Common themes link Reagan and Lincoln's presidencies

If you ask any registered Republican today, especially one running for the presidency, who they admire most, it is guaranteed to be Ronald Reagan.

Who wouldn't? Even the sound of his name is magical. It rolls off the tongue, Ronald Reagan. Anyone alive during his administration was captivated by his sonorous voice and his engaging smile. Even Democrats were charmed.

He was everyone's grandfather or friendly uncle. His cool comportment during the crisis of his near assassination created legends. As a physician I could only imagine the feeling in the air as he was wheeled into the operating room at George Washington University Medical Center.

He was bleeding to death in hypovolemic shock with a bullet in his chest. The surgical team would be scrubbed and gowned with their gloved hands held up at the elbow to keep them germ free. Caps hid their heads of hair and their faces were covered with masks, their identity unknown to the president.

In that solemn moment with his life and history riding on the next several minutes, the president quipped, "I hope you are all Republicans." To the patient came back the answer, "We are all Americans."

At the end of his term in office there was another proclamation we will always remember. It was his demand to Mikhail Gorbachev, then head of the Soviet Union's Communist Party, to "tear down this wall." Berlin and the world were never the same.

In spite of Reagan's immense popularity, I am a bit disappointed that at least one of the candidates, when asked about heroes, didn't say Abraham Lincoln.

There is a common theme that links the 16th and the 40th presidents of the United States. Both hated and fought slavery. The first battled the tyranny of our own creation, and the latter the totalitarian enslavement of whole nations.

We desperately need leaders who will continue the fight against slavery. Today there is not just one type of enslavement. There is the slavery of ignorance, fear, greed/debt and meanness.

The chains binding other human beings by race have been broken, and the Soviet gulags are dismantled. Nonetheless there are too many of us, regardless of color or political persuasion, that are bound by these different captivities.

Freedom from ignorance demands both the creation of excellent schools and an attitude of lifelong learning. Lincoln's limited year of formal education did not stop him from continuous discovery.