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Bully Pulpit

The term "bully pulpit" stems from President Theodore Roosevelt's reference to the White House as a "bully pulpit," meaning a terrific platform from which to persuasively advocate an agenda. Roosevelt often used the word "bully" as an adjective meaning superb/wonderful. The Bully Pulpit features news, reasoned discourse, opinion and some humor.

Tuesday, February 06, 2007

Happy 96th Birthday to the Gipper...

The Patriot Post

Last month the Czech capital of Prague announced its decision to erect a monument to honor Ronald Reagan. And why not? Similar monuments to the man already exist in Budapest and Warsaw, and elsewhere in Eastern Europe.

It is entirely proper that our nation’s 40th President be memorialized in cities once shrouded by the Iron Curtain. According to one Czech paper, after his 1983 “Evil Empire” speech, “President Reagan was probably the most hated and ridiculed of all the Western leaders by the former communist regime. The communist media relentlessly condemned what they called ‘Reagan’s war-mongering’ and the arms race.” Then again, these were state-run media whose leading insights on America came courtesy of CNN.

Following Reagan’s death in 2004, Czech Senator Jan Ruml, a pro-democracy dissident imprisoned under the communist regime, recalled the significance of the U.S. President’s staunch support for himself and his compatriots.

“In the 1980s we placed our hopes in Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher,” said Ruml. “The fact that someone out there called communism by its proper name and actually did something to promote freedom and democracy helped us a great deal. Ronald Reagan was the man instrumental in bringing down communism and we should all remember him with great respect as the man thanks to whom we are enjoying our present freedom.” This is high praise, indeed, coming as it does from a man with a first-person perspective on communist tyranny.

Announcing the overwhelming public desire to honor Reagan, Prague’s 6th-District mayor, Tomas Chalupa, agreed. Reagan’s central place in Czech history is assured, he said, as “the most important personality that enabled the fall of communism.”


Born in Tampico, Illinois, to Jack and Nelle Reagan on 6 February 1911, the Gipper would have turned 96 this Tuesday. It’s a fitting occasion, then, on which to ponder an important question: To what extent have we honored the conservative ideals of the Reagan Revolution?

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