"Freedom" is probably the word he said more than any other. He used the word freedom constantly. I think for some his frequent calls for freedom became a clichรฉ because he did it so often. They didn't get it, but Reagan certainly did. He thought deeply about the relationship between God and human freedom and the nonrelationship between atheistic communism and that freedom.
Paul KengorI was a child or didn't live through those presidents prior to [Ronald] Reagan, and thus didn't realize how little attention they had paid to the founders.
Paul KengorReagan loved and respected his father, Jack Reagan. But if there was a father figure to Reagan in the religious sense, it was Ben Cleaver. What Reagan's father didn't provide spiritually, from a fatherly point of view, Cleaver did.
Paul KengorRonald Reagan [ cite the founders] on behalf of emphasizing the faith of our founders, of limited government, of the uniqueness and exceptionalism of America, of a nation with a people facing another historic challenge beyond the American Revolution, and in contrasting the system of the United States with the system of the USSR.
Paul Kengor