Ronald Reagan: For God and Country

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.

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.”