Thank you. I want to thank andrew. I think he was in my first class at grove city college. I think he literally was. Thank you to pat foil and ron r robinson who is not here but thank you for all you do for young people and campuses around the country. Ronald reagan conservatives was about preserving. Thanks to cspan for being here, too. People call cspan and say thank god for cspan. There is not many sources as objective as cspan. They put it out there unedited. And let it speak for itself. There are so many talks that good on around the world and i say if there could be a camera here to capture and broadcast this and only cspan does that. What is a reagan conservative is my topic. And that is based on my new book 11 principles of a reagan conservative. This question, what is a reagan conservative you hear if you do a Google Search on the words reagan conservative it comes up with 30 Million People trying to define and what it means. And a lot of that is because so Many Republican candidates statewide, local wide, president ial candidates will say i am a reagan conservative. What is that . I dont think they totally know what a reagan conservative is but they want to have his political success and appeal. Here is a man who won 4450 states against an imcumbant president. One of the reason i think jimmy carter does so much is the lingering rejection he must have. And it is a good heart. I dont want to belittle that. But to lose 4450. Reagan was reelected by winning 4950 states. And the only state he didnt win was minnesota which was the home state of his challenger. So reagan twice won states that republicans could only dream of winning. He won california twice. New jersey twice. Massachusetts twice people are laughing and saying this is ridiculous and this could never happen again. My home state of pennsylvania. The second election he won the Electoral College by 52313. There was no reason to recount florida. The combined was 1, 11462. What republican wouldnt want to be like reagan in that sense . If you think about it, Ronald Reagans presidency, not just getting elected but when he left left with the highest Approval Rating since eisenhore. Prior to carter was gerald ford who never won the president ial election. And then prior to that you had Richard Nixon who resigned in disgrace. Prior to that lbjs whose presidency went so bad he didnt try to get the renomiknacnation. If you go back before truman he talked about the presidency like a great white jail. He had the highest disproval rating of any president until george w. Bush. Go back to Woodrow Wilson. His terms ended in dispare. He had 23 strokes toward the end. Reagan was elected because it was the best people could do to gate third term of reagan. We won one term. He lost in 1992 to bill clinton. Clinton wins with 43 of the vote because of the third party candidate. Bush gets in without winning the majority. And bush leaves office and around 2007 he had the worst gallop approval numbers since truman. Obama wins in 2008. 2012, obama is the first president in history, the first democrat i believe since lbj to get over 50 of the vote. But in 2012, first president to get elected to do this with less poplar and Electoral College votes. Reagan won 4950 and obama won 26. A bare majority. If you look at a map of counties it was 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 down in 2013, after the 2013 after the second inaugural that asked americans if Ronald Reagan was to run who would you vote for . And they said reagan by 53 . How was obama elected . The youth vote. That same poll, they asked people ages 1834 who would you vote for reagan or obama and they picked reagan. Unlike the gallop, they do a president s day poll every annual president s day and they have been doing this 13 times since 2001. Reagan placed first among the American Public as far as the question who is your all Time Favorite question . 2001, 2001, 2011 and 2012. He usually finishes in the top three beating lincoln. Imagine that. In june 2005, there was a poll done by aol and time warner, aol online surveyed americans and asked them to put in whatever name they wanted who is the greatest american of all time . 2. 4 Million People responded which anyone tells you is far and away a representative sample. You only need 500 people to do this polling. And reagan won. Greatest american of all time. What republican wouldnt want to be like reagan . Who wouldnt aspire to that success . You now have republican groups all over the country. County and state groups have been Holding Annual lincoln day dinners and they have been changing them the reagan day. The dinners were the month of president s day and also lincolns birthday and reagans. I get asked which candidate is the most like reagan. Where would reagan stand on this or that issue and that begs the question of what did Ronald Reagan believe. The standard barrier and icon of the Republican Party and what did he believe . Reagan never gave a definition of conservatism. Feb february 6th, 1967, reagan was speaking and he spoke at this event every year of his presidency. He was at cpack every year. I have the full february 1977 speech. He said conservatism can mean Different Things to those that call themselves conservatism. 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 that have proven to work and be the best and in fact and recommendation and the definition given my russell kirk who is run of the philosophical speakers for conservatives. He wrote books in the 1950s1970s. Reagan said this in 1977 conservatives the common sense and decency of ordinary men and women working out their own lives in their own way. This is the heart of american conservatives. Conservative wisdom and principles are derived from a willingness to learn not from what is going on now but also from what happened before. The democracy of the dead. The idea that our ancestors have something to say. We should stop and heed and think about what they learned before us. That doesnt mean everything done 200 years ago was right. The definition is timetested values that have endured over time. 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 a dozen, but in all of the combined experience of mankind. You dont just throw everything out because you think you know better now. Reagan said when we conservatives say we know something about political affair and what we know can be stated as principles we are saying the principles we hold dear are those that have been found through experience to be ultimately beneficial for individuals, families, communities and nations. Found through the often bitter testing of pain and sacrifice and sorry. It comes up all the time. The issue of samesex marriage is so dominant in this discussions. That is a case where the conservative position on that isnt to try to be mean and deny people marriage rights and so forth or tell people who love each other cannot come together. The conservatives believe 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 where an issue in 1993 the entire party and the clintons defined marriage as man and a women and anyone who disagrees is a bigot and all sorts of names. The conservative would say hold on a second. Just 20 years ago you were where he are now. The conservative says lets stop and look back and see what we know about this through experience. Reagan said that a real true conservative needed to be an a social and economic conservative and reagan was both. He was the total complete conservative. Not on some issues but social and economic. I lay out 11 principles of reagan conservatives. I dont know how i came up with 11 other than i laid them out and counted them and there were 11. Others said you should do ten and make it like the Ten Commandments of reagan. And i said there is not ten. There is a 11. And they said do a dozen. 11 stabenow is an odd number. Here they are. There is going to be a quiz at the end of this so make sure you take notes quick. Actually you have a cheat sheet in the book and on cspan you have a dvr. Freedom, faith, family, dig nity of human life, speern exceptional, the founders wisdom and vision, lower taxes, limited government, peace through strength and anticommune ism and believe in others. I will not have time to go through all of them but i will a few. Contracepti the first of these is freedom. Ronald reagan spoke of freedom over and over again. The time for choosing speech, which he gave on behalf of barry gold water on october 27th, 1964 said mankind from the swamps to the stars, the long assent from the swamp to the stars has above all struggled to be free. My reagans reckoning people everywhere needed freedom. When he wrote that speech, freedom was looking in the communist world. And reagan talked about a cuban boat person who was escaping castros cuba and he said how lucky he is that he had a place to escape to. And reagan said if we lose freedom here in america there is no place to escape, too. This is the last stand here. If we lose freedom on earth there is no place to escape. And reagan felt americans needed to understand this. They needed to understand this freedom thing. And need to understand it today, too. In his Farewell Speech on january 1989, beautiful speech written by peggy nunan and that is one of the four speeches in the back of the book. Reagan talked about what he called a freedom man and i will quote. He says he has become increasingly 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 where he are at. He talked about looking at the whitehouse window saying i have been thinking about at the window and reflecting on the past eight years and what they have meant. The image that comes to mind like a refrain is a nautical one. A small story about a big ship, and a sailor. It was the height of the boat period. These were the vietnam boat people after we left and vietnam was communist and we had thousands of people flewing like in cuba as well. The american sailor was hard at work on the ship patrolling the south china sea. The crews spied a leaky boat and there were refugees inside hoping to get to america. They sent a launch to bring the ship in to safety. As they went through the choppy seas, one saw the sailor on deck and looked up to him as the sail sailor held out a hand and he yelled, hello american sailor, hello freedom man. Imagine that. This boat person, at that moment, he is more than a boat person. He is the spokesperson for freedom. As reagan was at that moment. You have a symbol here that is more profound and deeper than the south china sea. He doesnt look up and say hello military man, or sir, but hello american sailor, hello freedom man. He is the freedom man. Reagan, a small moment with a big meaning, a moment the sailor who wrote it in a letter couldnt get that out of his mind and i could not stop it. That is what it meant to be an american in the 80s we stood for freedom. Freedom has many manifestations and you will hear this freedom mantra but freedom can mean regulations. It is easier to open a business if you are not burdens by regulations. You need to freedom to be able to open and start a business and in some countries you can not because of all of the the owner regulations. Taxes rob you of freedom. If 50 of your income is going to taxes that is 50 less. You could use that to do lan landscaping, pay off student loans, higher a plumber, give the charity. The more the government takes away in your taxes especially as you have a bigger growing government the more you lose of your personal freedom. Freedom in america can be the freedom to educate your children in the school where you would like to send them. To a private school, home school. Reagan talked about freedom of religion and religious tolerance. The freedom to immigrate. Think about that. When reagan was president everybody behind the iron curtain lacked the ability to immigrate. Reagans secretary of defense said any time i mentioned the iron curtain to an audience and he said this a year before he died. He said any time you mention the berlin wall ask the audience which direction did the east german guards point their guns . Right . East. On their own people. You are talking to a former secretary of defense. Walls are usually kept to keep enemies from invading. This was a wall to keep people who wanted to be free from leaving. There was barbed wire on top. The person of the free speech flew over and there was raked gravel that was there so that if footprints were seen there the night before because one of the east german guards let someone go free they would be held responsibility. Reagan said only when people are free to worship, build and create and decide their own future benefit from risks do societies become prosperous. He talked about the freedom to extract oil and energy. You know how much energy would be extracted if the government allowed them to do so . The freedom to do that. And freedom was said not just the exclusive domain of americans. It is one of the deepest and noblest aspectofs of the human spirit. Conservatives need to be Freedom Fighter and keepers of the flame of liberty. Second principle. Getting these down. First one. 111 is less than 10 . Faith was the second one. Consistent with reagan you have conservatives talking freedom, freedom, freedom but what reagan understood and what conservatives is about is freedom needs faith. They are dependented upon each other. Faith is like the moral rudder to freedom. Freedom without faith can be just license. It can be vice but not virtue. It can be las vegas not the city of god. And freedom is elevated when you have faith to infuse it. Faith provides a kind of grace to freedom that elevates the free will and allows us to aspire to our better angles. Reagan worked a lot with Pope John Paul ii who he was close to and he made a statement reagan could have made freedom without faith can become confused, preverse and even lead to the destruction of freedom for others. You can think of examples for that. Pope benedict the 16th said the west serves from a confused ideaology of freedom and because of that we are suffering from a dictatorship of relativeness. A scripture verse says use freedom to serve others and love your neighbor as yourself. Russell kirk, who i mentioned before, his 1974 classic the roots of american order talked about ordered liberty. You have to have an inner order before the country can have outer order. George washington talked about selfgoverning ones self before a nation can govern. You have to have a nation of selfgoverning people before you can have a successful nation. John adam says this constitution was made for religious and moral people and if you take away you are in trouble. Reagan quoted John Washington on prayer. Reagan said the image of George Washington nailing is in the snow of valley forge was the most sublime image in American History. Why . Because it personified people that knew it wasnt enough to depend on their own courage and goodness. They must seek help from their father and preserver. Bill clark and here and we coauthorered bill clarks bio. He was close to reagan and told me his favorite quote was from lincoln who said i am drawn to my knees as i have nowhere else to go. Reagan feared what happened to a fear Democratic Society when it scraps religious faith. Here is another speech at georgia town in october of 1988. Reagan said at its full flowering freedom is the full cycle of the society and freedom cant exist alone and that is why the theme for is so apt learning, faith and freedom. Each reinforces the other and each makes the other possibility for what are they without each other. And then he wrote a quote from the writer of democracy in america. 1835. Despitism may govern without faith but liberty cant. Religion is more needed in democrat cites than other because iowa you have to freedom to do things. So to control things and have order you need people that absence of law providing that order will self govern themselves before you can selfgovern the nation. Reagan warned learning is a good thing but unless it is tempered by faith and a love of freedom it can be dangerous. The names of many people that were educated are on the roles of infimny. Reagan said that the twin beacons of faith and freedom that brighten the american sky. Not the beacon alone. But the twin beacons of faith and freedom. Principle three. Family. The Trinity Reagan worshiped father, son, and holy spirit was family. He argued it was foundational to civilization. Reagan constantly made statements on the family. This surprised me. I had no idea how true that was. This is one of the last principles i added to the book because when i saw the sheer frequency of these references it became clear. Reagan said the family was quote the most basic and important unit of society. The family is the nukeilous of civileration and the cornerstone of american society. And as the country disappears the country is in trouble. Families stand at the center of society as the very foundation of freedom and children belong in a family. Here is a very conservative thought and sentiment from reagan. It is in a family that children are not only cared for but they are taught the moral values and traditions that give order and stability to our lives. What happens when there is no longer an understanding of those traditi traditions . It is important that you affirm an older set of values. The timetested values. And here another conservative sentiment. It is up to families to pass on the values we most cherish. Our conseptember of the family must withstand the trends of lifestyle and legislation. Reagan worried about progress that redefines family according to the latest lifestyle. In one of his final formal proclamati proclamations as president. This was days before leaving the president in january 1989. He said this we must teach youngsters the beauty of the loving lifelon