I couldn’t help but think, as I watched C-SPAN throughout the day Sunday, “If Ronald Reagan were alive today, what would he say to the American people about the actions of the D-baggers on Capitol Hill?” Then I remembered I needn’t wonder… for in 1961, Reagan told America what he thought of this health insurance bill disaster:

Timeless wisdom from a great leader. America sure needs a man like him again… now, more than ever.

Here’s to those brave heroes that succeeded in an impossible mission 65 years ago today and to those who follow in their footsteps now.

Thank you!

Looks like Ronald Reagan knew in 1961 the threat we’d face in the 2008 election…

“Now back in 1927 an American socialist, Norman Thomas, six times candidate for president on the Socialist Party ticket, said the American people would never vote for socialism. But he said under the name of liberalism the American people would adopt every fragment of the socialist program…

One of the traditional methods of imposing statism or socialism on a people has been by way of medicine. It’s very easy to disguise a medical program as a humanitarian project, most people are a little reluctant to oppose anything that suggests medical care for people who possibly can’t afford it. Now, the American people, if you put it to them about socialized medicine and gave them a chance to choose, would unhesitatingly vote against it. We have an example of this. Under the Truman administration it was proposed that we have a compulsory health insurance program for all people in the United States, and, of course, the American people unhesitatingly rejected this.”

(h/t Henry)

History has recorded a legacy for which we still fight. On Ronald Reagan’s birthdate, let us remind ourselves, through his own words, just what this fight is all about.

“Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it on to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children what it was once like in the United States when men were free.”

“Welfare’s purpose should be to eliminate, as far as possible, the need for its own existence.”

“One legislator accused me of having a nineteenth-century attitude on law and order. That is a totally false charge. I have an eighteenth-century attitude. That is when the Founding Fathers made it clear that the safety of law-abiding citizens should be one of the government’s primary concerns.”

“Politics is supposed to be the second oldest profession. I have come to realize that it bears a very close resemblance to the first.”

“If we lose freedom here, there is no place to escape to. This is the last stand on Earth. And this idea that government is beholden to the people, that it has no other source of power except to sovereign people, is still the newest and most unique idea in all the long history of man’s relation to man. This is the issue of this election. Whether we believe in our capacity for self-government or whether we abandon the American revolution and confess that a little intellectual elite in a far-distant capital can plan our lives for us better than we can plan them ourselves.”

“The trouble with our liberal friends is not that they are ignorant, but that they know so much that isn’t so.”

Here’s a video highlighting the Great Communicator’s wonderful humor: