Recently, I wrote that there is a “post-Reagan aimlessness still afflicting conservatism.” It is an uncertainty at the root of many of the Right’s current internecine conflicts. A few of these turn on the person of Ronald Reagan himself: Some argue that his legacy has been misunderstood, others that conservatives should leave “Zombie Reaganism” behind, and still others that Reagan has much to teach us.
Put Don Devine in that last category. Devine, now a senior scholar at the Fund for American Studies (where I am a Robert Novak Journalism Fellow), worked in the Reagan administration as director of the U.S. Office of Personnel Management. In the American Spectator, he makes the case that Reagan still has many lessons for us:
Reagan made errors, especially by being too trusting of his early education and immigration appointees, but he was fighting the Soviet evil while conservatives today merely have to deal with professor and media wokeism, a recession he showed how to fix, a government he told us how to control, regulators he led rather than followed, and a budget including entitlements he demonstrated how to control. Moreover, he taught conservatives to emphasize federalism and returning programs to states and communities, as well as how to defeat foreign enemies “without firing a shot,” as Britain’s Margaret Thatcher put it. He taught us how to think about life and governance.
Read the whole thing here.