Ronald Reagan was credited with being the master of symbolism, but it is doubtful that he delayed his earthly arrival one day so that his 100th birthday would be today, Super Bowl Sunday.

Memory will fade about his charm, his movie career and his humor. Reagan will last long past those who remember him personally, because he was the best spokesman for conservative ideas in American history.

Words, in fact, do matter. In 1964 Ronald Reagan burst onto the national scene with one of the most powerful speeches ever made in the political arena, a fundraising appeal for Republican presidential contender Barry Goldwater, titled: “A Time for Choosing.”

I was 14. I listened intently, and then sent $5 of my hard-earned money from sorting pop bottles at Souder’s General Store (normally used for baseball cards) to Goldwater for President. Not too long after, I formed one of the earliest Young Americans for Freedom high school chapters at Leo.

Reagan laid out the challenges we faced from communism and from statism at home. His stirring conclusion moved thousands to action.

“You and I know and do not believe that life is so dear and peace so sweet as to be purchased at the prices of chains and slavery. … Should Moses have told the children of Israel to live in slavery under the pharaohs? Should Christ have refused the cross? Should the patriots at Concord Bridge have thrown down their guns and refused to fire the shot heard ’round the world? The martyrs of history were not fools, and our honored dead who gave their lives to stop the advance of the Nazis didn’t die in vain.

“You and I have the courage to say to our enemies, ‘There is a price we will not pay.’ ‘There is a point beyond which they must not advance.’

“You and I have a rendezvous with destiny.

“We’ll preserve for our children this, the last best hope of man on earth, or we’ll sentence them to take the last step into a thousand years of darkness.”

I was but a speck in a sea of thousands of people inspired to action by “the Speech.” Three California businessmen were inspired enough to push, and fund, Reagan’s upset win as governor of California.

“A Time for Choosing” was not new. Reagan was developing his core speech with similar language on tour for General Electric in the 1950s. But the man who drove him around to GE plants his first year recited a story of Reagan’s bumping into some kids in the Rhode Island state capitol building, and in impromptu remarks saying: “You and I, my young friends, have a rendezvous with destiny. If we flop, at least our kids can say of us that we justified our brief moment here. We did all that could be done.”

A self-made man

Ronald Reagan made Ronald Reagan.

His years battling the Communist takeover of the actor’s unions in Hollywood in the 1940s led to his view of the conflict’s not just being a military battle. His work for GE and meeting thousands of American workers, business managers and civic leaders helped him develop a clear vision of what America should be.

In all versions of the speech, he wove a seamless story that the threat to our freedom was from an “evil empire” abroad and government takeover of our lives at home.

His speeches roamed from foreign policy, his history in the movie unions to contemporary stories of government meddling in the economy. Centralized power was the consistent menace in all. Communism was just the extreme form.

In the speech, Reagan declares: “We have so many people who can’t see a fat man standing beside a thin one without coming to the conclusion the fat man got that way by taking advantage of the thin one.” I like this line so much that I twice used it in my campaign radio ads. It perfectly captures liberalism, and the tendency to use government as a means to force its view of equality rather than leaving people free to choose. Reagan understood the battle for ideas.

All this absurdity about President Obama trying to model himself after Ronald Reagan is a lot of why liberalism continues to fail: They continue to think Reagan was about style rather than substance.

All the rest would be lost if Ronald Reagan weren’t the foremost advocate of basic principles that most Americans still believe in.

And he stood up defiantly for them, in private and in public.

Consistently conservative

Reagan is best known for his leadership in toppling communism and his successful economic policy, but his conservative views also included social issues. Chief of staff Jim Baker wanted Reagan to drop discussion of abortion for political peace.

According to former Reagan speechwriter Peter Robinson, Baker said, “There’s just no reason to go into it all over again.”

Reagan replied: “Well Jim, I just don’t know about that.”

All human life is sacred, he explained, and then had the speechwriters instead insert a recent article about tiny babies experiencing pain much sooner than had previously been thought.

Reagan assistant Dick Darman was furious, later yelling at the speechwriters that their job was to “protect Reagan from Reagan.”

Nobody successfully did, because Reagan was Reagan long before the others were ever around.

He endures because his ideas, and his steadfast defense of them, still matter today.

Ultimately – and many conservatives fail to understand this – Reagan compromised multiple times on almost every principle. He knew the difference between a speech and turning something into a law.

He began, after all, as a labor negotiator.

But by sounding a clear, certain trumpet for fundamental American principles, when he cut the deal, it was usually at 80-20, not 50-50.

Reagan’s words and ideas almost sound as if they were written precisely to respond to this president this year. We need to cut federal spending, reduce government regulation, stand up to those who would destroy us, be proud of America (not apologize for it), and defend our traditional values.

Because Reagan’s cause was transcendent, future generations will continue to seek that shining city on a hill he so often spoke about. Somebody really should have proposed putting him on the dime.