Extraordinary AQS, signed “Ronald Reagan,” one page on an 8.5 x 11 sheet of his personal letterhead, no date [circa 1965]. In full: One hundred years ago Lord Macauley said, ‘Rome was over run and conquered by the Barbarians in the fifth century A.D.’ In the middle of the 20th century America will be over run and destroyed but with this difference. Ancient Rome’s Barbarians came from without—Americas Barbarians will have been created by her own Democratic institutions and will come from within.” The consignor, chairman of the Wisconsin Young Republican Convention in the mid-1960s, explains that he originally obtained the item from Reagan as the result of a request for contributions to a fund-raising auction, and retained the item when the auction was cancelled due to insufficient donations. Reagan’s frank, startling “prediction” is especially resonant in light of the strong antisubversive posture that characterized his entire political career. From his efforts to root out Communists as president of the Screen Actors Guild in the McCarthy era, to his hard-line law-and-order stance as Governor of California, to his famous 1982 speech condemning the Soviet Union as the “evil empire”—it is clear, indeed, that defending America against “barbarians” was one of the central concerns of Reagan’s political philosophy. Such strongly worded and politically significant statements in Reagan’s own hand are of the utmost interest and rarity. Small, unobtrusive bend to top margin, otherwise very fine, immaculate condition. Auction LOA John Reznikoff/PSA/DNA and R&R COA.
