News and Press
Ronald Reagan honored at dinner
More than 100 people turned out Monday for the first annual Ronald Reagan Dinner, where attendees got to hear from the Honorable T. Kenneth Crib, a man who knew the president well. As the keynote speaker for the dinner, Crib delivered a lively presentation on the life and achievements of the former president. Crib presented Reagan as a true revolutionary, a man of principle and a leader ahead of his time.”Reagan believed the first duty of the national government is to provide for national defense,” said Crib, who served as Assistant to the President for Domestic Affairs in the Reagan Administration.
In addition to being a great communicator, Reagan was an intellectual who believed that ideas could rule the world “and he governed with ideas,” Crib said. He also suggested that Reagan was not a mystic, but was orthodox in his Christian faith. He also said he used “moral imagination” to overcome the Soviets.
“He helped people who were enslaved imagine their own freedom,” Crib said, adding the wall of communism fell without a shot being fired.
Reagan, he said, helped the United States imagine what the world would be like without communism.
Reagan was often alone in his views about the future of the Soviet Union, Crib said: “How could a former actor be so right when the experts were so wrong?”
Monday’s dinner was held by Franklin County Young Republicans in cooperation with the Franklin County Republican Committee at the Lighthouse Family Traditions Restaurant, Chambersburg.
According to FCYR Chairman Ben Rice, there is a mistaken belief that the Democrats have a lock on the 18- to 39-year-olds.
“This is an exciting time to be involved in politics,” he said before the start of the program. Evidence of this can be seen in the 15 people who recently signed up for the FCYR, he said.
At the start of the evening’s event, Jim Taylor told the audience, “This is a very important time to be a Republican - an active Republican.” He said they were there Monday to honor the modern day father of conservatism - Ronald Reagan.
Reagan, said Norm Brookens, was the greatest president ever. He read a list of standards that were inspired by Reagan. They should be upheld by Republicans, he said.
Following the meal, Crib came to the platform and talked about Reagan’s legacy. Among other things, Reagan believed that if you did the right thing, politics would take care of itself, he said.
Crib said the left wing historians have not been truthful in their assessment of Reagan. Some of them have described the 1980s as a decade of greed, he said. The liberals also have claimed that Reagan’s tax cuts led to huge deficits.
When liberal historians are asked about Reagan’s place in history, they tend to place him somewhere near the bottom, below Jimmy Carter, he said.
In terms of his assets, Reagan had a “huge appetite for foreign intellegence,” Crib said. He was unaffected by the stories on the front pages of The New York Times and The Washington Post.
Crib suggested that Reagan had insight into Russia that no one else had at the time. He studied communism all his life. According to Crib, Reagan was the only person who believed the United States would defeat Russia: “He was right and he lived to see it vanquished from the earth.”
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Roscoe Barnes III can be reached at 262-4762 or rbarnes@publicopinionnews.com.