Laura Bush is up now… Looking forward to a great night! I wish I was there.
UPDATE: Bush is up. Excerpts.
UPDATE, by Mark Noonan: Fred Thompson is hitting hard at governor Palin’s critics…well done.
UPDATE: Twittering the speeches here.
UPDATE, 10:40 PM: Joe Lieberman is up.
UPDATE: Fantastic night for the GOP!
50 comments September 2nd, 2008
The argument goes on - Romney, Giuliani, McCain, Thompson and Huckabee all claming the mantle of Reagan. But who really has it? Do any of them really qualify as “Reagan Republicans”?
Last year Matt and I were honored with a tour of the Reagan ranch outside Santa Barbara. I still get feeling of awe just to think that I was able to be in such a place. I love writing and I hope that it will eventually become the major activity of my professional life - but if all I ever get out if it is that trip to the ranch, then I feel that I’ve done very well out of it.
Ronald Reagan was, by the time he purchased that ranch in the mid-70’s, a very rich man - not gazillionaire rich like some people are today, but very well off. I don’t know how much Reagan paid for that ranch, but given its size and magnificence, it couldn’t have come cheap. But perched atop a gorgeous California mountain in sight of the Pacific ocean was the life of just any, old American. I remember, especially, looking over Reagan’s tool bench - and its just like any other middle-class American husband’s tool bench. The pegboard holding screwdrivers and wrenches, the vise attached to the edge of the bench…the soap and bandaids by the garage sink. While my father was a bit of a do-it-yourselfer, the person who really came to mind as I went over these mundane things was my father-in-law - a superlative do-it-yourselfer, as Reagan apparantly was. I could easily imagine my father-in-law and Ronald Reagan, far away from politics, discussing the best way to erect a fence, or lay down a floor (both things Reagan did, himself, at the ranch). Ronald Reagan, leader of the free world - my father-in-law, ironworker by trade, small businessman of decades experience…but each of them the other’s equal, and no fawning from the one or condescension from the other.
Who is “Mr. Conservative”? I don’t know - but it will end up being the man who could, without changing a thing, head down to the local hardware store and chew the fat with whatever average Joes and Janes happened to be there at the moment. You see, we can argue - if we wish - over issues of who is better at tax cutting, or who is better at spending control, or who is better at fighting the terrorists, but the true conservative is the true American - they are interchangable at the fundamental level. Sure enough, two true Americans can argue over the best way to tax and/or how much to tax, but any two true Americans also know what needs to be done - be honest; be courageous, keep faith in God and your fellow Americans, protect your family, help your neighbors. Do that, and the rest of the issues will tend to take care of themselves.
We now await the rise of “Mr. Conservative” in 2008 - we’ll see if any of them have in them that core Americanism which is the most conservative thing of all.
58 comments January 15th, 2008
It was given by Ronald Reagan in the closing days of the 1964 campaign between Lyndon Johnson and Barry Goldwater. I happened to catch it on Mark Levin’s radio show as I was coming home this afternoon…and, man, do we need a Ronald Reagan in 2007!. Here’s a quote:
It’s time we asked ourselves if we still know the freedoms intended for us by the Founding Fathers. James Madison said, “We base all our experiments on the capacity of mankind for self-government.” This idea that government was beholden to the people, that it had no other source of power except the sovereign people, is still the newest, most unique idea in all the long history of man’s relation to man. For almost two centuries we have proved man’s capacity for self-government, but today we are told we must choose between a left and right or, as others suggest, a third alternative, a kind of safe middle ground. I suggest to you there is no left or right, only an up or down. Up to the maximum of individual freedom consistent with law and order, or down to the ant heap of totalitarianism; and regardless of their humanitarian purpose those who would sacrifice freedom for security have, whether they know it or not, chosen this downward path. Plutarch warned, “The real destroyer of the liberties of the people is he who spreads among them bounties, donations, and benefits.
Today there is an increasing number who can’t see a fat man standing beside a thin one without automatically coming to the conclusion the fat man got that way by taking advantage of the thin one. So they would seek the answer to all the problems of human need through government. Howard K. Smith of television fame has written, “The profit motive is outmoded. It must be replaced by the incentives of the welfare state.” He says, “The distribution of goods must be effected by a planned economy.”
Another articulate spokesman for the welfare state defines liberalism as meeting the material needs of the masses through the full power of centralized government. I for one find it disturbing when a representative refers to the free men and women of this country as the masses, but beyond this the full power of centralized government was the very thing the Founding Fathers sought to minimize. They knew you don’t control things; you can’t control the economy without controlling people. So we have come to a time for choosing. Either we accept the responsibility for our own destiny, or we abandon the American Revolution and confess that an intellectual belief in a far-distant capitol can plan our lives for us better than we can plan them ourselves.
Where is the man (or woman) who will stand up and say such things in 2007? We’ve lost a lot of political courage in the 43 years since that speech was given, and we’ve got to get it back - because this 1964 speech even speaks to our current difficulties in the War on Terrorism:
The specter our well-meaning liberal friends refuse to face is that their policy of accommodation is appeasement, and appeasement does not give you a choice between peace and war, only between fight and surrender. We are told that the problem is too complex for a simple answer. They are wrong. There is no easy answer, but there is a simple answer. We must have the courage to do what we know is morally right, and this policy of accommodation asks us to accept the greatest possible immorality. We are being asked to buy our safety from the threat of “the bomb” (Ed.Note: in 2007, “the bomb” has been replaced by “terrorists”) by selling into permanent slavery our fellow human beings enslaved behind the Iron Curtain (Ed.Note: in 2007, those ruled by Islamo-fascists), to tell them to give up their hope of freedom because we are ready to make a deal with their slave masters.
“We must have the courage to do what we know is morally right”. President Bush has shown this courage since Septemer 11, 2001 - will any of the Presidential candidates, Democrat or Republican, have the courage to do the right thing? On the answer to that question will turn the fate of America is 2008. Now, go read the whole thing and become a Reaganite.
15 comments December 21st, 2007
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