If you’ve got ten minutes, it might do your patriotic spirit good to watch a couple snips of speeches from opposite ends of Ronald Reagan’s political career:

• The first I came across while perusing Prof. Jacobson’s blog: “Those who would trade our freedom for the soup kitchen of the welfare state have told us they have a utopian solution of peace without victory; they call their policy ‘accommodation,’ and they say that if we’ll only avoid any direct confrontation with the enemy, he’ll forget his evil ways and learn to love us.”
• The second is presented on Ocean State Republican as an answer to Obama’s supporters: “All great change in America begins at the dinner table, so tonight in the kitchen, I hope the talking begins. And children, if your parents haven’t been teaching you what it means to be an American, let ’em know and nail ’em on it. That would be a very American thing to do.”

It’s tempting to bemoan that “they don’t make ’em like Reagan anymore,” but they do. We just have to find them — and support them.