Happy Birthday, Mr. President

February 06, 2013 | By JONATHAN WOOD

Today we celebrate the 102nd birthday of Ronald Reagan.  Our friends at the Heritage Foundation have a number of posts celebrating the life of President Reagan, and particularly his importance to the cause of economic freedom.

President Reagan has a special place in the history of PLF, which was formed by attorneys from then-Governor Reagan’s welfare reform team, at the urging of his chief of staff, and legal adviser, Ed Meese.  To celebrate PLF’s 39th anniversary, we prepared this video reflecting on that history and the importance of President Reagan to the liberty movement:

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GycL3b5UmEI[/youtube]

On Mr. Reagan’s 100th birthday, former PLF attorney M. David Stirling reflected on the influence of Mr. Reagan’s ideas on his own political evolution.  In his tribute, David recalled a 1976 newspaper commentary that Mr. Reagan penned on the importance of freedom promoting legal organizations, like PLF, to the cause of freedom.

There are always plenty of government Goliaths ready to bully us into living the way they want us to.  Fortunately, we still have a few freedom-loving Davids around to put them in their places.  Here is a modern David-and-Goliath story that took place recently in Los Angeles, where I live and work.  It is a classic example of how government [in this case the State of California] can become an arrogant bully, and equally classic example of how a few courageous citizens, armed with a knowledge of their rights, can put the bully to flight … Enter ‘David,’ a small, non-profit public interest law firm called the Pacific Legal Foundation … and Goliath crawled back into his State Capital bureaucracy to nurse his wounds … the next time [Goliath] comes out Pacific Legal Foundation will be ready for him.  You can fight City Hall … you can even fight the State House and that’s good to know.

Thanks to the inspiration of Ronald Reagan and the people that support his visions of freedom and limited government, the Pacific Legal Foundation, and other organizations in the growing liberty movement, will continue to help individuals stand up for their rights against government abuses.