Ronald Reagan, Rest in Peace
President Ronald Reagan believed that he had been elected to lead a uniquely virtuous people, citizens of a divinely ordained "shining city on a hill" meant to serve as a beacon of freedom and justice to all the world. Some people will long argue that those beliefs were more fantasy than reality, and they will have their evidence - the role of slavery in American history, and the treatment of America's native peoples, will be favorite citations against Reagan's "national exceptionalism."
For my part, I will never forget the candidate who warned that "government is never more dangerous than when our desire to have it help us blinds us to its great power to harm us", nor the President who astonished the world by sincerely suggesting to his Soviet counterpart that they negotiate, not arms control, but a literal end to all nuclear weapons. This man's belief that America was a shining city on a hill may or may not have had a firm foundation in historical fact, but it motivated him to act as though it were true - and in this way the city he governed shone more brightly before all the world than it would have, had he never lived.
May the angels bear him to Paradise.
