakable conviction that threats to our freedom, whether it was Marxist communism or Islamic terrorism, must be confronted with strength and resisted with firm resolve. He wasn’t afraid to call it what it is?evil?and he understood that evil cannot be appeased or dealt with by concession. 

Ronald Reagan was also a champion for the unborn. He went beyond simply taking the correct political stance on abortion. He did something that was unheard of for a sitting president when he wrote a book entitled, Abortion and the Conscience of a Nation. 

Without a doubt, one of President Reagan’s greatest accomplishments was winning the Cold War. Ironically however, though communism has crumbled in many countries, we are still fighting the battle against Marxism, primarily right here in our own nation! Neo-Marxism is the dominant perspective being taught on many American university campuses. Surveys we have done at the University of Iowa indicate that the vast majority of students reason from a socialist worldview. There are an estimated 10,000 Marxist professors in America’s campuses. Some estimate that Marxists make up 90% of the faculty in some Midwestern universities.1  The abortion battle continues as well, as out-of-control judges continue to legislate from the bench. 

However, as our nation remembers President Reagan, his values, his decency, his convictions, the things he believed in and what he worked for, Ronald Reagan, in death, has imparted another full measure of life to our nation. May our resolve be bolstered one more time by this great man as we fight off the evils of terrorism, Marxism, and the assault against all that is moral and decent. May his legacy be preserved in our minds and in the conscience of our nation. 

In closing, I have to say that I am unusually touched as I think of Ronald Reagan. I am not ashamed to say that I write this sentence with a tear running down my cheek. I feel as though I have lost a grandfather?and indeed, as a nation, we have.