British historian Andrew Roberts, in a speech at Hillsdale College at a ceremony dedicating a statue of President Ronald Reagan, praised the "moral courage" and leadership abilities of our 40th president. Roberts, the well-respected author of numerous works of history, credited Reagan for policies that produced the longest period of sustained economic growth in the 20th century and brought down the Soviet empire.

The key to Reagan's success, Roberts said, was his willingness to resist the conventional wisdom of his time and ignore the slings and arrows of numerous critics who wrote him off as stupid, ignorant, and dangerous. In fact, Reagan was a widely read and thoughtful man with a steely will and determination to restore Americans' faith in their country after the setbacks of the 1970s.

Reagan, unlike the proponents of detente, understood the vulnerabilities of the
Soviet system and sought to exploit them. He understood that communism was "fundamentally opposed to the deepest and best impulses of human nature." He had the moral courage to "turn away from containment" and pursue a strategy to liberate Eastern Europe from Soviet control. The late historian John P. Diggins called Reagan one of the three great liberating presidents in U.S. history (Lincoln and FDR being the other two).