Posted on 09/22/2003 5:35:24 PM PDT by Pokey78
The extraordinary friendship between President Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher - seen by outsiders as an historic alliance of political soulmates - was viewed by Mr Reagan as evidence of divine intervention, according to letters he wrote to her.
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"Throughout my life, I've always believed that life's path is determined by a Force more powerful than fate. I feel the Lord has brought us together for a profound purpose, and that I have been richly blessed for having known you," he wrote in 1994, days after she delivered a speech at a formal 83rd birthday tribute for the retired president in Washington.
The note is in a cache of more than 5,000 handwritten draft letters unearthed by US researchers, extracts of which appear in a new book, Reagan: A Life in Letters, published in America today.
A few years earlier, the pair of leaders forged a deep bond of trust that some historians credit with reinvigorating the Anglo-American "special relationship".
It has long been known that Mr Reagan cherished the "Iron Lady" as a counsellor and sounding board. But a previously unknown letter shows that Mr Reagan - who saw international relations in intensely personal terms of trust, much like his disciple George W Bush today - was certain that God had called them together, to wage a sacred struggle against Soviet communism, and other "evils".
"I am proud to call you one of my dearest friends, Margaret; proud to have shared many of life's significant moments with you, and thankful that God brought you into my life," Mr Reagan wrote, signing himself: "Sincerely, Ron."
When it was written, in February 1994, both were out of office.
Even in retirement both could enjoy the deep satisfaction of seeing so much that they had worked for come to pass. Just two years after Mr Reagan called on the Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, to "tear down" the Berlin Wall, the whole Iron Curtain collapsed.
Reagan: A Life in Letters casts new light on a man who remains an enigma, despite the huge volume of speeches and personal appearances in his career as an actor, businessman and politician.
The cache of newly found drafts includes letters to fellow world statesmen, family members and random Americans, including a 12-year-old boy who wrote asking if his messy bedroom could be declared a "federal disaster area".
A strong note of Christian faith can be heard throughout the private writings of the former president, now 92.
In one note, dated 1951, Mr Reagan comforted a newly widowed friend, and gave an unexpected insight into the lingering effects of his childhood, raised by a mother linked to the "Disciples of Christ", a strict Protestant sect.
Mr Reagan wrote: "Even in marriage, I had a little guilty feeling about sex, as though the whole thing was tinged with evil."
Thankfully, "a very fine old gentleman" noted the example of Polynesians who as "truly children of nature and thus of God, accept physical desire as a natural, normal appetite", he wrote.
Shuld have stuck with Lady Thatcher and God -- would have been a better piece.
Ping!
Thanks!
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