The Once and Future Reagan

It's a mistake. [Link]

But what are we to do, you ask? What are we to do if no one will save us?

Do you hear yourselves? You’re Americans, not Europeans. You are the fruit of a nation constituted in liberty and based on the idea that the people can govern themselves. You should not wait for the king who sleeps beneath the hill.

Oh, I realize — I see — you look at 1980 and now, and you see the similarities and then you cry out “Romney is no Reagan.”

This is good, because Obama is no Carter. And our situation is in many ways far worse than it was.

But it is good, most of all, because Obama was bad enough that he woke the force that protects this country. It had been asleep for seventy years, sleeping beneath the dark hill of statism. It is now up, and roused and active. It is moving. The tea parties are proof of that, as is the massive swatting the Lords of Political Correctness got over the Chick-fil-A business.

Romney is a decent business manager. He’s a decent man. He likes America. He wants America to like him. He’s not going to actively dismantle our way of life, as will the one now in power. There will be no attacks on freedom of religion, no wild power grabs for the Internet, no executive orders that violate the laws of the land. He will not hanker for more “flexibility” so he can give more to Putin. And — this is petty but important for how the world sees us — he will neither apologize nor bow to foreign leaders.

Is he perfect? Oh, goodness, no. Is he exactly what we need? Probably not. Who is? Do you know the trouble we’ve got ourselves into by trusting presidents for this long? It’s a big hole. No one man can get us out of it. Only we can. And it will take time.

But that’s fine. He won’t be anointed by any gods. There will be no halos and no Greek columns. Instead, he’ll be the elected by the people and the people — the sovereign people of this free land — who are now awake will stand ready to make sure he knows it.

Perhaps we will once more save our democratic republic for another generation. Perhaps we’ll turn the tiller and start the long way back from deep blue statism.

In the end, as someone said, perhaps we’re the ones we’ve been waiting for. No hero will ride to the rescue — we will.

We’re Americans. We don’t need emperors. (If that’s what you want, to quote Romney, “you must vote for the other guy.”) We don’t want lords and masters. We’re free and at last aware that we must work to stay that way.