In response to Paul Dunn’s April 4 column on President Ronald Reagan, your comments were foul!

Reagan was never a liberal Democrat. He was always conservative and left the Democratic Party when it turned left. His cooperation with the FBI during the period when Hollywood went really, really left was in keeping with being an honest and loyal constitutional republic citizen.

The idea of putting Reagan’s face on the $50 bill is a fine gesture, but we should stop tinkering with what is and focus on what should be. Mount Rushmore is not an option either. We have great leaders there, and I take umbrage with any suggestion that anyone else should be up there.

To honor our greatest Americans is a time-honored practice. Reagan must be honored in more ways than having an airport named for him but not on the currency unless we create a new instrument worthy of such an honor for him.

The only evidence I need to support him as the greatest president in the modern era is to point to his “trickle down” economics, which boosted this country to great heights only to be squandered by the Clinton administration.

He almost single-handedly pushed the Russians into submission with his far-reaching plans for the so-called Star Wars technology.

They could not keep up and were forced to withdraw and attempt another end run toward world domination such as Putin and Medvedev’s current attempts to resurrect Russia as a main player on the world stage.

They will fail again as long as we put Congress back into conservatives hands in November 2010 and replace the current administration in 2012 with another Ronald Reagan.

Short of that, we are doomed to socialism and being subjected to second-class citizen status.

Rodney K. Ward

Pinehurst