There’s a strange new trend with some people on our side who have recently decided that Ronald Reagan is “not conservative” enough, and a relic of the past. They’re wrong.
There is still so much we can learn from Reagan’s conservative legacy, relevant to important fights happening in America today.
The key thing to understand about Reaganism is that Reagan did not fight just to fight. Reagan fought to win on critical fronts in the culture wars.
As we look at fighting the DEI ideology that is destroying higher education right now, we should look to Reagan’s higher education battles.
What did Reagan do when University of California administrators coddled student and faculty radicals that were rioting? He sent in the National Guard. What did he do when the violence continued? He shut down all 28 public colleges and universities in the state for four days. Not to mention, he also did the serious work of instituting budgetary reforms to prevent the administrative bloat that we see in higher education today.
We have to take the same approach. That means confronting the taxpayer-funded DEI that has propped up left-wing illiberalism and enabled the explosion of antisemitism we see on college campuses. How do we do this? Let’s start by creating smart higher ed policy.
I have a bill that will prevent taxpayer dollars from flowing to universities that force students to write DEI statements. Most Americans know the left is crazy, but we have to make sure that conservatives look like the adults in the room.
It’s important to acknowledge Reagan’s conservative legacy, learn lessons from him, and implement those lessons in our political debates today.
