Ronald Reagan: Fate, Freedom, and the Making of History

Following his departure from office, Ronald Reagan was marginalized thanks to liberal biases that dominate the teaching of American history.

John Patrick Diggins
John Samples

John Samples directs Cato’s Center for Representative Government, which studies campaign finance regulation, delegation of legislative authority, term limits, and the political culture of limited government and the civic virtues necessary for liberty. He is an adjunct professor at Johns Hopkins University. Samples is the author of The Struggle to Limit Government: A Modern Political History and The Fallacy of Campaign Finance Reform. Prior to joining Cato, Samples served eight years as director of Georgetown University Press, and before that, as vice president of the Twentieth Century Fund. He has published scholarly articles in Society, History of Political Thought, and Telos. Samples has also been featured in mainstream publications like USA Today, the New York Times, and the Los Angeles Times. He has appeared on NPR, Fox News Channel, and MSNBC. Samples received his Ph.D. in political science from Rutgers University.

Jonathan Clarke
Steven Hayward

A Cato Institute Book Forum featuring the author, John Patrick Diggins, Professor of History, City University of New York Graduate Center; with comments by Jonathan Clarke, Senior Fellow, Carnegie Council; and Steven Hayward, F. K. Weyerhaeuser Fellow, American Enterprise Institute. Moderated by John Samples, Cato Institute. Following his departure from office, Ronald Reagan was marginalized thanks to liberal biases that dominate the teaching of American history, says John Patrick Diggins. Yet Reagan, like Lincoln (who was also attacked for decades after his death), deserves to be regarded as one of our three or four greatest presidents. Reagan was a far more active president and far more sophisticated than we ever knew. His negotiations with Mikhail Gorbachev and his opposition to foreign interventions demonstrate that he was not a rigid hawk. And in his pursuit of Emersonian ideals and his distrust of big government, he was the most open-​minded libertarian president the country has ever had, combining a reverence for America’s hallowed historical traditions with an implacable faith in the limitless opportunities of the future.