The Guild 6-7-2004 President Reagan remembered

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.''

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.

A sign of how the MediaCrats really don't "get it":

The MediaCrats have Ph.d's in not getting it. Last Tuesday at President Bush's news conference he said something that made me sit up straight...

...we heard from the new Iraqi government, by the way, today, and the new Prime Minister who stood up and thanked the American people, for which I was grateful. He was speaking to the -- to the mothers and dads and wives and husbands of our brave troops who have helped them become a free country, and I appreciated his strong statement. Link

Grumbling to myself, certainly that bit of news should be on the nightly news networks. So I decided to test it and at the appointed time, switched back and forth with all the big three. Nope, not one network ran the story in the first 15 minutes. And CBS's lead story was the audio tape of Enron employees cheering over bilking California grannies and whooping it up hoping that GWB would be elected.

I could take it no more but waited until the weekend's events had quieted down and then sent a letter to abc, cbs and nbc telling them how I searched in vain on that evening's newscast and didn't find what I thought was an important story. I included the fact that they are not fooling anyone, that their desire is a Kerry WH and if troops have to die and Iraq is left to terrorists to get to that end, it's apparent they have no trouble helping bring that end. And I included this from the WSJ opinion journal:

A myth has developed that Iraqis aren't grateful for their liberation from Saddam. So it's worth noting that the leaders of Iraq's new interim government have been explicit and gracious in their thanks, not that you've heard this from the U.S. media.

First in Arabic and then in English, Prime Minister Iyad Allawi said in his inaugural address to the Iraqi people last Tuesday that "I would like to record our profound gratitude and appreciation to the U.S.-led international coalition, which has made great sacrifices for the liberation of Iraq." In his own remarks, President Ghazi al-Yawer said: "Before I end my speech, I would like us to remember our martyrs who fell in defense of freedom and honor, as well as our friends who fell in the battle for the liberation of Iraq."

Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari told the U.N. Security Council much the same thing last Thursday: "We Iraqis are grateful to the coalition who helped liberate us from the persecution of Saddam Hussein's regime. We thank President Bush and Prime Minister Blair for their dedication and commitment."

We thought our readers might like to know. Link

***************************************

It is fun to watch all the Reagan haters on the tellie having to bite their lips and talk nicely about The Gipper. Will they explode before Friday?

Outside View: How Reagan Made My Day

By James E. Rogan
A UPI Outside View commentarybr>

Washington, DC, Jun. 9 (UPI) -- One afternoon in 1973 I was still in high school when I read that Gov. Ronald Reagan would be attending a luncheon at the Boundary Oaks Restaurant, located in nearby Walnut Creek, Calif. The cost of attending a private reception with Reagan, eating lunch and then hearing him speak was $6 - - tax and tip included.

Since I didn't have the six bucks, I snuck in when the door was momentarily left unattended.

Reagan had little chance to enjoy the lunch served that day: he spent most of his time shaking hands and signing autographs for admirers. I noticed something intriguing about the speech notes Reagan reviewed while awaiting his introduction: they were handwritten in blue ink on a stack of 4-by-6-inch index cards. I made up my mind to ask Reagan to give me his original speech notes when the luncheon was over.

When he finished his speech, he was whisked to a private room in the restaurant to huddle with a small delegation of state legislators. The luncheon guests lingering outside Reagan's meeting room gradually dwindled as the hours passed. Finally, only a 10-year old boy holding an old Brownie camera and I remained to meet Reagan.

Three hours after my stakeout began, the governor's aide told the boy and me that Reagan was about to leave and that his limousine had been brought around back. The aide suggested we wait in the rear parking lot to get our pictures. We took his advice and arrived just in time to see Reagan quickly walking to his car. The boy with the Brownie froze; his reflexes were too slow to snap Reagan's picture as the governor prepared to depart. Unaware of our presence, Reagan climbed into the limousine and the motorcade started pulling away.

Just then, Reagan looked over his shoulder and saw the boy holding the old camera, his face etched in disappointment. Reagan leaned forward and tapped the driver on his shoulder. The limousine stopped, backed up to where the boy stood, and Reagan rolled down his window.

"Hi, son!" Reagan called out. "Were you waiting to get a picture of me?" With no reporters or crowd around to witness his act of generosity, Reagan climbed out of the car, greeted the boy, posed for pictures with him, and thanked him for waiting.

When Reagan shook my hand, I told him about my growing political memorabilia collection, and then asked if he would autograph his speech notes and give them to me. Reagan grimaced at my request. "Well," he said with a heavy air of reluctance, "you see, I'll need to give this speech more than once, and I don't have another copy of it. My staff will kill me if I don't come back with it," he said, his voice fading.

Sensing my opportunity slipping away, and remembering how the sad-faced child with the Brownie camera played on Reagan's sympathy, I dropped my head and stuck out a pouting, protruding lower lip while rubbing my eyes as Reagan tried to turn me down. "I understand," I said with a heaving sigh. "It's all right. Don't worry about it ..."

Recognizing his defeat, Reagan conceded: "OK, OK," he exclaimed with a twinkle in his eye. "You win! You may not be able to make heads or tails out of my writing, but here they are." He produced the cards from his jacket pocket, penned his name on the last page, and turned over the set to me. Each speech card was handwritten on one side: on the other side were notes typed in large black font. Reagan explained that the typed side was his reading copy of a speech he delivered earlier to the California Highway Patrol.

Never one to waste paper, Reagan said he used the back of those typed cards for that day's address: "I sat in my hotel room last night and wrote out the speech I gave today on the back of the CHP speech," Reagan said. "So you're really getting two speeches for the price of one!"

Eight years later, Ronald Reagan was the United States' newly installed president, while I was a struggling law school student. A financial crisis hit and I needed about $1,500 to pay for tuition and expenses, or else I risked losing my seat in school.

Faced with the choice of being kicked out of school or selling the notes, I had no alternative but to part with the treasured Reagan gift. However, I refused to sell the entire set: I kept page one of Reagan's notes in my collection, and sold pages 2 through 8.

As Paul Harvey would say, here's the rest of the story: Almost 20 more years went by. About the time President Clinton's impeachment came to an end, I was sifting through part of my memorabilia collection when I came upon page 1 of Ronald Reagan's Boundary Oaks Restaurant speech notes.

I looked at it for a long time, thinking about the irony: if Ronald Reagan had not given me those notes in 1973, I might not have finished law school. That meant I never would have become a prosecutor, a judge, a state legislator, a member of Congress, or a House Manager in the impeachment trial of a U.S. president.

Still pining over the forced sale, I hoped that Reagan would forgive me if he knew I sold the notes to finish my education and use it for public service.

A week or so later, I was flipping through an auction catalog of political memorabilia for sale. I almost fell out of my chair when I turned the page and saw what constituted Auction Lot #73 in the sale: It was pages 2 through 8 of my old Reagan speech note cards! The original purchaser died, and his heirs were selling his collection. I placed my bid on Lot #73 and then stayed up late into the night of the auction tracking my progress.

When the sun rose the next morning, Auction Lot #73 - - Ronald Reagan's Boundary Oaks Restaurant speech notes from 1973 -- were once again mine.

There is an interesting footnote to this episode: Martin Anderson, a former aide to Reagan who has researched and written multiple books from Reagan's handwritten archives, told me that these notes are the only known complete set of Reagan's famous 4x6 handwritten speech cards outside the possession of the Reagan Library, and the only known set autographed by Reagan to exist. Apparently, nobody thought to ask Reagan to sign his speech cards before I came along, and nobody bothered to ask after.

Later this week, my family and I will stand along Constitution Avenue in downtown Washington with hundreds of thousands of other mourners. I'll watch a riderless horse escort a flag draped casket to the Capitol. When it passes, I'll remember that grimace I gave him when I was a kid, followed by the twinkle in his eye when he handed me that stack of note cards. Like others, I'll remember what he did for the United States, but I'll also remember what he did for me.

It was a busy morning, approximately
8:30 am, when an elderly Gentleman, in
his 80's, arrived to have stitches removed from his
thumb. He stated that he was in a hurry as he had an
appointment at 9:00 am. I took his vital signs and
had him take a seat, knowing it would be over an hour
before someone would to able to see him.

I saw him looking at his watch and decided, since I
was not busy with another patient, I would evaluate
his wound. On exam it was well healed, so I talked to
one of the doctors, got the needed supplies to remove
his sutures and redress his wound.

While taking care of his wound, we began to engage in
conversation. I asked him if he had a doctor's
appointment this morning, as he was in such a hurry.
The gentleman told me no, that he needed to go to the
nursing home to eat breakfast with his wife.

I then inquired as to her health. He told me that
she had been there for a while and that she was a
victim of Alzheimer Disease.

As we talked, and I finished dressing his wound, I
asked if she would be worried if he was a bit late.
He replied that she no longer knew who he was, that
she had not recognized him in five years now.

I was surprised, and asked him. "And you still go
every morning, even though she doesn't know who you
are?" He smiled as he patted my hand and said. "She
doesn't know me, but I still know who she is."

I had to hold back tears as he left, I had goose bumps
on my arms, and thought, "That is the kind of
love I want in my life."

True love is neither physical, nor romantic. True
love is an acceptance of all that is, has been, will
be, and will not be.

Good friends are like stars..You don't always see
them, but you always know they're there.

THE makers of the new Nicole Kidman movie, The Stepford Wives, have risked incurring the wrath of two of America's most powerful women.

A trailer for the film shows former First Lady Senator Hillary Clinton holding a cookie tray like an obedient housewife.

And in another short clip, an image of National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice changes to make her appear topless, with her arms crossed over her chest.

Film company Paramount said it had not received any complaints about the images, being shown across the US ahead of the film's release on June 11.

It was not clear whether Mrs Clinton or Ms Rice even knew that they appeared in the commercial.

The film is based on the original 1975 thriller by director Bryan Forbes, which itself was taken from the book by Ira Levin.

It is about a small town in the state of Connecticut where it emerges that the wives of the wealthy men who live there are "perfect" because they have been replaced by robots.

Link

Condi Rice must really scare the heck out of some people. I pray Condi run for president in '08.

The most important part is that you listened
***
Whom, or whatever, it was, was so strong and clear that I could not misunderstand the message, nor could I not act upon it.
***
22 Years of Cats - the musical

Memory (Daylight)

Daylight, see the dew on the sunflower
And a rose that is fading.
Roses wither away.
Like the sunflower I yearn to turn my face to the dawn.
I am waiting for the day.

Now Old Deuteronomy, just before dawn
Through a silence you feel you could cut with a knife,
Announces the cat who can now be reborn
And come back to a different Jellicle Life.

Memory, turn your face to the moonlight.
Let your memory lead you.
Open up, enter in
And if you find there the meaning of what happiness is,
Then a new life will begin.

Memory, all alone in the moonlight.
I can smile at the old days.
I was beautiful then.
I remember the time I knew what happiness was.
Let the memory live again.

Burnt out ends of smokey days.
The stale cold smell of morning.
The streetlamp dies, another night is over and
Another day is dawning.

Daylight, I must wait for the sunrise.
I must think of a new life
And I mustn't give in.
When the dawn comes,
Tonight will be a memory too
And a new day will begin.

Sunlight, through the trees in the summer.
Endless masquerading
Like a flower as the dawn is breaking.
The memory is fading.

Touch me, it's so easy to leave me.
All alone with the memory of my days in the sun.
If you touch me, you'll understand what happiness is.
Look, a new day has begun.

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