Posted on 06/07/2004 7:43:41 AM PDT by BigWaveBetty
Remarks at an Ecumenical Prayer Breakfast in Dallas, Texas
August 23, 1984
Thank you, ladies and gentlemen, very much. And, Martha Weisend, thank you very much. And I could say that if the morning ended with the music we have just heard from that magnificent choir, it would indeed be a holy day for all of us.
It's wonderful to be here this morning. The past few days have been pretty busy for all of us, but I've wanted to be with you today to share some of my own thoughts.
These past few weeks it seems that we've all been hearing a lot of talk about religion and its role in politics, religion and its place in the political life of the Nation. And I think it's appropriate today, at a prayer breakfast for 17,000 citizens in the State of Texas during a great political convention, that this issue be addressed.
I don't speak as a theologian or a scholar, only as one who's lived a little more than his threescore ten -- which has been a source of annoyance to some -- [laughter] -- and as one who has been active in the political life of the Nation for roughly four decades and now who's served the past 3\1/2\ years in our highest office. I speak, I think I can say, as one who has seen much, who has loved his country, and who's seen it change in many ways.
I believe that faith and religion play a critical role in the political life of our nation -- and always has -- and that the church -- and by that I mean all churches, all denominations -- has had a strong influence on the state. And this has worked to our benefit as a nation.
Those who created our country -- the Founding Fathers and Mothers -- understood that there is a divine order which transcends the human order. They saw the state, in fact, as a form of moral order and felt that the bedrock of moral order is religion.
The Mayflower Compact began with the words, ``In the name of God, amen.'' The Declaration of Independence appeals to ``Nature's God'' and the ``Creator'' and ``the Supreme Judge of the world.'' Congress was given a chaplain, and the oaths of office are oaths before God.
James Madison in the Federalist Papers admitted that in the creation of our Republic he perceived the hand of the Almighty. John Jay, the first Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, warned that we must never forget the God from whom our blessings flowed.
George Washington referred to religion's profound and unsurpassed place in the heart of our nation quite directly in his Farewell Address in 1796. Seven years earlier, France had erected a government that was intended to be purely secular. This new government would be grounded on reason rather than the law of God. By 1796 the French Revolution had known the Reign of Terror.
And Washington voiced reservations about the idea that there could be a wise policy without a firm moral and religious foundation. He said, ``Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, Religion and morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that man (call himself a patriot) who (would) labour to subvert these . . . finest [firmest]\1\ (FOOTNOTE) props of the duties of men and citizens. The mere Politician . . . (and) the pious man ought to respect and to cherish (religion and morality).'' And he added, ``. . . let us with caution indulge the supposition, that morality can be maintained without religion.''
(FOOTNOTE) \1\White House correction.
I believe that George Washington knew the City of Man cannot survive without the City of God, that the Visible City will perish without the Invisible City.
Religion played not only a strong role in our national life; it played a positive role. The abolitionist movement was at heart a moral and religious movement; so was the modern civil rights struggle. And throughout this time, the state was tolerant of religious belief, expression, and practice. Society, too, was tolerant.
But in the 1960's this began to change. We began to make great steps toward secularizing our nation and removing religion from its honored place.
In 1962 the Supreme Court in the New York prayer case banned the compulsory saying of prayers. In 1963 the Court banned the reading of the Bible in our public schools. From that point on, the courts pushed the meaning of the ruling ever outward, so that now our children are not allowed voluntary prayer. We even had to pass a law -- we passed a special law in the Congress just a few weeks ago to allow student prayer groups the same access to schoolrooms after classes that a young Marxist society, for example, would already enjoy with no opposition.
The 1962 decision opened the way to a flood of similar suits. Once religion had been made vulnerable, a series of assaults were made in one court after another, on one issue after another. Cases were started to argue against tax-exempt status for churches. Suits were brought to abolish the words ``under God'' from the Pledge of Allegiance and to remove ``In God We Trust'' from public documents and from our currency.
Today there are those who are fighting to make sure voluntary prayer is not returned to the classrooms. And the frustrating thing for the great majority of Americans who support and understand the special importance of religion in the national life -- the frustrating thing is that those who are attacking religion claim they are doing it in the name of tolerance, freedom, and openmindedness. Question: Isn't the real truth that they are intolerant of religion? [Applause] They refuse to tolerate its importance in our lives.
If all the children of our country studied together all of the many religions in our country, wouldn't they learn greater tolerance of each other's beliefs? If children prayed together, would they not understand what they have in common, and would this not, indeed, bring them closer, and is this not to be desired? So, I submit to you that those who claim to be fighting for tolerance on this issue may not be tolerant at all.
When John Kennedy was running for President in 1960, he said that his church would not dictate his Presidency any more than he would speak for his church. Just so, and proper. But John Kennedy was speaking in an America in which the role of religion -- and by that I mean the role of all churches -- was secure. Abortion was not a political issue. Prayer was not a political issue. The right of church schools to operate was not a political issue. And it was broadly acknowledged that religious leaders had a right and a duty to speak out on the issues of the day. They held a place of respect, and a politician who spoke to or of them with a lack of respect would not long survive in the political arena.
It was acknowledged then that religion held a special place, occupied a special territory in the hearts of the citizenry. The climate has changed greatly since then. And since it has, it logically follows that religion needs defenders against those who care only for the interests of the state.
There are, these days, many questions on which religious leaders are obliged to offer their moral and theological guidance, and such guidance is a good and necessary thing. To know how a church and its members feel on a public issue expands the parameters of debate. It does not narrow the debate; it expands it.
The truth is, politics and morality are inseparable. And as morality's foundation is religion, religion and politics are necessarily related. We need religion as a guide. We need it because we are imperfect, and our government needs the church, because only those humble enough to admit they're sinners can bring to democracy the tolerance it requires in order to survive.
A state is nothing more than a reflection of its citizens; the more decent the citizens, the more decent the state. If you practice a religion, whether you're Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, or guided by some other faith, then your private life will be influenced by a sense of moral obligation, and so, too, will your public life. One affects the other. The churches of America do not exist by the grace of the state; the churches of America are not mere citizens of the state. The churches of America exist apart; they have their own vantage point, their own authority. Religion is its own realm; it makes its own claims.
We establish no religion in this country, nor will we ever. We command no worship. We mandate no belief. But we poison our society when we remove its theological underpinnings. We court corruption when we leave it bereft of belief. All are free to believe or not believe; all are free to practice a faith or not. But those who believe must be free to speak of and act on their belief, to apply moral teaching to public questions.
I submit to you that the tolerant society is open to and encouraging of all religions. And this does not weaken us; it strengthens us, it makes us strong. You know, if we look back through history to all those great civilizations, those great nations that rose up to even world dominance and then deteriorated, declined, and fell, we find they all had one thing in common. One of the significant forerunners of their fall was their turning away from their God or gods.
Without God, there is no virtue, because there's no prompting of the conscience. Without God, we're mired in the material, that flat world that tells us only what the senses perceive. Without God, there is a coarsening of the society. And without God, democracy will not and cannot long endure. If we ever forget that we're one nation under God, then we will be a nation gone under.
If I could just make a personal statement of my own -- in these 3\1/2\ years I have understood and known better than ever before the words of Lincoln, when he said that he would be the greatest fool on this footstool called Earth if he ever thought that for one moment he could perform the duties of that office without help from One who is stronger than all.
I thank you, thank you for inviting us here today. Thank you for your kindness and your patience. May God keep you, and may we, all of us, keep God.
Thank you.
Thank you President Reagan!
The Blue Snooties (Mostly men) I worked with were a strange group. They didn't have any political discussion with me, lowly sec'y, but they had no trouble telling me how horrible southern men were to women. You can imagine the look I shoot back at hearing that.
This group of 15 was the rudest, nasties, most condescending clutch of know nothings I've ever had the displeasure to work with.
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But Mae has it right, GWB carries younger vote in a bigtime! This will be their revolution against their liberal parents. :-)
God Bless Nancy and President Reagan, May God give you comfort Mrs. Reagan.
I love that woman in the background grinning at them.
I'll admit, when I saw the recorded footage of Nancy beside the casket tonight on the news, I burst into tears.
That's priceless.
And never fear, the miserable, envious reprobates MUST throw in their two bits:
Associated Press: "Over two terms, from 1981 to 1989, Reagan reshaped the Republican Party in his conservative image, fixed his eye on the demise of the Soviet Union and Eastern European communism and tripled the national debt to $3 trillion in his single-minded competition with the other superpower."
BBC: "His foreign policy was criticised for being in disarray. . . . His October 1983 invasion of the small Caribbean island of Grenada was dismissed as a clumsy sham. Then there were his gaffes. . . . The report [from Congress on the Iran-contra kerfuffle] was seen as a devastating indictment of Mr Reagan's style of government. . . . More of a figurehead than a strong leader with a grasp for detail . . ."
Reuters, in the lead paragraph of an obituary: "Ronald Reagan, who died on Saturday at 93, was one of the great mysteries in American politics--was he the man in charge or simply a puppet, the master politician or a manipulated performer?" (Hey Reuters, isn't one man's manipulated performer another's freedom fighter?)
Reading stuff like this reminds us of just how similar the complaints about President Bush are to those about Reagan when he was in office: "cowboy," "simplistic," "warmonger," "dim-witted," "figurehead." The only one missing is "movie actor," and in a particularly imaginative bit of Bush-bashing, the Times' Alessandra Stanley manages to disparage the current president for not being an actor:
After American troops seized Baghdad, President Bush donned a flight suit and landed by jet fighter on an aircraft carrier festooned with the words "Mission Accomplished." Mr. Reagan stopped wearing costumes when he left Hollywood. Yesterday, he once again stole the show.
Stanley's colleague Adam Nagourney tries to find hope for the Democrats: "Some Republicans said the images of a forceful Mr. Reagan giving dramatic speeches on television provided a less-than-welcome contrast with Mr. Bush's own appearances these days, and that it was not in Mr. Bush's interest to encourage such comparisons."
Well, maybe. Certainly Bush isn't as eloquent as Reagan was. Then again, neither is John Kerry. When Bush speaks, you often imagine Reagan might have said the same thing better. When Kerry speaks, you imagine Reagan would disagree--assuming he could even figure out what Kerry was saying. I love BotW.
Natan Sharansky (né Anatoly Shcharansky), the Soviet dissident turned Israeli official, tells a story of Reagan in today's Jerusalem Post:
In 1983, I was confined to an eight-by-ten-foot prison cell on the border of Siberia. My Soviet jailers gave me the privilege of reading the latest copy of Pravda. Splashed across the front page was a condemnation of President Ronald Reagan for having the temerity to call the Soviet Union an "evil empire." Tapping on walls and talking through toilets, word of Reagan's "provocation" quickly spread throughout the prison. We dissidents were ecstatic. Finally, the leader of the free world had spoken the truth--a truth that burned inside the heart of each and every one of us.
Let's remember that Reagan took a lot of flak for that statement--from many of the same people who now criticize President Bush for, among other things, identifying the axis of evil. In 1983 they agreed with Pravda rather than Sharansky. Apparently they are condemned to repeat history.
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'He Is a Very Famous Man'
Ronald Reagan made no public appearances during the last decade of his life, but in November 1997 the New York Times published an article that provided a glimpse into his twilight years and the toll Alzheimer's disease was taking. We managed to find a copy on the Web site of the Standard-Times of New Bedford, Mass., and here are two anecdotes that stuck with us all these years:
In February 1996, George Shultz went to visit his old boss, Ronald Reagan, at the former president's home in the Bel Air neighborhood of Los Angeles. He drank tea with Reagan and his wife, Nancy, and talked a little politics. In all, he stayed perhaps an hour.
That night Shultz, the former secretary of state, received a call from Mrs. Reagan, who told him that "something poignant happened today that you would like to know about."
At one point in the visit, Reagan had left the room briefly with a nurse. When they came back, Mrs. Reagan went on, "he said to the nurse: 'Who is that man sitting with Nancy on the couch? I know him. He is a very famous man.' " . . .
This summer, walking in Armand Hammer Park near his home, Reagan was approached by an elderly tourist and his 12-year-old grandson, Ukrainian emigres now living near Toledo, Ohio. They spoke with him for a moment, and the grandfather snapped a picture of the boy sitting with the former president. An article about the encounter, and the picture, appeared first in The Toledo Blade and then in newspapers around the country.
The other day, the grandfather, Yakob Ravin, recalled their meeting.
"We went to the park, for a picnic, with our friends," he said. "And then we saw President Reagan. And we began to cheer him, and said, 'Mr. President, thank you for everything you did for the Jewish people, for Soviet people, to destroy the communist empire.'
"And he said, 'Yes, that is my job.' "
Last month, as the Baltimore Sun notes, Mrs. Reagan said at a Beverly Hills, Calif., fund-raiser that "Ronnie's long journey has finally taken him to a distant place where I can no longer reach him." Joanne Drake, Mr. Reagan's chief of staff: "While it is an extremely sad time for Mrs Reagan, there is definitely a sense of relief that he is no longer suffering and that he has gone to another place."
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Patriotic in Hindsight
In an editorial on the 60th anniversary of D-Day, the New York Times argues that today's war just doesn't meet the high standard set by World War II:
It's tempting to politicize the memory of a day so full of personal and national honor, too easy to allude to the wars of our times as if they naturally mirrored World War II. The iconic starkness of the forces that met on the beaches of Normandy makes that temptation all the greater. But beyond the resemblance of young soldiers dying in wars 60 years apart, there is no analogy, and that is something we must remember today as well. D-Day was the result of broad international accord. By D-Day, Europe had been at war--total war--for nearly five years, at profound cost to its civilian population. American civilians, in turn, had willingly made enormous material sacrifices to sustain the war effort. There was no pretense that ordinary life would go on uninterrupted and no assumption that America could go it alone.
So in the Times' view, a war of liberation is worthwhile only if it's a "total war" that lasts "nearly five years," entails a "profound cost to [the] civilian population" and "enormous material sacrifices" and "no pretense that ordinary life would go on uninterrupted." We guess Sept. 11 wasn't "profound" enough for the Times. How many American civilians do the terrorists have to kill before the paper's editorialists will deign to approve of our country's efforts?
And what's this about a "broad international accord"? If we remember our history right, at least three major countries--Germany, Italy and Japan--weren't on America's side of World War II. Italy and Japan both have troops in Iraq, even if Germany was pro-Saddam. Seems to us two out of three ain't bad. Stories at Best of the Web.
A sign of how the MediaCrats really don't "get it":
This morning both the NY Times and the WashPost have prison-abuse headlines ABOVE their Reagan coverage.
Communist Cuba harshly criticized Reagan in its first public reaction to his death, saying Monday: ``He who never should have been born has died.''
``As forgetful and irresponsible as he was, he forgot to take his worst works to the grave,'' the government's Radio Reloj station said in an editorial broadcast across the Caribbean island. link.
WHEN ABC News broke the sad news of Ronald Reagan's death Saturday afternoon, it sent its competitors into a frenzy. The press corps traveling with President Bush in Normandy first heard the news when ABC's White House reporter Terry Moran began doing a live report in their midst. The reaction, according to one eyewitness, was "total chaos — people running everywhere, knocking into things." CNN's John King yelled into his cellphone that CNN had been beaten and was so upset he threatened to quit. King ended his tantrum by throwing his cellphone to the ground. Bad move: his meltdown was captured on tape. [It just doesn't get any better than this, folks!] So just how did ABC get such a big jump? The network refused comment, but insiders credit ABC News chief David Westin. Apparently, working the phones produces better results than throwing them.
And this:
JENNIFER Lopez was in such a hurry to marry Marc Anthony because she has a baby on the way, sources say. A guest at Saturday's quickie surprise wedding told our source that Lopez, called "Lola" by her bridegroom, is pregnant. Another friend confirmed that La Lopez has been telling close pals she's expecting. ...
NOT only were John Kerry's sched uled New York and Los Angeles star-studded fund-raiser concerts next week with everyone from Barbra Streisand to Whoopi Goldberg both scratched, but Jann Wenner's VIP cocktail party, which was to precede the June 10 Madison Square Garden affair and was to have everyone from Bette Midler to Paul Newman, was also scratched.
Tickets to both fund-raisers were slow. Tough for Kerry to catch a break. A convention coming up? Former President Clinton has a book coming out. These Los Angeles and Madison Square Garden concerts? Former President Reagan makes his final farewell. Trying for TV? Current President Bush is all over with D-Day. Hoping for mobs? Smarty Jones got the biggest overflow crowd ever. A week he's in town we had Tony Soprano, Tony Awards, even the marriage de jour of J.Lo to another Tony, Marc Anthony.
Incredible. If there was just one more civilian fatality, the Times would be screaming bloody murder. Thus the hypocrisy of the left, I suppose.
Bush may suffer from Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. ....
Bush has shown a "lifelong streak of sadism," ranging from "childhood pranks (using firecrackers to explode frogs)" to "insulting journalists, gloating over state executions ... [and] pumping his fist gleefully before the bombing of Baghdad." .... The rest of this tripe.
Wouldn't that just FROST the "Rock the Vote" crowd?
I stayed home yesterday from work to see the casket moved and for the ceremony and because I wanted to see the crowds of people paying their respects. I burst into tears too, when Nancy laid her cheek on the casket - and I was so heartened by Patti holding her hand throughout the service and holding her mom while at the casket - telling private things to each other and the younger comforting the older. It was really beautiful. I'm taking off Wed and Friday, too, not just because I hate to miss history, but because I want to feel the power of the man one more time.
Are you sure that didn't come from Nancy Pelosi's office? (she refuses to release any comment on Reagan's life and death - what a dried up 'ol prune she is, bless her heart.)
You're not corny. He wasn't corny. I'm not corny. We BELIEVE in the American spirit. We BELIEVE this is the greatest country on earth (and it is). We BELIEVE in being proud of Old Glory and we BELIEVE human life is valuable and is meant for purpose. Lastly, we BELIEVE good will eventually triumph over evil and we BELIEVE we have to be part of that fight. You are welcome in my foxhole anytime, sweets (and bring your pie recipes!).
Nancy Pelosi, NY Times, Radio Reloj, John Kerry ... who can tell? Birds of a feather.
That was just beautiful and you have me in tears.
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