Tuesday, March 19, AD 2024 6:24am

Ronald Reagan: For God and Country

The things that you find on YouTube.  Ronald Reagan in a training film for Army chaplains, For God and Country (1943).  Much higher production values than the average training film, and I found it moving.   Reagan was assigned to the 1rst Motion Picture Unit of the United States Army Air Corps.  During the War it made some 400 training films for the Army.

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Joe Green
Joe Green
Wednesday, March 21, AD 2012 7:56am

I’ll concede that compared to the current crop of politicians, Ronnie looks good. However, While it is easy to feel misty-eyed about good ol’ Dutch exuding sunlight from that ever-smiling actor studio’s face, there are other images that persist:
• A clearly winded Ronnie, in his second term, falling asleep in front of the Pope.
• Trading arms for hostages.
• Running a trillion-dollar national debt to three trillion, thanks to lot of money for tanks, bombs and missiles.
• Ordering the bombing of Libya, which resulted in several deaths, including that of Khaddafi’s adopted daughter, on flimsy evidence that that country was behind the bombing of a Berlin nightclub.
* Ordering bloody military actions to suppress social and political change in El Salvador, Nicaragua, Guatemala and Afghanistan. He even admitted the U.S. intervention into Lebanon was one of his biggest regrets.
• His low opinion of Martin Luther King Jr. Reluctantly signed MLK holiday. Asked if King was a communist sympathizer, Reagan responded: “We’ll know in 35 years, won’t we?” referring to sealed documents.
Hollywood-trained that image was everything, substance nothing, Reagan was scripted to the core, from host of GE’s TV theater, reading from a cue card, to the schamltzy “touch of the face of God” speech after the Challenger astronauts died – most of his speeches written by the likes of Peggy Noonan and Pat Buchanan.
Like both Bushes, Reagan was never very hard-working, put in a 9 to 5 day five days a week, napped often and vacationed at his palatial ranch in California with a moon-faced Nancy perpetually guarding the gates and fending off the press.
Perhaps given undue credit for “defeating” the Soviet Union “without firing a shot” is the biggest mistake conventional wisdom makes in the instant rush to write history. Reagan’s “evil empire” speech had no effect on the Russians, as Gorby and others said, but rather it came at a time when the USSR was overburdened by massive defense spending in an attempt to keep up with Reagan’s runaway Pentagon budget.
But who wants to spoil Americans’ image of Reagan atop a white horse, metaphorically leading the charge against the “Evil Empire,” cowboy hat jauntily placed amid the orange-dyed locks with the Battle Hymn of the Republic crescendoing in the background.
To be sure, Reagan had some good qualities such as connecting with the masses. Some, however, would prefer to remember him as “The Great Prevaricator” rather than “The Great Communicator.” He told some whoppers.
Of course, all presidents lie – it’s how they get elected and keep office for the most part. I’ll give Reagan credit for at least being able to read the script virtually flawlessly. Poor George W. Bush. He was not only the most intellectually shallow person ever to occupy the White House, he also mispronounces the most elemental words.
Although I’d hold my nose and vote for Romney, he is no Reagan. The last good President we had was Ike but most on here weren’t even born yet when he ran the show. The prosperity, peace and unity of the fifties, Korea notwithstanding, will never been duplicated again.
Even with Rubio on the ticket, Romney will stumble during the final months of the campaign as the Obama propaganda machine gets into full gear, the MSM making sure that their boy gets another 4 years to seal the country’s doom.
I’ve said before that if that happens, resources permitting, I would become an ex-pat and although my first choice would be Costa Rica, I am thinking that I would settle into a cheap apartment in Rome to be near the Vatican, which I would visit every day to help restore my now weak Catholic belief. In short, I have given up on America.

T. Shaw
T. Shaw
Wednesday, March 21, AD 2012 10:33am

Joe,

I’m looking at NZ and Chile, too. Rome: hadn’t thought of that. Worth a look. Wait until the euro crashes.

I remember Ike and the ’50’s and ’60’s. I was dealing with a salesman 10 years younger than me and he lamented having come of age in the ’70’s. I had to agree.

Guys like you and I may be unhappy now. At least we can look back on better times – the best years of our lives. The young ones never had it GOOD, and things will get worse.

God help them.

Joe Green
Joe Green
Wednesday, March 21, AD 2012 11:42am

Mr. Shaw. Just finished Pat Buchanan’s book, Suicide of a Superpower, which renewed my nostalgia for the “good old days,” along with Stephen King’s Book, 11-22-63, which also transported me back to a better age.

I no longer identify with the current or previous generation and suppose I’ve become embittered and misogynistic in my old age, pining for an era of simplicity and civility that no longer exists. Which is why my Catholic faith is returning because it is the one thing I can cling to as I hopefully merit God’s grace and go to a far better place.

For me, Keats, in Ode to a Grecian Urn, sums up life on this earth: “Beauty is truth and truth beauty. Tis all ye know on earth and all ye need to know.”

PM
PM
Wednesday, March 21, AD 2012 1:35pm

T. Shaw and Joe Green – I also remember and value as a standard, the civility and simplicity of life until the early 60’s when the balance in life started to go heavily toward the material here and now and lighter on innocence, faith, and reason. The young and children have such a different way with life these days (computers and dangers). I marvel at what I was unaware of even at age 21. It’s interesting to think of alternative residencies (the depth of being near the only outpost of Truth)( often think of my mother’s cousin in Italy who would never visit here), but I’m at a loss and the logistics are overwhelming … I think it was Franz Kafka, who wrote ‘A Clean, Well-Lit Room’. And, Jesus, in so many ways, warned against taking the things of the world to follow Him. He also said to keep lamps ready for when He returns. I don’t want to be out of oil for my lamp at that time. At least here – familiarity.

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Wednesday, March 21, AD 2012 4:00pm

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Joe Green
Joe Green
Wednesday, March 21, AD 2012 5:24pm

Don, thanks for adding some perspective and balance to my rather harsh critique of the Gipper. In retrospect I’d take him over any president in the past 60 years. However, I’d put Ike on Rushmore so make room for one more.

John Nolan
John Nolan
Thursday, March 22, AD 2012 1:25pm

Europeans also have a lot to thank Reagan for, particularly those in central Europe. In 1994 I ran into some Poles in Budapest who insisted on buying me a drink and whose only English was ‘Ronald Reagan’ and ‘Margaret Thatcher’. Eisenhower’s second term is now viewed much more positively, and it’s a pity that Nixon wasn’t elected in 1960 – there would have been no Berlin Wall, no Cuban missile crisis and quite possibly no Vietnam War.

On a liturgical note – although he holds the paten correctly between first and second fingers, the thumb and forefinger of the left hand are not conjoined, and the slight bows in the Libera nos are omitted.

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