The Liberator of East Central Europe and Central America, the leader who made the U.S. believe in itself again, the man who changed the world forever, we remember our great President Ronald Reagan.

He was the father of the modern democratic revolution.

Just consider what the world was like before Reagan became our leader. In the backwash of the 1960s and the moral mud of the Carter era, revolution was the province of violent charlatans like Che Guevara. After Reagan, they became something different, beginning with the Velvet Revolution. Reagan knew that freedom was a concept engraved on every human heart. And he never lost hope in anyone, no matter who or where they were in the world. He believed.

No leader I have ever seen has ever scaled Reagan’s brilliance and goodness.

“Whatever else history says about me when I’m gone, I hope it will record that I appealed to your best hopes, not your worst fears; to your confidence, rather than your doubts,” Mr. Reagan told the nation in 1992. “My dream is that you will travel the road ahead with liberty’s lamp guiding your steps and opportunity’s arm steadying your way.”

Rest in peace, our cherished leader of the free world.