Recipients
Former President George H.W. Bush, who was awarded the medal on February 6, 2007, the anniversary of Ronald Reagan's 96th birthday, remarked, "I wish I had a little Ronald Reagan in me when it came to communicating with the American people. Had I been blessed with my predecessor's remarkable skill, who knows? I might still be employed." On a more serious note, he said later in the speech: "Working with Ronald Reagan was one of the greatest joys of my life." Bush served as Reagan's Vice President for the eight years that Reagan was President.
On September 17, 2008, the award was presented to former Soviet dissident Natan Sharansky by former first lady Nancy Reagan.
- 1992 – Mikhail Gorbachev, former General Secretary of the Soviet Union
- 1993 – General Colin Powell, former National Security Advisor to President Reagan
- 1994 – Yitzhak Rabin, former Prime Minister of Israel
- 1995 – King Hussein I, then King of Jordan
- 1997 – Bob Hope, former entertainer.
- 1998 – Margaret Thatcher, former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom
- 2000 – The Reverend Billy Graham, evangelical minister
- 2002 – Rudy Giuliani, former mayor of New York
- 2007 – George H. W. Bush, former President of the United States, served under Reagan as Vice President of the United States
- 2008 – Natan Sharansky, former KGB prisoner, human rights activist, Israeli politician.
- 2011 – Lech Walesa, former Solidarity leader and former president of Poland
Read more about this topic: Ronald Reagan Freedom Award
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“The proclamation and repetition of first principles is a constant feature of life in our democracy. Active adherence to these principles, however, has always been considered un-American. We recipients of the boon of liberty have always been ready, when faced with discomfort, to discard any and all first principles of liberty, and, further, to indict those who do not freely join with us in happily arrogating those principles.”
—David Mamet (b. 1947)