This Pro-Death
Penalty Quote from the late President Ronald Reagan is dedicated to all the
victims and their families as it is the 2013 National Crime Victims’ Rights Week.
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President
Ronald Reagan
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QUOTE: Reagan had faced the
dilemma [of a governor's role in capital punishment] while serving as governor
of California, Reagan recalled the demonstrators who regularly paraded in front
of the governor's mansion. With a slight chuckle, the president mentioned how
some Christian ministers began tolling their bells in anticipation of the
execution. "I told them, 'If you toll your bells
every time somebody is murdered, I won't mind if you do it every time the state
executes a killer." [Focus on murder victims while
considering capital punishment (Source: Lessons From a Father to His Son, by John
Ashcroft p.138-139 , May 5, 1998)]
AUTHOR: Ronald Wilson Reagan (February 6,
1911 – June 5, 2004) was the 40th President of the United States (1981–1989),
the 33rd Governor of California (1967–1975), and prior to that, a radio, film
and television actor. Reagan was born in Tampico in Whiteside County, Illinois,
reared in Dixon in Lee County, Illinois, and educated at Eureka College in
Eureka, Illinois, with a Bachelor of Arts degree in economics and sociology.
Upon his graduation, Reagan first moved to Iowa to work as a radio broadcaster
and then in 1937 to Los Angeles, California. He began a career as an actor,
first in films and later television, appearing in over 50 movie productions and
earning enough success to become a famous, publicly recognized figure. Some of
his most notable roles are in Knute Rockne, All American and Kings Row. Reagan
served as president of the Screen Actors Guild, and later spokesman for General
Electric; his start in politics occurred during his work for GE. Originally a
member of the Democratic Party, he switched to the Republican Party in 1962.
After delivering a rousing speech in support of Barry Goldwater's presidential
candidacy in 1964, he was persuaded to seek the California governorship,
winning two years later and again in 1970. He was defeated in his run for the Republican
presidential nomination in 1968 as well as 1976, but won both the nomination
and election, defeating incumbent Jimmy Carter in 1980. As president, Reagan
implemented sweeping new political and economic initiatives. His supply-side
economic policies, dubbed "Reaganomics", advocated reducing tax rates
to spur economic growth, controlling the money supply to reduce inflation,
deregulation of the economy, and reducing government spending. In his first
term he survived an assassination attempt, took a hard line against labor
unions, and ordered an invasion of Grenada. He was reelected in a landslide in
1984, proclaiming that it was "Morning in America". His second term
was primarily marked by foreign matters, such as the ending of the Cold War,
the 1986 bombing of Libya, and the revelation of the Iran-Contra affair.
Publicly describing the Soviet Union as an "evil empire", he
supported anti-communist movements worldwide and spent his first term forgoing
the strategy of détente by ordering a massive military buildup in an arms race
with the USSR. Reagan negotiated with General Secretary of the Communist Party
of the Soviet Union Mikhail Gorbachev, culminating in the INF Treaty and the
decrease of both countries' nuclear arsenals. Reagan left office in 1989. In
1994, the former president disclosed that he had been diagnosed with
Alzheimer's disease earlier in the year; he died ten years later at the age of
93. Although a polarizing figure to some on the American left, he often ranks
highly in public opinion polls of U.S. Presidents. Moreover, as a popular
conservative icon, he is credited for generating an ideological renaissance on
the American political right.
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