ABSTRACT
Like his personal hero Franklin Roosevelt, Ronald Reagan changed our minds and reshaped our vision about rewarding individual achievement and the role of government and the bureaucratic state. Reagan preached the wonders of economic opportunities and human liberty as well as advocating an abiding faith in the glories of free market capitalism rather than an over-reliance on an ever expanding federal government. Admiring risk takers and entrepreneurs, he saw individuals, not the federal government, as the creative force in modern society and believed that they should be given greater scope and control over their destinies. A visionary, he saw growth and progress as derived mainly from individual effort and competition, not collective action and the public provision of goods and services.
