Let's remember what life was like when we had a real President.
Not a neurotic self-righteous Baptist preacher wanna-be, or a Yale patrician, or an Arkansas Bubbah who never could keep it in his pants, or a patrician's son who understood little past loyalty to himself, or a leftist who dedicated his life to the demise of the country.
A President.
We miss you, Gipper.
Showing posts with label Ronald Reagan 100th Birthday. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Ronald Reagan 100th Birthday. Show all posts
Tuesday, August 23, 2011
Monday, February 7, 2011
Happy Birthday, President Reagan. We Miss You Terribly.
OldSouth has been wondering how best to join the chorus of voices honoring the 100th birthday of Ronald Reagan. So many others have done so much, so well. And hopefully, we will all continue to tell his story, and our story in light of his. Our children and grandchildren deserve to hear about this man, given the venal midgets Clinton and Obama, and the well-meaning dunces Bush and Bush, who have occupied the White House since.
So, OS looked through a few previous posts, and found this one from a few months ago, Memorial Day of 2010. It recounts his remarks of Memorial Day, 1986. Reagan, unlike so many in our day, believed that words have meaning and power, and that they should be simple, memorable, and unequivocal. He loved words. And, unlike the crowd now in the White House, he loved America and freedom with his whole heart.
So, in honor of the Gipper, OS would remind you of the closing words of that address from 1986. They were so typical of Mr. Reagan: simple, true, and from the heart. May God in his mercy grant us another like him in our day, even though we don't deserve it.
I know that many veterans of Vietnam will gather today, some of them perhaps by the wall. And they’re still helping each other on. They were quite a group, the boys of Vietnam—boys who fought a terrible and vicious war without enough support from home, boys who were dodging bullets while we debated the efficacy of the battle. It was often our poor who fought in that war; it was the unpampered boys of the working class who picked up the rifles and went on the march. They learned not to rely on us; they learned to rely on each other. And they were special in another way: They chose to be faithful. They chose to reject the fashionable skepticism of their time. They chose to believe and answer the call of duty. They had the wild, wild courage of youth. They seized certainty from the heart of an ambivalent age; they stood for something.
And we owe them something, those boys. We owe them first a promise: That just as they did not forget their missing comrades, neither, ever, will we. And there are other promises. We must always remember that peace is a fragile thing that needs constant vigilance. We owe them a promise to look at the world with a steady gaze and, perhaps, a resigned toughness, knowing that we have adversaries in the world and challenges and the only way to meet them and maintain the peace is by staying strong.
That, of course, is the lesson of this century, a lesson learned in the Sudetenland, in Poland, in Hungary, in Czechoslovakia, in Cambodia. If we really care about peace, we must stay strong. If we really care about peace, we must, through our strength, demonstrate our unwillingness to accept an ending of the peace. We must be strong enough to create peace where it does not exist and strong enough to protect it where it does. That’s the lesson of this century and, I think, of this day. And that’s all I wanted to say. The rest of my contribution is to leave this great place to its peace, a peace it has earned.
Thank all of you, and God bless you, and have a day full of memories.
So, OS looked through a few previous posts, and found this one from a few months ago, Memorial Day of 2010. It recounts his remarks of Memorial Day, 1986. Reagan, unlike so many in our day, believed that words have meaning and power, and that they should be simple, memorable, and unequivocal. He loved words. And, unlike the crowd now in the White House, he loved America and freedom with his whole heart.
So, in honor of the Gipper, OS would remind you of the closing words of that address from 1986. They were so typical of Mr. Reagan: simple, true, and from the heart. May God in his mercy grant us another like him in our day, even though we don't deserve it.
I know that many veterans of Vietnam will gather today, some of them perhaps by the wall. And they’re still helping each other on. They were quite a group, the boys of Vietnam—boys who fought a terrible and vicious war without enough support from home, boys who were dodging bullets while we debated the efficacy of the battle. It was often our poor who fought in that war; it was the unpampered boys of the working class who picked up the rifles and went on the march. They learned not to rely on us; they learned to rely on each other. And they were special in another way: They chose to be faithful. They chose to reject the fashionable skepticism of their time. They chose to believe and answer the call of duty. They had the wild, wild courage of youth. They seized certainty from the heart of an ambivalent age; they stood for something.
And we owe them something, those boys. We owe them first a promise: That just as they did not forget their missing comrades, neither, ever, will we. And there are other promises. We must always remember that peace is a fragile thing that needs constant vigilance. We owe them a promise to look at the world with a steady gaze and, perhaps, a resigned toughness, knowing that we have adversaries in the world and challenges and the only way to meet them and maintain the peace is by staying strong.
That, of course, is the lesson of this century, a lesson learned in the Sudetenland, in Poland, in Hungary, in Czechoslovakia, in Cambodia. If we really care about peace, we must stay strong. If we really care about peace, we must, through our strength, demonstrate our unwillingness to accept an ending of the peace. We must be strong enough to create peace where it does not exist and strong enough to protect it where it does. That’s the lesson of this century and, I think, of this day. And that’s all I wanted to say. The rest of my contribution is to leave this great place to its peace, a peace it has earned.
Thank all of you, and God bless you, and have a day full of memories.
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