And that's about all I have to say tonight. Except for one thing. The past few days when I've been at that window upstairs, I've thought a bit of the "shining city upon a hill." The phrase comes from John Winthrop, who wrote it to describe the America he imagined. What he imagined was important because he was an early Pilgrim, an early freedom man. He journeyed here on what today we'd call a little wooden boat; and like the other Pilgrims, he was looking for a home that would be free.
I've spoken of the shining city all my political life, but I don't know if I ever quite communicated what I saw when I said it. But in my mind it was a tall proud city built on rocks stronger than oceans, wind-swept, God-blessed, and teeming with people of all kinds living in harmony and peace, a city with free ports that hummed with commerce and creativity, and if there had to be city walls, the walls had doors and the doors were open to anyone with the will and the heart to get here. That's how I saw it, and see it still.
And how stand the city on this winter night? More prosperous, more secure, and happier than it was eight years ago. But more than that; after two hundred years, two centuries, she still stands strong and true on the granite ridge, and her glow has held steady no matter what storm. And she's still a beacon, still a magnet for all who must have freedom, for all the pilgrims from all the lost places who are hurtling through the darkness, toward home.
We've done our part. And as I walk off into the city streets, a final word to the men and women of the Reagan revolution, the men and women across America who for eight years did the work that brought America back. My friends: We did it. We weren't just marking time. We made a difference. We made the city stronger. We made the city freer, and we left her in good hands. All in all, not bad, not bad at all.
And so, good-bye, God bless you, and God bless the United States of America
Reagan's Legacy
One thing about President Reagan was that he was rarely sarcastic. I teach 10th grade, and that is a very sarcastic age. I like to point out to the kids what the character Gene says in the novel Separate Peace, "It was my sarcastic summer."
Gene is so envious of his friend Finny that he makes Finny fall out of a tree. Ultimately the opimistic Finny dies.
The novel is really on the same theme as The Iliad, "the wrath of Achilleus (Gene) and its devastation." Gene, like Achilleus cheated of his war prize, believed that Finny had cheated Gene of his status as the best student in the school.
"Sarcasm is the refuge of the weak" I tell the kids. People who are sarcastic just belittle what the people who are positive achieve. I tell them that it is normal to be sarcastic in the 10th grade, but that by the time they are older they will notice that they don't need the sarcastic people around. They aren't team players. They don't lead, but just tear down other people's goals and aspirations.
We also read Shakespeare's The Tempest. The two bad guys in that story deposed a duke and tried to kill a king; these villians are full of sarcasm for another character Gonzalo, who is always very positive and optimistic. When they are on a desert island, Gonzalo believes he is in paradise, but the sarcastic ones believe they are in Hell. Gonzalo sees a garden; the courtiers see weeds.
That island in Shakespeare's Tempest could be America. The sarcastic ones always are in Hell. The optimistic positive ones are like Ronald Reagan; like Gonzalo, they believe the best is yet to come.
I think President Bush should "win one for the Gipper." He should have the courage to say that America stands for democracy in the Middle East. He should not give in to the sarcastic and pessimistic people who believe that people in the Middle East aren't ready for democracy. Those people in the Middle East are so sarcastic and negative and paranoid. They have turned the Garden of Eden into a Hell. What they need is optimism and democracy. It will take time. There will continue to be the terrorists with their hate-fulled ideology, their poisonous sarcasm and murder of real leaders; but democracy will still take root there, and the weeds of sarcasm will eventually be choked out.
President Reagan had a sign on his desk that said, "There is nothing you can't achieve if you are willing to give other people the credit." This was also the attitude of the man who lead the Pilgims on the Mayflower and became the governor of the Plymouth Colony, John Bradford. In his book, Of Plymouth Plantation, Bradford gave all the credit to the people around him. He also had a good relationship with the Indians.
Reagan was the same. He gave the communist Gorbachev the credit for taking down the Berlin Wall. Gorbachev gave Reagan a piece of this wall for his library, and now Reagan will be buried near this wall. That's quite an epitaph for both of these men.
