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Marjorie Taylor Greene Says She Doesn’t Believe In Reagan’s Commandment

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Former President Ronald Reagan was the standard-bearer for the Republican Party for a generation, but in the new GOP, he’s just another RINO. That’s according to Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), who attacked Reagan’s notorious 11th Commandment. . .

Speaking on Jenna Ellis’s podcast, the Republican explained that she believes that Reagan was a great president, but that she’s a real Christian, so she only believes in the Ten Commandments. (Read more from “Marjorie Taylor Greene Says She Doesn’t Believe In Reagan’s Commandment” HERE)

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Son of President Reagan Has Urgent Warning for Trump Concerning the Border Wall

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By The Blaze. Michael Reagan, son of former President Ronald Reagan, voiced a dire warning to President Donald Trump Thursday, one day before the government temporarily shut down over a budget battle between Republicans and Democrats.

Despite Democrats’ insistence to thwart any and all effort to build a wall on the southern U.S. border, Reagan — who hasn’t always been a Trump supporter — urged Trump to not back down from border security. . .

One of Trump’s central campaign promises was border security and erecting a border wall. However, politics in Washington have proved to be a powerful roadblock to seeing the realization of that promise. (Read more from “Son of President Reagan Has Urgent Warning for Trump Concerning the Border Wall” HERE)
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Ronald Reagan’s Son Warns Trump About Border Wall

By Daily Wire. The son of former President Ronald Reagan issued a warning for President Donald Trump this week, telling the president that this is his last chance to get the funding that he needs to build the border wall.

“Hey @POTUS in 1986 my father made a deal with the Democrats Amnesty for Border Security my father is still waiting,” Michael Reagan tweeted on Thursday. “U have no choice its now or never. #BuildTheWallNow.”

“The Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 allowed any illegal immigrants who had been in the U.S. since 1982 to receive temporary legal status and eventually become eligible for green cards if they learned English,” The Washington Examiner reported. “The legislation also attempted to boost border security by increasing funding for the Immigration and Naturalization Service and the U.S. Border Patrol. … The measure also sought to crack down on illegal immigration by barring employers from knowingly hiring illegal immigrants.”

The number of illegal immigrants currently in the U.S. has more than doubled since 1986, from approximately 5 million to 11.1 million, according to The Washington Post. . .

(Read more from “Ronald Reagan’s Son Warns Trump About Border Wall” HERE)

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President Reagan Once Carried out a Deathbed Intervention for a Dying Atheist

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In a modern world of dispiriting news, I offer for your perusal something uplifting. It’s an edifying letter from August 1982, found only recently, written by a great man and great president.

Credit goes to Karen Tumulty, who discovered the letter within the personal keepsakes of Nancy Reagan. Tumulty, a journalist, is writing a biography of Mrs. Reagan. She came across the letter in a cardboard box of Nancy’s cherished memories. The letter is nothing short of a deathbed intervention by President Ronald Reagan, reaching out to his atheist father-in-law, Loyal Davis, who Reagan liked and respected, and whose soul he was gravely concerned about.

I knew about this intervention by Reagan. I had written about it in a book on Reagan’s faith published in 2004. Tumulty, however, has found the actual letter, and what it says is inspiring.

Tumulty marvels that Reagan, who held the most difficult job in the world, would have paused in the middle of his day, Aug. 7, 1982, to write a four-page letter like this on White House stationery. She might be surprised to learn that Reagan sat down to pen letters like this throughout his presidency and his gubernatorial years. Reagan scholars estimate that our nation’s 40th president may have written more letters than any president since Thomas Jefferson.

I have read hundreds of them. During my first of many summers doing research at the Reagan Library, I was blown away by the sheer volume of letters Reagan produced, and how meaningful they were. There remain many unmined gems in that treasure trove of Reagan correspondence. In the summer of 2001, I resolved to read through all the letters during my next summer’s research. I made it only about half-way through 1982. Some of the most moving Reagan missives were directed to complete strangers, like Ruth Smith of Coeur d’Alene, Idaho. And to think that liberals in the 1980s portrayed Reagan as a dawdling, doodling old fool who slept through workdays at the White House — when not amusing himself with VHS tapes of Bedtime for Bonzo. The left’s scurrilous caricature of Reagan was scandalous.

As for this letter to Loyal Davis, it’s yet another testimony of Reagan’s thorough decency and ever-present concern for the literal eternal dignity of people. He was concerned not merely about the perils of evil empires, but the perils of individual souls. I will not quote the full letter here, but I’d like to call attention to one particular passage, which is consistent with what I saw years ago. In one section of the letter to his dying father-in-law, Reagan tried this Christian apologetic:

Some seven hundred years before the birth of Christ the ancient Jewish prophets predicted the coming of a Messiah. They said he would be born in a lowly place, would proclaim himself the Son of God and would be put to death for saying that.

All in all there were a total of one hundred and twenty three specific prophesys [sic] about his life all of which came true. Crucifixion was unknown in those times, yet it was foretold that he would be nailed to a cross of wood. And one of the predictions was that he would be born of a Virgin.

Now I know that is probably the hardest for you as a Dr. to accept. The only answer that can be given is — a miracle. But Loyal I don’t find that as great a miracle as the actual history of his life. Either he was who he said he was or he was the greatest faker & charlatan who ever lived. But would a liar & faker suffer the death he did when all he had to do to save himself was admit he’d been lying?

The miracle is that a young man of 30 yrs. without credentials as a scholar or priest began preaching on street corners. He owned nothing but the clothes on his back & he didn’t travel beyond a circle less than one hundred miles across. He did this for only 3 years and then was executed as a common criminal.

But for two thousand years he has had more impact on the world than all the teachers, scientists, emperors, generals and admirals who ever lived, all put together.

Before digging into the roots of Reagan’s theological thinking, I’d like to share another such example. On March 1, 1978, Reagan sent a similar epistle to a Methodist minister from Shell Beach, California who was having doubts about the divinity of Christ (a rather odd predicament for a pastor). This liberal minister accused Reagan of a “limited Sunday school level theology,” and Reagan responded — characteristically — not with vitriol but grace:

Perhaps it is true that Jesus never used the word “Messiah” with regard to himself (although I’m not sure that he didn’t) but in John 1, 10 and 14 he identifies himself pretty definitely and more than once.

Is there really any ambiguity in his words: “I am the way, the truth and the life: no man cometh unto the Father but by me?”… In John 10 he says, “I am in the Father and the Father in me.” And he makes reference to being with God, “before the world was,” and sitting on the “right hand of God.”…

These and other statements he made about himself, foreclose in my opinion, any question as to his divinity. It doesn’t seem to me that he gave us any choice; either he was what he said he was or he was the world’s greatest liar. It is impossible for me to believe a liar or charlatan could have had the effect on mankind that he has had for 2000 years. We could ask, would even the greatest of liars carry his lie through the crucifixion, when a simple confession would have saved him?… Did he allow us the choice you say that you and others have made, to believe in his teachings but reject his statements about his own identity?

It was the same tack he used with Loyal Davis. In fact, Reagan frequently used this approach, privately and publicly. He employed it in several letters, as well as in self-written nationally syndicated radio addresses (for example, Christmas 1978).

And what of the roots?

Many readers will immediately recognize here an echo of C. S. Lewis’s formulation in “Mere Christianity,” best known as his classic “liar, Lord, or lunatic” argument.

Lewis advised people against taking that “really foolish” position that people often take about Christ: “I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept His claim to be God.” Lewis protested:

That is one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on the level of the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman and something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord or God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.

With his usual wit, Lewis confronted the popular assertion by some non-Christians that Christ should be recognized as a “great person” or “great teacher” or “great philosopher” but not as God or the Son of God. Lewis maintained that to assert that Christ was not the Son of God but still a great man is contradictory. Such a great man would be the greatest and most successful liar in human history, providing endless millions, even billions, with a false security and phony sense of salvation.

As for Reagan invoking Lewis, this tells us several things about the late president.

First, he went deep to help friends, loved ones, even strangers on matters of faith and conversion, whether in his private life or as governor of California or president of the United States. He considered this very much worth his time. Reagan’s faith wasn’t some shallow or passing interest. And clearly, Reagan not only read C.S. Lewis but internalized the renowned Englishman’s teachings. (As president, Reagan made open references to Lewis, including in the Evil Empire speech, and notably to the “Screwtape Letters,” which Reagan hailed as “unforgettable.”)

But above all, this latest Reagan disclosure, 36 years after it was written, and a decade-and-a-half after the man’s own rendezvous with the afterlife, further reveals a genuinely decent man worried about the souls of others. Here was a president engaged not only in statecraft in dealing with an atheistic empire, but in soulcraft in dealing with the eternal well-being of people like his atheistic father-in-law. (For more from the author of “President Reagan Once Carried out a Deathbed Intervention for a Dying Atheist” please click HERE)

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Reagan: ‘Pray That No Heroes Will Ever Have to Die for Us Again’

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This Memorial Day, in honor of those who sacrificed their lives in service to their countrymen, it is worth listening to President Ronald Reagan’s 1986 remarks at Arlington National Cemetery.

Take a momentary break from cookout planning and Memorial Day shopping to read along with President Reagan’s words and reflect on the Americans who died in faraway places so that we might live in freedom today.

Today is the day we put aside to remember fallen heroes and to pray that no heroes will ever have to die for us again. It’s a day of thanks for the valor of others, a day to remember the splendor of America and those of her children who rest in this cemetery and others. It’s a day to be with the family and remember. I was thinking this morning that across the country children and their parents will be going to the town parade and the young ones will sit on the sidewalks and wave their flags as the band goes by. Later, maybe, they’ll have a cookout or a day at the beach. And that’s good, because today is a day to be with the family and to remember.

Arlington, this place of so many memories, is a fitting place for some remembering. So many wonderful men and women rest here, men and women who led colorful, vivid, and passionate lives. There are the greats of the military: Bull Halsey and the Admirals Leahy, father and son; Black Jack Pershing; and the GI’s general, Omar Bradley. Great men all, military men. But there are others here known for other things.

Here in Arlington rests a sharecropper’s son who became a hero to a lonely people. Joe Louis came from nowhere, but he knew how to fight. And he galvanized a nation in the days after Pearl Harbor when he put on the uniform of his country and said, “I know we’ll win because we’re on God’s side.” Audie Murphy is here, Audie Murphy of the wild, wild courage. For what else would you call it when a man bounds to the top of a disabled tank, stops an enemy advance, saves lives, and rallies his men, and all of it single-handedly. When he radioed for artillery support and was asked how close the enemy was to his position, he said, “Wait a minute and I’ll let you speak to them.”

Michael Smith is here, and Dick Scobee, both of the space shuttle Challenger. Their courage wasn’t wild, but thoughtful, the mature and measured courage of career professionals who took prudent risks for great reward—in their case, to advance the sum total of knowledge in the world. They’re only the latest to rest here; they join other great explorers with names like Grissom and Chaffee.

Oliver Wendell Holmes is here, the great jurist and fighter for the right. A poet searching for an image of true majesty could not rest until he seized on “Holmes dissenting in a sordid age.” Young Holmes served in the Civil War. He might have been thinking of the crosses and stars of Arlington when he wrote: “At the grave of a hero we end, not with sorrow at the inevitable loss, but with the contagion of his courage; and with a kind of desperate joy we go back to the fight.”

All of these men were different, but they shared this in common: They loved America very much. There was nothing they wouldn’t do for her. And they loved with the sureness of the young. It’s hard not to think of the young in a place like this, for it’s the young who do the fighting and dying when a peace fails and a war begins. Not far from here is the statue of the three servicemen—the three fighting boys of Vietnam. It, too, has majesty and more. Perhaps you’ve seen it—three rough boys walking together, looking ahead with a steady gaze. There’s something wounded about them, a kind of resigned toughness. But there’s an unexpected tenderness, too. At first you don’t really notice, but then you see it. The three are touching each other, as if they’re supporting each other, helping each other on.

I know that many veterans of Vietnam will gather today, some of them perhaps by the wall. And they’re still helping each other on. They were quite a group, the boys of Vietnam—boys who fought a terrible and vicious war without enough support from home, boys who were dodging bullets while we debated the efficacy of the battle. It was often our poor who fought in that war; it was the unpampered boys of the working class who picked up the rifles and went on the march. They learned not to rely on us; they learned to rely on each other. And they were special in another way: They chose to be faithful. They chose to reject the fashionable skepticism of their time. They chose to believe and answer the call of duty. They had the wild, wild courage of youth. They seized certainty from the heart of an ambivalent age; they stood for something.

And we owe them something, those boys. We owe them first a promise: That just as they did not forget their missing comrades, neither, ever, will we. And there are other promises. We must always remember that peace is a fragile thing that needs constant vigilance. We owe them a promise to look at the world with a steady gaze and, perhaps, a resigned toughness, knowing that we have adversaries in the world and challenges and the only way to meet them and maintain the peace is by staying strong.

That, of course, is the lesson of this century, a lesson learned in the Sudetenland, in Poland, in Hungary, in Czechoslovakia, in Cambodia. If we really care about peace, we must stay strong. If we really care about peace, we must, through our strength, demonstrate our unwillingness to accept an ending of the peace. We must be strong enough to create peace where it does not exist and strong enough to protect it where it does. That’s the lesson of this century and, I think, of this day. And that’s all I wanted to say. The rest of my contribution is to leave this great place to its peace, a peace it has earned.

Thank all of you, and God bless you, and have a day full of memories.

“Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends,” John 15:13. To the men and women who have died to preserve the liberties that every American enjoys today, thank you. We remember. (For more from the author of “Reagan: ‘Pray That No Heroes Will Ever Have to Die for Us Again'” please click HERE)

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Shapiro: Is Trumpism the New Reagan Revolution?

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Last week, Ethics and Public Policy Center senior fellow Henry Olson released a revisionist look into the legacy of Ronald Reagan. The purpose: to recast Donald Trump in Reagan’s mold. According to Olson, Trump could be the New Reagan Revolution. Why? Because Reagan was not, in fact, “an anti-government ideologue.” Here is Olson’s breakdown of Reaganism:

Reagan’s conservatism was not a more attractive version of Barry Goldwater’s anti-statist ideology. From the moment Reagan started speaking out as a conservative in the late 1950s, he endorsed an active role for government. He believed that government should care for those who could not care for themselves, build public housing for the poor and expand public universities…Reagan’s conservatism even supported the idea of universal health coverage….Reagan did not shrink from endorsing government action when needed as governor or as president. He raised the gas tax in 1983 to fund road construction and repair. He also imposed sanctions on Japanese industries and companies for what he believed were unfair trade practices even as he sought to extend free-trade agreements throughout the world. Even Reagan’s support for immigration was limited by a belief in protecting U.S. workers….That’s not to say Reagan would have agreed with everything Trump says or does. But the overlap in their views on these issues stems from a broader overlap in philosophy.

And just like that – it’s magic! – Trump is the new Reagan.

Unfortunately, this is a dramatic overstatement of Reagan’s position in order to justify Trump’s. It turns Reagan into a big government advocate. He wasn’t. (Read more from “Want to Take Back Our Sovereignty? Start by Breaking up the Ninth Circuit” HERE)

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Pro-Life Leadership From the White House Can Change the Course of History. Reagan Did It, and So Can Trump

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It has been well-reported that the number of abortions in America has dwindled to below the number of abortions in 1973, the year Roe vs. Wade was decided. But one chart shows how extremely important pro-life leadership in the White House can change the course of history.

The Supreme Court’s 1973 decision in Roe vs. Wade encouraged millions of women to have abortions under the assumption that it was a right guaranteed to them by the United States Constitution. That decision was an absolute abomination and as the number of abortions rose exponentially in the first years after the decision, so too did the moral outrage in the hearts and minds of the people. But in 1980 that number reversed course, and the election of Ronald Reagan just might have changed history.

Ronald Reagan made pro-life arguments every single time the issue of abortion came up in his campaign for president. In one debate against John Anderson, who ran as an independent, (then-President Carter declined the debate) a question having to do with whether a president should be guided by organized religion on issues such as abortion was asked. Reagan defended the GOP platform and stated:

The litmus test that John says is in the Republican platform, says no more than the judges to be appointed should have a respect for innocent life. Now, I don’t think that’s a bad idea. I think all of us should have a respect for innocent life. With regard to the freedom of the individual for choice with regard to abortion, there’s one individual who’s not being considered at all. That’s the one who is being aborted. And I’ve noticed that everybody that is for abortion has already been born. I think that, technically, I know this is a difficult and an emotional problem, and many people sincerely feel on both sides of this, but I do believe that maybe we could find the answer through medical evidence, if we would determine once and for all, is an unborn child a human being? I happen to believe it is.

Reagan stated his pro-life views at a time when abortion was wildly popular, in fact, the most popular in all of American history. His courage in stating his views and connecting with the American people might just have turned the tide on the issue.

What many do not remember about back then was that large numbers of so-called “establishment Republicans” at the time embraced the Supreme Court’s ruling. They accepted it as the “law of the land” and wanted to move on from the issue. Indeed, President George H.W. Bush was a pro-abortion Republican as were Presidents Gerald Ford and Richard Nixon. Ronald Reagan was considered by these pro-abortion Republicans during the 1980 campaign to be “backward” on the issue. Still, he was able to make a clear case for life which helped him harness the issue for the American people.

Reagan biographer Craig Shirley characterized the leadership of Ronald Reagan at this point in history. As he said in an email, “Reagan not only freed millions behind the Iron Curtain but he also saved countless lives by being the first president to put a spotlight on the horrors of abortion.” Ever since, the Republican Party has been pro-life.

That’s why it’s so heartening to see Donald Trump take up the torch of life and run with it.

During the 2016 campaign, Trump’s comments on the subject of abortion were hard to sift through. If he wasn’t going over the top — for example, when he said that the woman has to have some sort of punishment, which made every pro-lifer cringe and denounce him — he was muddling the issue on the importance of defunding Planned Parenthood. Many conservatives had a very difficult time trying to figure out just what he would do as president. But only two weeks into his presidency, Trump has already done some significant things on the pro-life front.

First, Trump knocked down International Planned Parenthood’s recent eight-year-stint of population control experiments worldwide by reinstating Ronald Reagan’s Mexico policy. There has been many accolades for this move, but in fairness, George W. Bush also reinstated the policy when he took office. Trump then nominated a justice for the Supreme Court who has taken a clear pro-life position, even writing, “human life is fundamentally and inherently valuable, and that the intentional taking of human life by private persons is always wrong.”

I would challenge Donald Trump to further the pro-life movement by taking a strong stand on defunding Planned Parenthood. The reinstatement of Reagan’s Mexico City policy is good, really good, but it doesn’t go far enough and people may have it confused with actually defunding the private abortion corporation. There should be no quarter given to an organization as heinous as that one exposed by the Center for Medical Progress as profiting off of the death of millions of children who would not receive a decent burial. Instead, they are used as parts ready to be sold to the highest bidder. The American people clearly are turning away from abortion, they should certainly not be funding the nation’s largest provider and butcher shop.

Presidential leadership is often the key to attitudinal changes. If Donald Trump didn’t convince many that his intentions were true on the issue of life, he may be well on his way. But now that the number of abortions has dropped so significantly, it would be a mistake to believe the issue has taken care of itself.

President Trump must take a cue from Ronald Reagan, remember the American people who, during his campaign, so strongly demanded the defunding of Planned Parenthood, and encourage the Republican Congress to listen to the people who gave them the majority. (For more from the author of “Pro-Life Leadership From the White House Can Change the Course of History. Reagan Did It, and So Can Trump” please click HERE)

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30 Years Later, President Reagan’s 1986 Christmas Address Is More Relevant Than Ever

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On Dec. 20, 1986, President Ronald Reagan gave a national radio address, centering on the importance of family values. He thought the family unit had begun to lose its place in American society.

In his speech, Reagan made reference to Will and Ariel Durant, a married pair of Pulitzer Prize-winning philosophers who wrote a multi-volume work of history called “The Story of Civilization.”

“Will and Ariel Durant called the family ‘the nucleus of civilization.’ They understood that all those aspects of civilized life that we most deeply cherish — freedom, the rule of law, economic prosperity, and opportunity — that all these depend upon the strength and integrity of the family,” Reagan said.

“Yet, for all that,” he continued, “in recent decades the family has come under virtual attack. It has lost authority to government rule writers. It has seen its central role in the education of young people narrowed and distorted. And it’s been forced to turn over to big government far too many of its own resources in the form of taxation.”

Reagan’s remedy? Along with his honest, yet impactful, words speaking to the importance of the American family’s indispensable role, the president called on Americans to look toward the holy family in Bethlehem as a model: “[L]et us remember that in the midst of all the happy bustle of a season there is a certain quietness, a certain calm: the calm of one still night long ago and of a family — father, mother, and newborn child.”

Ronald Reagan’s message on family values is as relevant today as it ever was. Indeed, it is even more important today.

Consider: In 2015, over 40 percent of babies born in the U.S. were born to unmarried mothers. In 1986, the number stood around 25 percent.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, there were 9.9 million single mothers raising children younger than 18 last year. In 1985, that number was 7.7 million. Further, among women who gave birth in 2015, over 415,000 were simply cohabitating with a partner (i.e. not married).

A lot of ink has been dedicated over the years about the unmistakable correlation between lower crime rates and offspring from a traditional household. And it only makes sense; kids growing up with single moms miss out on the immeasurable benefits such as confidence and discipline fathers provide.

Children from broken homes are also significantly more likely to live in poverty, and are more likely to suffer from mental health problems (especially in single-mother homes) as a result of the stress and anxiety they may face growing up in an unstable and/or unpredictable environment.

Raising children in broken households is not good for our communities, not good for our country, and not good for our world.

So, what’s to be done?

The real solution to this problem is something Pres. Reagan looked to in 1986: the perfect example of filial love, humility, and sacrifice, exemplified by the holy family — and which we celebrate on Christmas.

Of course, the holy family represents an ideal. But, religious or not, it’s an ideal we would all be better off striving toward. (For more from the author of “30 Years Later, President Reagan’s 1986 Christmas Address Is More Relevant Than Ever” please click HERE)

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3 Things Reagan Said About Trade That Apply Today

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Ronald Reagan was an advocate of free trade throughout his presidency. But just like today, many Americans in the 1980s opposed free trade and pushed for measures that would keep the nation out of the global economy.

Fortunately, Reagan argued persuasively in support of trade, and his success led to rapid growth in the U.S. economy.

He knew that protectionist policies might benefit some industries, but they hurt others.

When the government gets involved in trade, special interests get a chance to game the system. These groups excel at making it hard to tell how their policies harm Americans.

In his 1987 economic report, Reagan explained how protectionism hurts consumers:

Whatever the motive, protection in any form redistributes income and wealth. And because the redistributive effects are usually not readily apparent, special interest groups sometimes favor and governments often choose these methods over other more visible and much less costly forms of subsidy. Protection raises the price of imports and domestically produced import-competing products.

Reagan realized that history provides many examples of the damage unfree trade policies can do.

Speaking to the nation in the summer of 1983, he reminded Americans that the United States has gone down the road of protectionism before—with disastrous results. He said:

One economic lesson of the 1930s is protectionism increases international tensions. We bought less from our trading partners, but then they bought less from us. Economic growth dried up. World trade contracted by over 60 percent, and we had the Great Depression. Young Americans soon followed the American flag into World War II.

Free trade has the opposite effect, which Reagan knew well. Speaking at a reception in Tokyo on Nov. 10, 1983, he succinctly summarized his philosophy on trade, stating:

The message I want to leave with everyone here tonight is simple. It’s a lesson history has taught us again and again. Protectionism hurts everyone, but free trade benefits all.

Ronald Reagan was right about trade, and the exceptional economic growth during his presidency provides proof.

Research conducted by The Heritage Foundation shows a clear correlation between low trade barriers and economic prosperity. Today, we must remember that free trade leads to more prosperity for all, while protectionism hurts American consumers and producers. (For more from the author of “3 Things Reagan Said About Trade That Apply Today” please click HERE)

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GOP Adopts Reaganesque Stance on Religious Liberty

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Rights of conscience are under assault not only in the United States, but all over the globe. The draft of the 2016 Republican platform, as adopted Tuesday evening, doesn’t mince words about what party’s position on the issue.

The platform language also takes a strong stance on global human rights, especially the right of conscience (religion, speech, association, etc), which are under ever-increasing assault worldwide. 2015 Pew polling found that 77 percent of the world’s population lives in a country with either “high” or “very high overall level restrictions on religion.”

At one point, an amendment was proposed striking language condemning the Castro regime and Obama administration’s policy of opening the door to Havana, arguing that the best way to improve the regime is through trade and open dialogue. This was promptly shut down by others on the committee, who remember the failure of improving the Chinese regime through trade.

In particular, the original language states that “China’s behavior has negated the optimistic language” of the 2012 platform.

“The liberalizing policies of recent decades have been reversed” under Xi Jinping it reads, with “dissent brutally crushed, religious persecution heightened and the cult of Mao revived.”

The committee added additional language on “International Religious Freedom” in the draft, which condemns both religious oppression in the sorts of regimes mentioned above and the Obama administration’s neglect of the role of the United States Committee on International Religious Freedom, a bipartisan watchdog group championed by GOP congressmen in the late 1990s. Additionally, the GOP platform promises to restore religious freedom advocacy to a prominent place in diplomatic negotiations.

USCIRF “has been neglected by the current Administration at a time when its voice more than ever needs to be heard,” according to the original draft of the language obtained by CR. “A Republican Administration will return the advocacy of religious liberty to a central place in its diplomacy.”

Finally, the document directly addresses the plight of Christians, Yazidis and other religious minorities in the Middle East, who have suffered genocide at the hands of ISIS since the Jihadist insurgency’s rise to power in the summer of 2014. The adopted language formally acknowledges ISIS’ actions as genocide and even supports the creation of a safe haven for religious minorities in Northern Iraq.

This language comes at a time when the rights of conscience are under assault not only in America, but around the world. Prisoners of conscience still languish in prisons and face arbitrary arrests in communist regimes like China, Cuba, and Vietnam, Russia is cracking down on religious expression, and ISIS has been committing genocide against religious minorities in Iraq and Syria for two years now.

Furthermore, these trends have shown no reversal whatsoever under President Obama, whose administration has cut deals with totalitarian regimes, effectively shrugged at China’s human rights record, brazenly opened the door to Cuba, and whose Middle East policies have given rise to an international Jihadist insurgency under ISIS.

In an age of global persecution, Americans need a policy on global human rights reminiscent of the kind Reagan enacted on behalf of dissidents in the Soviet Union and elsewhere. These sections of the Republican platform offer an example of what that might look like in the 21st century. (For more from the author of “GOP Adopts Reaganesque Stance on Religious Liberty” please click HERE)

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Trump vs. Reagan: What Is a Conservative?

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Many of Donald Trump’s supporters have compared him to Ronald Reagan. It is quite instructive that Trump himself picked up the 1980 Reagan campaign slogan, “Let’s Make America Great Again.” Trump speaks positively of Ronald Reagan, and, like Reagan, claims to be a conservative.

“Of course Trump is a conservative,” writes a Trump enthusiast at Townhall. “Actually on the most important issues of the day, he’s the most conservative GOP Presidential candidate since Reagan.”

Many longtime Reagan conservatives beg to differ. The Trump comparisons make them bristle.

But if Trump insists he is a conservative, then it is incumbent upon him to do something that ought to be fairly simple: explain how and why he is a conservative. He should tell us—as Reagan often did—what conservatism means.

That was never a problem for Ronald Reagan. Reagan remains the prototype of modern conservatism. He is the ideology’s standard-bearer. In the dictionary next to the word “conservative” there should be a photo of Ronald Reagan.

So, let’s start with Reagan’s understanding of conservatism—a good yardstick with which to try to size up Trump. In fact, to narrow the comparison even tighter, I will go with a Reagan definition of conservatism that he provided prior to the presidency, without the aid of a White House speechwriter scripting him.

On February 6, 1977, Reagan spoke to CPAC, the Conservative Political Action Conference, a venue he would address no less than 13 times through his final year in the White House, not missing a single CPAC during any year of his presidency. (Donald Trump bailed out of CPAC this year.)

On this particular date, which happened to be Reagan’s 66th birthday, he acknowledged that conservatism is often described differently by “those who call themselves conservatives.” Nonetheless, differing claims by different people calling themselves “conservatives” does not mean that we cannot identify certain common conservative principles. To that end, Reagan stated:

The common sense and common decency of ordinary men and women, working out their own lives in their own way—this is the heart of American conservatism today. Conservative wisdom and principles are derived from willingness to learn, not just from what is going on now, but from what has happened before.

The principles of conservatism are sound because they are based on what men and women have discovered through experience in not just one generation or a dozen, but in all the combined experience of mankind. When we conservatives say that we know something about political affairs, and that we know can be stated as principles, we are saying that the principles we hold dear are those that have been found, through experience, to be ultimately beneficial for individuals, for families, for communities and for nations—found through the often bitter testing of pain or sacrifice and sorrow.

There’s a definition that every self-professing conservative needs to take to heart and mind. It is one you could find in conservative classics, such as Russell Kirk’s The Conservative Mind, or glean from decades of reading William F. Buckley’s flagship publication of the conservative movement, National Review, or from the older Human Events—all of which Ronald Reagan read assiduously. Reagan had an informed comprehension of conservatism because he devoured these writings. He did the intellectual heavy lifting that facilitated his full conversion from a 1940s New Deal FDR liberal to a conservative trying to save the Republican Party from the Rockefeller Republicans who were not conservatives.

What Reagan said here in February 1977 is worth underscoring: The essence of conservatism is to preserve and conserve time-tested values that have endured for good reason and for the best of society, for citizens, for country, and for order—internal and external order (see Kirk’s The Roots of American Order). Again, think about that definition. Do not fall for the Leftist canard that cruelly caricatures conservatism as merely wanting to preserve anything and everything from the past, from slavery to Jim Crow to women not voting. Quite the contrary, conservatives want to preserve the values and ideals that are timeless and time-tested for the benefit of humanity, not the detriment. We conservatives cling to and seek to conserve and preserve not just any ideas but worthy ideas. If we merely sought to keep any, say, 19th century idea, then why aren’t we fighting for Marxism or some variant of socialism, as many of our “progressive” friends still do? That isn’t conservatism, regardless of what you heard about it from some liberal professor or clicked in a Google search.

In that same speech to CPAC, Ronald Reagan enunciated a number of conservative principles and positions: freedom and liberty, free markets, religious freedom, constitutional rights and protections, anti-communism, smaller government, local government, individualism, voluntarism, communities, families, self-reliance, hard work, common sense, reason, faith in God. (In my book on Reagan conservatism, I distill 11 principles that I believe capture Reagan conservatism.) He called for a prudent and just government that spends money wisely and whose stewards act with integrity and honesty. Here, too: we need a nation comprised of outer order and inner order, a virtuous government that is the product of virtuous citizens.

And finally, Reagan told CPAC that the time had come “to present a program of action based on political principle that can attract those interested in the so-called ‘social’ issues and those interested in ‘economic’ issues.” He wanted a complete conservatism that combined the two core strands of contemporary American conservatism (the social and economic) into “one politically effective whole.”

There is much more I could say about this, but let’s pivot to Donald Trump’s explication of conservatism. I’ll consider the two recent occasions where Trump was asked to give a definition.

In New Hampshire during an ABC News debate in February, Trump was asked point blank, “What does it mean to be a conservative?” In response, Trump stated:

Well, I think I am, and to me, I view the word conservative as a derivative of the word “conserve.” We want to conserve our money. We want to conserve our wealth. We want to conserve. We want to be smart. We want to be smart where we go, where we spend, how we spend. We want to conserve our country. We want to save our country. And we have people that have no idea how to do that, and they are not doing it. And it’s a very important word and it’s something I believe in very, very strongly.

Ironically, this definition (I’ve provided the entirety of Trump’s statement) does not suggest that he believes in conservatism “very, very strongly.” He might believe in conserving money and wealth very, very strongly, which is fine, but that isn’t a definition of conservatism.

There is no sense in Trump’s statement of any grounding let alone a rich or nuanced cognizance of conservative philosophy.

What’s worse, Trump gave that definition with a look of surprise and unpreparedness—with a deer-in-the-headlights look. That is worse because only two weeks prior he was asked the same question in an interview on CBS’s “Face the Nation,” where his response was shockingly dismal. The candidate this time should have been equipped to give a better answer.

That other Trump definition, offered to CBS in January, was at best a stream of consciousness, with occasional disconnected outbursts of random policy observations. Here is (verbatim) what he told CBS when asked for his definition of a conservative:

Well, I think it’s a person that doesn’t want to take overly risk. But I think that’s a good thing. I think it’s a person that wants to—in terms of government, I’m talking about—a person that wants to conserve, a person that wants to, in a financial sense, balance budgets. A person that feels strongly about the military, and I feel very strongly about the military. And, you know, you have some of these people they don’t even want to focus on the military, our military is falling apart. I feel very, very, and I have always felt very, very strongly about the military. By the way, if you look at vision, when you look at the word “vision,” I was the one that said, “take the oil,” I’ve been saying that for years, and I said, “take the oil, let’s take the oil,” and nobody would listen, then all of a sudden after Paris they started saying “maybe that’s right, we’ll take the oil.” They still don’t do it the proper way. You know, I was—which is a little bit different than a normal conservative—but I was very much opposed to the war in Iraq. A lot of these guys were all for the war in Iraq, look what that’s got us: We spent $2 trillion, we lost thousands of lives, we have nothing, we’re now handing Iraq over, just handing over to Iran. Iran is going to take over Iraq, and I said that was going to happen. I said that years ago, in 2003-2004, that Iran will take over Iraq with the largest oil reserves in the world. And that’s not a conservative position. When I was, you know, saying, don’t go into Iraq—I’m a very militaristic person, I’m very much into the military, and we’ll build our military bigger, better, stronger than ever before, but—and that’s safe, that’s actually the cheapest thing to do, opposed to what we have right now, but I was opposed to the war in Iraq. Most conservatives were gung-ho. I mean, these guys, every one of them, wanted the war in Iraq. Look where it got us.

Here again, what I’ve quoted is the entirety of Trump’s response. My transcript leaves out nothing.

Trump’s “definition” is, in short, anything but a picture of conservatism. To the contrary, what you just read is a picture of a non-conservative exploiting a conservative movement in order to try his hand at getting elected president via the Republican Party—the party of Reagan conservatism.

This definition from Trump is confusing, incoherent, and incomprehensible, and it is a vindication of legitimate concerns by true conservatives that Donald Trump as the GOP’s new standard-bearer is poised to do enduring damage to the modern conservative movement that Ronald Reagan did so much to advance.

Is Donald Trump a Reagan conservative? Certainly not by any definition he has hazarded to try to give. (For more from the author of “Trump vs. Reagan: What Is a Conservative?” please click HERE)

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