Yesterday I took immense pleasure in the discomfiture of others. Many of my friends and colleagues were displeased with the celebration I was taking part in.

You see, it was the 91st birthday of an American hero, a man who also happens to be my favorite president, Ronald Wilson Reagan. With his birthday in mind, I had planned to write a treatise on his impact on me, the country and indeed the world. This idea came to an abrupt halt when I realized that not everyone shares my zeal for the advancement of “all things Reagan.”

Well, screw them. The man saved this world for democracy not once, not twice, but thrice, and for his troubles he is vilified by ill-informed young people whose parents instilled in them some primitive hatred for a great man. He’s also maligned by used-up, aging hippies who were probably so high on Election Day 1980 that they voted Reagan by mistake.

On top of all this, the man gets Alzheimer’s disease and is slowly fading away in his dotage. When I mention his name to certain liberal people, they make a face eerily similar to the one a conservative would make when you say things like, “Guns kill.”

Ronald Reagan was America’s savior time and again. Picture a time when the executive office was ravaged by a dirty president named Nixon who had no regard for the law. A kind-hearted boob named Ford who had three martini lunches and a penchant for looking stupid. And finally, a grinning idiot peanut farmer named Carter who had no idea how to run the country. This is the America President Reagan confronted.

Winning by a landslide in 1980, he saved us from our own awful political officials who were ruining this great nation and making us more and more like Canada every day (damn Canadians). He brought his charismatic “Everything will work out for the best because this is America” idealism into the office and wiped the cynicism away.

Four years later, during the acceptance speech of the 1984 Democratic National Convention, Walter Mondale proclaimed he was being truthful where President Reagan wasn’t and gleefully claimed that, if elected, he would raise taxes. This was the second time Reagan saved us from the fiery pits of deepest darkest hell. He beat Mondale in the biggest landslide in presidential history, winning every state except for Minnesota.

The third time, Reagan saved us all from the cold dead hands of the Grim Reaper was the eventual collapse of the “evil empire.” That’s right — he saved us from those crazy trigger-happy commies. Mikhail Gorbachev thought he was getting an affable old man as his prime adversary; instead, he got a hard-as-nails-nationalistic, military-buildup zealot with a serious hatred for all godless communists.

You may recall a 1984 campaign commercial referring to the Soviet Union as a bear in the woods — well, President Reagan shot that bear dead.

Reagan also gave us the long economic expansion the nation enjoyed from the early ’80s and throughout the ’90s. With the exception of a nine-month economic contraction in 1990, the decisions of the Reagan administration gave us an incredible economic expansion.

Taking the cue from John F. Kennedy; who was the first supply side economics enthusiast; Reagan’s administration enacted a risky, but eventually successful, plan to cut taxes and spending simultaneously.

If recent poll numbers are to be believed, Reagan has become America’s all-time favorite president. This is fitting for a man who gave this country a sense of pride at a time when we desperately needed it. As time passes, his stock will only increase as people recall his greatness. Sadly, he is near the end of his life and cannot actively aid our country in times of need.

However, my friend Matt Rodbard has an intriguing theory that President Reagan is already dead. He hypothesizes that Reagan’s death won’t be made known until President Bush is in a sticky situation, or perhaps close to the next election. Whether or not this is true I can’t say, but I can say that the gipper would be proud to help his country one last time.

Over the course of his career, Reagan saved us from a dangerous drift towards Canadianism, a crazy tax-happy Democrat and the frightening potential of Red Dawn, as well as usher in a new political reality and a huge economic boom. So let’s all toast this living legend by going out and renting “Bedtime for Bonzo” one more time.

James P. Kent ([email protected]) is a senior majoring in economics and business management.