Bob Barr Quotes

Steve Jobs and Bill Gates did as much to win the Cold War as anyone…. The idea that Ronald Reagan won the Cold War is ludicrous.

Reagan gave essentially the same speech from the beginning to the end of his political career, which was always, 'The American people are great, the government always screws things up, let's get the government out of the way.' On the foreign policy side it was, 'Communism is bad, and we're going to defeat it.'

All Americans and freedom-loving people around the world owe President Reagan our deepest gratitude for his strong, principled leadership that ended the Cold War and brought freedom to millions of people.

Reagan won the Cold War by first restoring America's economy and military and then staring down an economically weakened Soviet Union. He knew defeating Russia couldn't be accomplished without laying the groundwork.

Reagan never cottoned to dictators. He was pure in this notion in a true belief that democracy was the best solution in the world because it spoke to people's hopes and dreams and aspirations, freedom of religion, freedom of speech, freedom of speech.

My only thought about Margaret Thatcher is the same one I had about Ronald Reagan. I hated a lot of what they did, but once in a while a country just needs a change.

Ronald Reagan offered us an international vision divided between the free world and the evil empire. Even if this was a cartoonish view, it helped us make sense of everything from Star Wars to industrial policy.

My feeling is that it's a misreading of history to say that, as the Reagan supporters do, that Reagan won the Cold War.

With his trademark courage and conviction, President Reagan led us out of the Cold War, spreading his vision of freedom, resulting in the release of millions of people from the yoke of communism.

Ronald Reagan in foreign affairs, I think, was someone who had certain, very general ideas, general propositions by which he lives: To combat communism, to build up the American military power to assure our national security against any conceivable threat.

It is well known that my husband and Lady Thatcher enjoyed a very special relationship as leaders of their respective countries during one of the most difficult and pivotal periods in modern history. Ronnie and Margaret were political soul mates, committed to freedom and resolved to end Communism.

Two famous happy warriors - Reagan and his political soulmate, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher - knew they were fighting their own ideological and external wars. But they did so with the sunny dispositions and positive outlooks of those who knew they were on the right side of history.

Labour was always aligned with the U.S. during the Cold War, but the ignominious implosion of communism reinforced the belief that no alternative to the prevailing common sense was possible.

Without Jimmy Carter we might not have gotten Ronald Reagan, without Ronald Reagan there would probably still be a Soviet Union.

Margaret Thatcher was a 20th century visionary who understood the power of individual freedom versus the tyranny of government collectivism. She was a loyal supporter and friend of the United States and her terms as prime minister were marked as the beginning of the resurgence of the economy of the United Kingdom.

Our real battlefield today is Asia and our real battle is the one between democracy and communism.... We have to prove to the world and particularly to downtrodden areas of the world which are the natural prey to the principles of communist economics that democracy really brings about happier and better conditions for the people as a whole.

I do not believe that Communism will overwhelm the free world.

The conflict between communism and freedom is the problem of our time. It overshadows all other problems.

Shouldn't someone tag Mr. Kennedy's 'bold new imaginative program' with its proper age?" Reagan wondered. "Under the tousled boyish haircut it is still old Karl Marx.

In the 1980s and 1990s, radical change in economic policies fostered by Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher put the brakes on government planning and ushered in a new free-market supply-side era and a two-decade boom. That model has been abandoned in the new century. This must be reversed.

Politically at that time, with Thatcher in Britain and Reagan in the White House, it wasn't looking too great for the Left. And we were always on the left.

Nothing is more false than the notion that the triumph of Communism is inevitable or that the Communists are steadily pushing the free world into a corner.

We are all living in a world shaped by Reagan and his ideology of small 'l' liberalism.

Many of Reagan's listeners thought he was dreaming. But Reagan had faith in freedom. He knew that communism, although militarily powerful, was ideologically dead. He knew what our Founders knew: that, in a truly legitimate government, power does not come out of the barrel of a gun, but only from the consent of the people.

Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher did more to liberate people by defeating the Soviet Union and freeing eastern Europe than the Obamas, the Clintons, and Kerrys of this world ever have. They were all on the wrong side of that debate.