Ronald Reagan’s famously sunny personal and political optimism was grounded by seeing the world as it was in its complex, often dark reality.
His buoyancy was boosted by a bedrock belief that foundational American values of faith, freedom and individual dignity had the power to make the troubled world a better place.
The rare combination of sunniness in the face of harsh reality and his faith in American exceptionalism gave the Great Communicator a gift to predict future events with remarkable accuracy.
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“He was astonishingly clairvoyant,” Reagan biographer Craig Shirley told Fox News Digital.
“[Reagan] once said, ‘I have seen the conservative future and it works.’”
West Yellowstone, Montana: Then-California Gov. Ronald Reagan, shown wearing the traditional white hat of the western “good guy” as he shows up for a press conference in cowboy garb at the Western Governors Conference. (Getty Images)
Reagan had an ace up his sleeve when it came to sizing up the future.
Like a gambler who bet on a fixed game, he knew the United States, and his leadership, could tip the direction of world affairs toward a favorable outcome.
“It’s still trust — but verify,” Reagan said in his 1989 farewell address. “It’s still play — but cut the cards.”
Said Shirley, author of the upcoming 2024 biography, “The Search for Reagan,” and four other books about the 40th commander in chief, “He knew if he controlled events, he could predict and control the future.”
“He was astonishingly clairvoyant.” — Reagan biographer Craig Shirley
“He could control American optimism through leadership. He could bring down communist walls through leadership.”
Added Shirley, “He could control the economy to produce growth ,which gave him the tools to successfully defeat Soviet Communism. He could control events to let freedom flourish. He once said that more important than wanting to be president, he should be president.”
Here are five ways Reagan foresaw the future in America.
1. Reagan warned that government would weaponize medical care
Private citizen Reagan addressed the threats posed by government-run health care in a public recording in 1961 — five years before he ran for governor of California.
His words have proven to be ominous political prophecy.
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“One of the traditional methods of imposing statism or socialism on a people has been by way of medicine,” Reagan said in a 10-minute speech, recorded into an LP album by the American Medical Association, which at the time opposed a government takeover of health care.
Ronald Wilson Reagan, 40th president of the United States (1981-1989) and 33rd governor of California (1967-1975). (Photo12/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)
“It’s very easy to disguise a medical program as a humanitarian project,” he also said.
He believed that “under our free enterprise system, we have seen medicine reach the greatest heights that it has in any country in the world.”
Government would only stifle the quality of care for everyone, in Reagan’s view.
Even worse, it would quickly encroach on individual freedom — for both the patient and the caregiver.
“One of the traditional methods of imposing statism or socialism on a people has been by way of medicine.” — Ronald Reagan in 1961
Horrified Americans witnessed Reagan’s dystopian nightmare come true during the COVID-19 panic in 2020 and 2021.
Medical care was determined by executive or even bureaucratic fiat under the guise of humanitarianism.
Doctors were afraid to challenge political authorities about questionable and even erroneous medical advice for fear of their careers being destroyed. And millions of ordinary Americans were ordered to comply with government medical decisions — or, in many cases, lose their livelihoods.
Lifelong bureaucrats such as Anthony Fauci, former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, directed medical care for millions by fiat during the COVID-19 panic. (Ting Shen/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
The devastation suffered in the name of humanitarian public policy may never be known.
But 60 years earlier, Reagan warned of the scenario.
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“Once you establish the precedent that the government can determine a man’s working place and his working methods, determine his employment, from here it’s a short step to all the rest of socialism — to determining his pay,” said Reagan.
“Pretty soon your son won’t decide when he’s in school, where he will go, or what they will do for a living.”
2. Reagan predicted that America’s shining ‘city upon a hill’ would remain a beacon to the world
The simplistic leftist narrative of today is that the United States was born of sin and must suffer for the evil of systemic racism.
This narrative is soundly refuted by the thousands of people of all races, colors and creeds desperate to move to the United States every single day, legally and otherwise.
In 1964, Reagan gave a televised speech on the eve of an election. He campaigned unofficially throughout 1965 for the California governership, announcing his candidacy at the end of the year. Here, his supporters reach for a handshake with the future president. (Getty Images)
To these people from all walks of life, America shines the way Reagan saw it.
He spoke often of the United States as a “city upon a hill,” from his earliest political speeches to his farewell address as he left the White House in 1989.
“As a visionary, Reagan believed in a happy and productive future. Some politicians derided the ‘V’ word, but not Reagan. To him, controlling events and thus controlling the future was the job of a national leader,” said Shirley.
“The city upon a hill was a vision to Reagan but also the promise of a reality. Of the reality of the future of America.” — Craig Shirley
“The city upon a hill was a vision to Reagan but also the promise of a reality. Of the reality of the future of America.”
The City Upon a Hill is still shining, as evidenced by the countless throngs still risking it all every day to scale its heights.
3. Reagan boldly called the outcome of the Cold War: ‘We win and they lose’
The world lived with the threat of “mutually assured destruction” for both the United States and the Soviet Union and their various allies for four decades during the Cold War.
Craig Shirley is the author of four Ronald Reagan biographies, plus the upcoming 2024 release, “The Search for Reagan.” The 40th president “was astonishingly clairvoyant,” said Shirley. (Courtesy Craig Shirley)
This had taken root as an unassailable status quo among geopolitical policymakers on both sides.
Reagan offered a better solution than living in perpetuity on the edge of nuclear holocaust.
“It is this: We win and they lose,” Reagan said in a prophetic 1977 conversation with confidante and future National Security Advisor Richard V. Allen. “What do you think of that?”
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The American intelligentsia did not think much of it. Media, academics and bureaucrats ridiculed Reagan for a narrative they felt lacked sophistication.
“One had never heard such words from the lips of a major political figure; until then, we had thought only in terms of managing the relationship with the Soviet Union,” Allen wrote for the Hoover Institution in 2000.
“Reagan went right to the heart of the matter. Utilizing American values, strength and creativity, he believed we could outdistance the Soviets and cause them to withdraw from the Cold War or perhaps even to collapse.”
President Ronald Reagan addresses the nation on the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI). (©CORBIS/Corbis via Getty Images)
Reagan as president tipped the scales in favor of his prediction.
He labeled the Soviet Union the “Evil Empire” in March 1983, challenging Americans and the Western World to confront the true nature of communism.
Two weeks later he proposed the Strategic Defensive Initiative, dubbed “Star Wars” — a daring initiative to weaponize space that tore at the Soviet Union’s fragile economy.
“Reagan’s SDI terrified the Soviets.” — Craig Shirley
“Reagan’s SDI terrified the Soviets,” said Shirley. “Reagan knew the future. We had the technology. They didn’t.”
And in Berlin in 1987, Reagan brazenly dared Soviet premier Mikhail Gorbachev by name to “tear down this wall” — the Berlin Wall that divided communist East Berlin from democratic West Berlin and, symbolically, statism from individualism.
The Berlin Wall crumbled less than two years later. The Soviet Union collapsed in December 1991, freeing hundreds of millions of people from the shackles of the Iron Curtain.
Ronald Reagan in 1987 made his famous challenge to Mikhail Gorbachev to tear down the Berlin Wall. (Getty Images)
Reagan’s unimaginable “we win and they lose” scenario rang true just 14 years after he called for it.
“Simply put, no president before him had the courage to call the Soviets evil. And they were,” said Shirley.
“Calling the Soviets what they were altered the equation. From that time on, they were on the defensive. All of Reagan’s actions brought about the future collapse of the Soviet Union.”
4. Reagan warned that federalized education would marginalize parents and shortchange students
Reagan ascended to the White House in January 1981 in the wake of the creation of the Department of Education as a cabinet agency in May 1980.
“Our traditions of opportunity and excellence in education have been under siege,” Reagan said in a March 1983 speech on education.
On Aug. 23, 1984, in Dallas, Texas, President Ronald Reagan leans over and thanks singer Ray Charles. Charles sang “America the Beautiful” at the GOP Convention. Nancy Reagan is on the left. (Getty Images)
The bureaucracy had grown into a leviathan with 4,400 employees and a $68 billion budget by 2022 — greater than the entire budgets for all services of 41 states.
The quality of education across the United States has plummeted in the years since, from among the best in the world to among the worst in the industrialized world, according to the United Nations Education Index.
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Even more sobering: Federal and state education bureaucracies now brazenly tout their desires to push parents out of the classrooms attended by their own children.
“Reagan insisted that the 1980 GOP platform include the elimination of the Departments of Education and Energy,” said Shirley.
“He knew they were holdover federal boondoggles from the Carter years meant as political payoffs, not to actually solve any energy or education problems. And they didn’t. Federal bureaucrats argued constantly to increase the funding for each, but Reagan had his mind on more important things like defeating an Evil Empire.”
Mark Winn of Loudoun County, Virginia, faced public reprimand and threats in May 2023 after speaking out against public education officials. Winn is among millions of American parents who have been marginalized by the bureaucratic takeover of public education at both the federal and state level. (Screenshot/WJLA)
Said Reagan in the same 1983 speech, “We’ve witnessed the growth of a huge education bureaucracy. Parents have often been reduced to the role of outsiders … Even God, source of all knowledge, was expelled from classrooms.”
He added, “It’s time to face the truth. Advocates of more and more government interference in education have had ample time to make their case, and they’ve failed.”
He went on, “Look at the record. Federal spending on education soared eightfold in the last 20 years, rising much faster than inflation. But during the same period, scholastic aptitude test scores went down, down, and down.”
“Parents have often been reduced to the role of outsiders … Even God, source of all knowledge, was expelled from classrooms.” — Ronald Reagan
Reagan saw parents as the saviors of education, not nuisances to be silenced by education bureaucrats.
“In his farewell speech to the nation, he didn’t call on the Department of Education to teach America’s children about American history ,but rather called on parents,” said Shirley.
“He said in his 1996 GOP convention speech that the most important education took place in the home.”
5. Reagan believed the sun would rise again over America
Reagan ran on the now-famous “It’s Morning Again in America” ad campaign during his re-election bid in 1984, after helping lift the U.S. out of the infamous “malaise,” as it was called by his predecessor President Jimmy Carter.
But his buoyant, pro-American optimism was evident even before his first victorious bid for the White House in 1980.
Then-California Gov. Ronald Reagan wears a cowboy hat during a trail ride on Dec. 5, 1968, at the GOP Governor’s Conference here. (Getty Images)
“I find no national malaise, I find nothing wrong with the American people,” Reagan said on Nov. 3, 1980, the eve of the election in which he would sweep to victory by winning 44 of 50 states.
“Oh, they are frustrated, even angry at what has been done to this blessed land. But more than anything they are sturdy and robust as they have always been.”
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Added Reagan, “Together, tonight, let us say what so many long to hear: that America is still united, still strong, still compassionate, still clinging fast to the dream of peace and freedom, still willing to stand by those who are persecuted or alone.”
Said Shirley, “Reagan has a natural wellspring of optimism in him. It was as much a part of his character as his faith in God. But his optimism was also based on the practicality of America.”
“From the strong fortress of his convictions, he set out to enlarge freedom the world over at a time when freedom was in retreat — and he succeeded.” — Margaret Thatcher
Shirley believes Reagan’s star shines even brighter today in comparison to state of American leadership today.
“Reagan’s optimism would be tested by the morose loser Joe Biden and his apocalyptic thinking,” the author said.
President Ronald Reagan greets British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher as she arrives by helicopter at Camp David. (Getty Images)
“Reagan always foresaw the best for Americans; Biden always sees the worst for Americans. Reagan often predicted a bright new dawn for Americans. Biden’s morose vision is terrifying because it is based on controlling people, not inspiring people,” said Shirley.
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Wrote Reagan political ally and United Kingdom Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, “From the strong fortress of his convictions, he set out to enlarge freedom the world over at a time when freedom was in retreat — and he succeeded.”
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