Ronald Reagan Peace Through Strength Essay

Throughout his presidency, Ronald Wilson Reagan's goal was achieve "peace through strength". His courage and love for this nation made him feel like he fulfilled his 1980 campaign pledge to bring back "the great, confident roar of American progress and growth and optimism". He proved to the American people that he was brave and resilient by overcoming many different obstacles and diversities. We consider him as one of the greatest because of his commitment to this country (Fidel and Sidey, 2006).

One of the most well-known courageous acts from Reagan was going through the process of ending the Cold War. When he went into office, the Cold War had been raging since World War II. Reagan stood his ground against the Soviets, calling it the

"evil empire" and told Mikhail Gorbachev to "tear down this wall" in Berlin. He was persistant and wouldn't give up on his Strategic Defense Initiative and gave help to rebels who were battling the Soviet-backed Marxists from Nicaragua to Angola. This cause a lot of conflict between the United States and Russia, and the people of the United States were scared for their lives. Reagan stayed confident and steady, and reassured the American people that our nation would not go under. His efforts during this war and the Soviet collapse was essentially what ended it (Human Events, 2011).
An economic boom that lasted two decades can be credited to Reagan. His choices on cuttin taxes, deregulation, and domestic spending restraint ultimately created 16 million new jobs. Reagan inherited a misery index of 19.99% when he first went into office, but at the end of his term it dropped to 9.72%. Liberals were opposed to his ideas of tax cutting, but he stuck to his beliefs and his ways which caused America to see results and help create jobs. His courage through the hatred he got from his non-supporters has set an example to the politicians today (Human Events, 2011).
With President Reagan being so straight-forward on his political goals, the United States was united again.

A large amount of people were opposed to his way of doing things because it wasn't the traditional way that they were used to. After both of his terms ended, it was clear that Reagan had made the most change than any other president around that time had. With being so clear about his goals to the people, it caused there to be many hardships during his time as President. On March 30th, 1981, John Hinckley Jr. attempted to assassinate him. He was strong and graceful during his recovery, only being in the hospital for twelve days after the 70 year old man who lost half of his blood was shot in the chest (Craig Shirley, reagan's Road to Recovery, 2011).

This attempt didn't slow him down at all. Reagan declared that " government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem". He went through great measures to reassure Americans that he did not want to " do away with government". Rather, he wanted to "make it work-work with us, not over us; to stand by our side, not ride on our back". As a die-hard conservative, Reagan sought to reduce the size of govenrment and stand by the people (Lou Cannon,

2016).
Cutting taxes was one of the main focuses of Reagan. Some would argue that he was in favor of the rich, but he had the people as a whole in mind. He cut income taxes from 70% to 28% for the top income rate, and 48% to 34% for the corporate tax rate. HE also made promises that he would reduce the money supply to combat regulation. All of Reagan's promises are based around "reaganomics", which is what he and his supporters called his goals during his presidency (Kimberly Amadeo, July 2011).
Reagan's opponents thought that he had poor policies, such as bloating the national defense, drastically cutting social services, and making illegal arms-for-hostages deals, led the country into record deficits and global embarassment. ALthough he had people of his own country against his views, this didn't stop him from being one of America's greatest Presidents. If you look at his accomplishments, it is clear that he did amazing things for our country. His courage led us into the greatest decades in history. I respect Ronald Wilson Reagan for all he has done. Facing obstacles and dealing with hatred made him go down as one of the best.