Our parties are the Democrats and the Republicans as electoral and governing bodies, liberals and conservatives in ways of thinking. Increasingly, Democrats are liberals and Republicans are conservatives, the phenomenon known as polarization, by which we more and more divide ourselves politically, in our parties, by our ways of thinking. We tend to think as partisans facing opponents.

In the last years of Ronald Reagan's life, his voluminous writings on politics, policy, and people finally emerged and offered a Rosetta stone by which to understand him. From 1975 to 1979, in particular, he delivered more than 1,000 radio addresses, of which he wrote at least 680 himself.