And say thank god for cspan. I echoes that. There is not many sources out there as objective as cspan. They just put it out there, unedited, no commentary, let it speak for itself and there are so many talks like this the golan all around the country, thousands of times a year. There could just be a camera here to capture this and record and broadcast it and only cspan does that so much appreciated. My topic today, what is a reagan conservative . It is based on my new book 11 principles of a reagan conservative, and this question, what is a reagan conservative . If you do a Google Search right now or last time i did a Google Search on the words reagan conservative, came up with 30 million hits. Different people trying to define it and what it means and the lot of that is because so Many Republican candidates, statewide, local races, nationwide, president ial candidates, they will say over and over again when asked what they believe i am a reagan conservative. But what is that . In many cases they say this not so much because maybe they even necessarily totally know what reagan conservative is but many of them want to emulate his political sense, reagans political appeal. Here was a man in 1980 who won 44 out of 50 states against an incumbent president , 44 out of 50 states and one of the reasons jimmy carter does so much is this lingering sense of rejection he must have. It is a good heart. I dont want to be little flat but that was think about that. For an incumbent president to lose 44 out of 50 states. In 1984 reagan was reelected by winning 49 of 50 states. The only state he didnt win was minnesota, which was the home state of his challenger, walter mondale. So reagan twice won states that republicans today could only dream of winning. Won california twice, won new jersey twice, won massachusetts twice. If you were laughing thinking this is ridiculous, it could never happen again, my home state of pennsylvania he won twice. The second election he won the alert durrell college by a vote of 52513. So there is no need to recount florida and in that race. The combined Electoral College margin in sees two president ial races was 1,01462. What republican wouldnt want to be like reagan in that sense . If you think about it Ronald Reagan, his presidency, not just that he got elected, when he left he left office with the highest president ial Approval Ratings of any president since eisenhower, the highest gallup approval of any since eisenhower and if you go before reagan, he replaces a president who fails to get reelected, jimmy carter. Prior to jimmy carter was gerald ford and never won a president ial election. Prior to that year Richard Nixon resigned in disgrace, prior to that lbj whose presidency went so bad he declined to pursue his partys nomination for president , lbj replaced a president who was killed in office. If you go back before eisenhower, harry truman talked about the presidency, like the great white jail. A prisoner of the presidency. Truman has highest disapproval rating of any president basically until george w. Bush. Go back to the 20s, Woodrow Wilsons presidency, two term end in despair, two or three strokes in the final 18 to 24 months of his presidency. He will go after reagan. George h. W. Bush, elected 1988 largely because as anybody over 30 will remember largely because it was the best way to get a third term of reagan. He won one term, that was the. He lost in 1992 to bill clinton. Clinton wins with 43 of the vote roughly because of the thirdparty candidacy of who . Ross perot. Clinton in 96 didnt get over 50 of the vote. 2000, george w. Bush gets in without even winning a majority of votes and 2004, the second bush term, george bush leaves office, around 2007 at the worst gallup approval numbers of any president since harry truman. Barack obama wins in 2008. 2012, obama is the first president in history, though he was the first democrat i believe since lbj to get 50 of the vote. In 2012 he was elected, the first president to do this, elected with less popular vote and elect oral College Votes in his reelection. Reagan won 49 out of 50 states in his reelection, obama won 26. A bare majority. If you look at a map of counties under reagan it is a sea of red. Under obama it was still a sea of red. If you look at counties. Speaking of obama, there was a poll done in 2013 after the 2013 after the second inaugural which asked americans if Ronald Reagan were to run today against barack obama, who would you vote for . They said reagan by 58 over obama. That is right after obamas reelection in 2013. How was obama elected . Principally the use of votes. The same poll that asked people ages 1834 who would you vote for, reagan or obama, they picked reagan. They took reagan. Unlike gallup does up president s day poll, reagan placed first among the American Public whos your favorite president . Reagan got it 2001, 2005, 2011, 2012. Greg unusually finishes in the top three. Typically beat lincoln. Imagines that. In new june of 2005 there was a poll done by a o l and time warner. A o l online which surveyed americans and didnt give them a choice, put in whatever name they wanted. Who is the greatest american of all time. Not the greatest president , who is the greatest american of all time. 2. 4 Million People responded with any status far and away representative sample. Maybe 500 people to do this polling and reagan won greatest american of all time. What republican wouldnt want to be like reagan . Who would aspire to that success . You now have republican groups all over the county, state groups, they have been holding these annual lincoln day dinners for years, changing the names of many of those to reagan day dinners because the lincoln day dinners were in february which is the month of president s day and lincolns breast and also the month of Ronald Reagans birthday so many of these republican groups in a sense reagan replacing lincoln of all things. All right, so i get asked all the time by media people and others which candidate is the most like reagan . Where would reagan stand on this issue or that issue . And it begs the question of what did Ronald Reagan believe . This poster boy, this face of conservatism, the standard bearer and icon of the republican party, what did he believe . What did he actually believed . With that, reagan never really gave the definition of conservatism. He was afraid to try. The sooner he tried to do this you get all sorts of critics and so forth but february 6th, 1977, which was his 66th birth day he spoke at the conservative Political Action conference, reagan spoke their 13 times. Every year of his presidency reagan spoke and this particular address which in the back of the book i have the full february of 1977 reagan speech, it is a jam. He said conservatism can mean Different Things to those who call themselves conservatives and it can. Really the essence of conservatism if you want a definition from me and i will give the reagans definition, the conservatives seek to conserve and preserve the time tested values and ideas that they believe best serve the country, citizens and people everywhere. The idea that over time have proven to work, proven to be the best, give you a recommendations that is pretty consistent with the definition given by russell kirk, one of the philosophical spokesman for conservatism. The roots of american border, the american cause, some of the books he wrote in 1950s, 60s, 70s, reagan said this in 1977. Conservatives, the common sense and common decency of ordinary men and women working out their own lives in their own way, this is the heart of american conservatism. Conservative wisdom and principles are derived from a willingness to learn, not just from what is going on now but from what has happened before. What has happened before . What chesterton called democracy of the dead. The ideas that our ancestors have something to say. We should stop and think about what they learned before us which doesnt mean everything that was done 200 or 400 or 500 years ago was right. The definition is the time tested values that have endorsed overtime. Reagan continued, the principles of conservatism are sound because they are based on what men and women have discovered through experience in not just one generation or dozen but in all the combined experience of mankind. This is our patrimony in a way. You dont just throw all this stuff out because you suddenly think right now you know better. When we conservatives say we know something about Political Affairs and what we know can be stated as principles we are saying that the principles we hold dear are those that have been found through experience to be ultimately beneficial for individuals, families, communities and nations of. Found through the often bitter testing of pain or sacrifice and sorrow. It comes up with the students, the issue of samesex marriage is so dominant in all these discussions but that is a case right there where the conservative position on that isnt to try to be mean and deny people marriage rights and so forth or tell two people who love each other that they cant come together. The conservative believes there is something to learn from an institution that has been the way it has been for multiple thousands of years and to be real careful about an issue where just 20 years ago in 1993 the entire Democratic Party and liberalism and the clintons defined marriage as between a man and a woman. 20 years later anyone who disagrees with them they call them a big and all sorts of names. A conservative would they hold on a second. Just 20 years ago you were where we are now. Now we are the radicals . The conservative says lets stop and look back and see what we know about this through experience . Where you are going now with that idea is not time tested. So reagan said the old lines dividing social and economic conservatives were disappearing and reagan said that real true conservative needed to be both social and economic conservatives and reagan was both. Reagan was really the total conservative, not just conservative on some issues, tax cuts and so forth but on both social and economic issues. Eleven you have a cheat sheet in the book and on cspan you have a dvr. Freedom, faith, famry, human life, american exceptionalism, the founders wisdom, anti anticomnism and the believe in humans. I am not have time to go through all of them but i will go through some and check the clock and you will probably have the dr pull me off the stage. The first is freedom. Reagan talked about freedom. The time to chose speech october 7th 1974 said mankind from the long assent from the swamp to the stars has above all struggled to be free. And by reagans wreckening everyone needed freedom. Freedom in 1964 was looking in the communenist world. Reagan said if we lose freedom here in america there is no place to escape to. This is the last stand on earth. If we lose freedom here, there is no place to escape. And reagan felt americans needed to understand this. And they need to understand it today, too. In this swan song, his Farewell Speech on january 1989, beautiful speech, and that is one of the four speeches in the back of book, too. Reagan talked about what we called a freedom man. And i will quote here. He says he has become pensive in the last few weeks as he is preparing to leave washington and go back home to california about 40 minutes up the road from here. He talks about looking at the whitehouse window and says i have been thinking about the window and the past eight years and a nautical story comes to mind. A small ship and a large sailor. It was a the height of the vietnam people escaping as it became communist. The carrier midway was being worked on and the crew spied a leaky little boat and crammed inside were refugees hoping to get to america. As they made their way through the choppy seas one spied the sailor on deck, looked up and called out to him as the sailor held out his hand to pull him up. He yelled hello american sailor, hello freedom man. Imagine that. At that moment this boat person is more than a boat person. He is the spokesperson for freedom. He is the spokesperson for american exceptionalism as reagan was as at that moment. You have a symbol deeper than the south china sea. He doesnt say hello, military guy, hello sir. But hello freedom man. Reagan a small moment with a big meaning. The moment a sailor wrote that and couldnt get out of his mind. That is what it meant to be an american in the 1980s. He stood for freedom. That is what it meant to be an american in the 1980s. Freedom has many manifestations you will hear this freedom mantra but it can mean regulations. It is easier to open a business if you are not burdened by regulations. You need the freedom to open and start a business and in some countries you cannot because of the owners regulations. Taxes. High taxes rob you of freedom. If 50 of your income goes to taxes that is 50 less of your income. Money you could use to do landscaping, to pay off a student loan, to day down a mortgage, to buy a new dish washer, to hire a plumber, to give the charity. The more that the government takes away in your taxes especially as you have an every growing government the more you lose of your personal freedom. Freedom in american could be the freedom to educate your children in the school you would like to educate them in. Reagan talked about religious freedom. Speech, press, assembly, religion. The freedom to integrate. Thing about that. You could not go over the iron curtain. Reagans secretary of state said any time he mentioned the iron curtain to the audience, and he said this before he died, about a year before, in which direction did the east german guards who patrolled the berlin wall pointed the guns east on their own people. Walls are usually built to keep enemies from invading. This was a wall to keep people who wanted to be free from leaving. It had barbwire over the top of it. The te there was raked gravel so they could see if there were footprints there and the guard would be responsible for letting them go free. Reagan said only when people can free to create, worship and build only then do cites become dynamic and prosperous. He talked about the freedom to extract energy and oil. Do you think how much energy would be extracted if the government allowed them to do so . Right. The freedom to do that. And freedom wasnt just the exclusive exclusive domains of the americans, it is part of the human spirit and conservatives need to be Freedom Fighters and keepers of the flame of liberty. All right. Second principle. 111 so far. Less than 10 . Second one is faith. Consistent with reagan you have conservatives today who walk freedom, freedom, freedom, but what reagan understood and what c c conservatism is about. If you dont have freedom without faith it can be just license and vice and not virtue. It can be las vegas not the city of god. And faith provides a sanctifying grace that elevated free will. Reagan worked with john paul ii and john paul ii made a statement freedom without faith can become confused and perverse and can even lead to the destruction for others. Pope benedict said the west serves from a confused ideaology of freedom. The scriptual verses say dont use your freedoms as opportunity for the flesh but rather use freedom to what . Serve others. To love your neighbor as yourself. Russell clark talked about ordered liberty. You have to have an inner order before the country can have a external order. George washington talked about selfg selfgoverning yourself before you can have a successful selfgoverning nation. John adams said the constitution was made for religious and moral people and if you take that away wuiowa you are in trouble. Reagan said the image of George Washington nailing in the snow of valley porch was the most sublime issue in American History because the per sonified of people knew they had to seek help from their creator. Bill clark was very close to Ronald Reagan and used to tell me one of reagans favorites votes aside from the washington one was lincoln that said im brought to the conclusion that i am brought to my knees frequently because there is nowhere else to go. And he wondered what would happen if we scrapped religion. This was with a great speech as georgetown given in october of 1988. Reagan said at its full flowering, freedom is the first principle of western society. And yet freedom cannot exist alone. And that is why the theme for your bicentenni al is learning faith and freedom. Each make them possible. And then he quoted the author of democracy of america in 1835. He said despitism day govern without faith but religion cannot. Religion is needed more in democratic societies than any other. So you need a law that will selfgovern the people before the nation. And reagan warned then learning is a good thing but unless it is tempered by faith and a love of freedom it can be dangerous. Reagan said that learning is about learning this vital relationship between faith and freedom. At grove city college, faith and visi vision. Com is our website for faith for center. Reagan said the twin beacons of faith and freedom that brighten the american sky. The twin beacons of faith and freedom brighten the american sky. Principle three is family. The trinity he worshiped father, son, holy family was a family. Reagan constantly made statements on the family throughout this run. This surprised me. I had no idea how true it was. This was one of the last principles i added to the book. When i saw the sheer frequency of the references it became clear. He said it was the most basic and important unit of society. The family is the nuke of civ civilization and the corner of stone of society. The engine of social progress. Families stand at the center of society as the very foundation of freedom and children belong in the family. And here is a very conservative sentiment from reagan. It is in a family that children are nonl cared for but taught the traditions that give order to society and life as a whole. What happens when there is no longer an understanding of what those moral values and traditions are . Right . It is more important than every that American Families affirm on older and more lasting set of values. The timetested values. Here is another conservative senment it is up to families to observe and pass on to each generation the values we most cherish. Our concept of the family must withstrand the trends