The Last Jeffersonian

Ronald Reagan's Dreams of America

"If there is one thing we are sure of, it is ...that nothing is impossible, and that man is capable of improving his circumstances beyond what we are told is fact."

Here's an excerpt from chapter five, where we look at the sources of Ronald Reagan's ideas about self-improvement:

Most people know of individuals or families who struggle hard for success. If you look around you these heroes are everywhere. One such family lives in a trailer a few blocks from the office where I am writing now. I bought an old car from them not so long ago. They have a small child and not very much money. When I came by to conclude the transaction, the wife and mother, who was deaf, was working on some basic math problems for a course she was taking at the local community college. It was part of a program in office management she was in. The husband and father had not finished high school, and was working at the same community college to prepare for the last of the exams that would give him his General Equivalency Diploma. You could tell that they were both hopeful about the future despite their modest circumstances. Gesturing toward their mobile home, which had no yard and was crowded in among many others, the husband said, "You don't think we want to stay here forever, do you?"

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Only forty-six years separated Reagan's birth from Lincoln's assassination and the end of the Civil War. During those years Horatio Alger wrote dozens of children's books about self-improvement and sold millions of copies. Log Cabin to White House was one of his tales--it helped build the Lincoln myth with the next generation, as if it needed any assistance. Reagan loved the things Lincoln stood for. He quoted Lincoln frequently, and his beliefs about freedom, self-improvement, and economic opportunity reflected Lincoln's attitudes from first to last. Lincoln himself, according to one historian, believed that "the most sacred thing free society could do was to give to the common man freedom and opportunity to make his own way." And Reagan, standing before the country for the first time as its president, said "Whoever would understand in his heart the meaning of America will find it in the life of Abraham Lincoln."