The Death of Right & Wrong: Epilogue

In 1994 I was in my fourth year as president of the Los Angeles chapter of NOW. I had also served on the National NOW Board of Directors. It was a year I remember, for several reasons. It was the year O. J. Simpson killed Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ron Goldman, and the year my town was hit by the devastating Northridge earthquake. It was also the year Ronald Reagan announced to the nation that he had Alzheimer’s.

Ronald Reagan was hated, and still is, in the feminist-establishment circles in which I grew up. That milieu subsists on enemies and hatred. I took my cues from the women around me, women I admired. They were strong and confident, and they knew. They knew who was out to get us. They knew who was determined to throw us back into the Dark Ages. They knew Reagan was evil.

I tell you this not as an excuse for my past actions but as a further illustration of what I’ve been discussing throughout this book--the way malignant narcissism is spread. You see, the seed of my politics, the politics I espouse now, were already manifested in my voting for President Reagan 10 years earlier. I liked him, and I believed he had the best interests of Americans in mind. During my involvement with NOW, however, what took over was my need to be accepted, the romanticization of my "victimhood," and the power I could achieve by following the models of the women at the top. Those women were happy that Reagan was sick, so I would be, too.

The conditioning of the Left Elite works so well partly because the people attracted to that camp are looking for family, they are looking to belong; consequently people like that--people like me--are easy pickings. My emptiness compelled me to cheer when a decent man who followed his principles was struck down by an unforgiving assailant. Alzheimer’s had done what many feminist leaders fantasized about doing themselves, if only they could get away with it.

Today, I am still pro-choice, and I still support fetal tissue research. But I now realize that those who disagree with me also have good points. I hope they reflect on their position as often as I do on mine, because both camps are on the razor’s edge. I have made my commitment to women and reproductive freedom, while my compatriots on the other side of the fence, mostly because of their religious faith, have made a pact with what they call the unborn.

We will have to agree to disagree, but only now do I consider those on that other side decent people--as decent as I, but with a different focus. Ronald Reagan is one of those decent people, but in all the feminist establishment’s mirth about his illness, never did they consider, never would they consider, the humanity of the man. Some may have made sympathetic public comments, but, like Madelyn Toogood, the woman who beat her little girl in a parking lot, they were simply looking around to make sure no one was watching before they returned to privately declaring that Reagan deserved to suffer.

By now, you may not be surprised to learn that in certain gay and feminist circles, bottles of champagne wait in refrigerators to be opened when Reagan dies. I write this on the night Nancy Reagan appeared on 60 Minutes II. Mike Wallace interviewed her about the former president, their marriage, and their history. Watching the show, I remembered why I liked Reagan so much--old footage of an early interview with Mike Wallace, at the time Reagan announced his first candidacy in 1976 (I was 14), deeply moved me and reminded me what great leadership was to come...

During the interview, Mrs. Reagan disclosed that she’s not sure her husband recognizes her anymore. Long ago he had stopped recognizing his children, but he always knew her. Now, it seems, he doesn’t. There was a deep sadness in the woman’s face. It was the "long goodbye," as she called it. The Reagans, like so many other people, had probably approached their Golden Years trusting, assuming, that memories would be shared, and laughed and cried about. For Nancy Reagan that doesn’t exist. She hasn’t said goodbye to her husband because "he’s still here," but the welling of tears in her eyes revealed a wounded, sad woman. I found it heartbreaking to see, as would any decent person of any political persuasion.

Part of my life, however, is still reflective of what I call my "old" life--my years of leadership in the feminist establishment and involvement in the gay-rights movement. This night, those two lives collided. As I cried after the interview because of the sadness of it and my own guilt and shame, I checked my phone messages. There was one from a gay male friend, whom I see infrequently these days but with whom I share some fun and important activist memories. He had been watching the same interview, but he was cheering. "Woo hoo! It looks like we might be opening up that champagne sooner than later! I hope you were watching the Dragon Lady on 60 Minutes tonight. I suppose with Alzheimer’s, he’s not suffering anymore, but it sure looks like she is! There is a God after all."

I had never thought of my friend as an indecent person, just as I never thought of myself as one. But he really hates those two people and wishes them awful things. He believes he’s in the right and they’re wrong. He also believes that the questions that divide them are moral issues about life and death. The difference, however, is that I think it’s safe to say neither Nancy nor Ronald Reagan ever had a bottle of champagne in the fridge waiting for a gay man or a feminist to die. The Reagans, I’ll bet, don’t hoot and holler at someone else’s pain.

Mrs. Reagan’s humanity illustrated by counterpoint the soullessness of the Left. We, the Feminist and Gay Elites, inflicted on society narcissists’ biggest crime of all: We couldn’t see beyond our own interests and desires. We became indecent in defending our principles.

While I don’t hold out any hope for the damaged Left Elite I’ve exposed for you in this book, I know that we as individuals can overcome and reject what the Left demands of us--the abandonment of right and wrong, the banishment of decency and integrity, the rejection of what the Reagans, both of them, represent.

We can instead do our best to live honest lives, replete with the discomfort of shame, the difficulties of personal responsibility, and the joy, the genuine happiness, that only right and good can bring. We will have the reward of being better people.

On FOX & Friends she made a point to condemn NOW and say Connor's life did matter, that Peterson should be charged with double murder and that Connor "deserved advocacy." Perhaps you should consider reading her book before coming to these conclusions based on a six-minute interview.

On the contrary, she was the head of NOW Los Angeles and a member of the NOW National Board of Directors. I remember her being profiled in the New York Times and being on the Today Show. You think they'd give her those platforms now? I think your point regarding "how many of us had heard of her" makes my point well - that is the point, a lot of people here don't take the time to look outside our boilerplate, and in this case that is a shame because this woman is smart, has been there and she has something to say.

You were great up to the end of "the depth of their being." The rest, feel it as you may, is uncalled for and, frankly, evil in itself. Had you just said such people were "evil" that would have been a different story. That you say it with such fervor - "to the core" - indicates not simple passion, but a judgement that wanders into the unseemly.

Gambling laws were mostly dropped or eased when states figured out that they could make lots of money from gambling. In Florida the gambling laws are still pretty strict and are enforced. Joe Blow and his Wednesday night poker club just might get busted. And youseem to be saying that if all violators cannot be caught and punished then a law is unenforceable and should not exist. Statistically, laws against murder are not effectively enforced even 50%, laws against burglary even worse. Laws against abortion had a better record than that , perhaps even 80 or 90%. Abortion is the wilful taking of a human life for the sake of convenience. Permitting it legally promotes the attitude that whatever a large number of people desire to do should be okay because if even murder can be allowed then there is no legitimate rationale for criminalizing anything else that lots of people want to do.The idea that abortion did not increase with legalization is absurd as the idea that more women died from abortions then than do now.

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