While you cannot top the Founding Fathers or Abraham Lincoln, it is important to recognize political leaders who have defended and sought to conserve their legacy in years when it was under attack.It’s no coincidence that Calvin Coolidge was born on the Fourth of July. A hero of limited government, a precursor to Ronald Reagan’s supply-side revolution, and a friend of civil rights by the standard of the time, the 30th president didn’t really get his due even on the Right until Amity Shlaes’s Coolidge in 2013.
But the Harding-Coolidge years were a period where Republicans governed successfully while being recognizably conservative by modern standards and demonstrably less racist than much of the Democratic Party. Coolidge did this without Warren G. Harding’s baggage or Herbert Hoover’s backsliding.Instead, Silent Cal has been unfairly maligned in school textbooks and blamed by lazy liberal historians and Keynesian economists for causing the Great Depression. His immigration policy views may be back in style, but his commitment to fiscal discipline and smaller government is not.Coolidge deserves better.
Samuel J. Abrams, contributor:When asked to name a hero from American history, most people think of presidents, generals, or civil rights leaders. Mine is Harrison “Jack” Schmitt — geologist, Apollo 17 astronaut, U.S. senator, and the first scientist to walk on the moon.I had the rare privilege of knowing Jack. Decades ago, he was generous enough to give me all the time I needed, patiently answering my many questions. What impressed me was not the singularity of his achievements but the consistency of his character. After helping write one of the great chapters in American history, he devoted himself to public service, scientific inquiry, and quiet citizenship. There was no self-importance in him, only intellectual seriousness, humility, curiosity, and a deep sense of obligation to the country he had served in extraordinary ways.The Apollo program showed what a free society can achieve when it invests in knowledge and ambition. Jack spent the decades that followed demonstrating something equally important, namely that genuine greatness is measured not only by what we accomplish, but by the character with which we carry those accomplishments for the rest of our lives.
