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What would Reagan have said about homosexual “marriage”?
Maybe Reagan got Alzheimer’s so that he could spend his final years on earth not having to know about things like this: The mayor of this Detroit suburb (Ferndale, Michigan) officiated at the mass wedding of nearly a dozen gay couples outside City Hall on Saturday in a symbolic demonstration of support for legalizing same-sex marriage in Michigan. Although the ceremony carried no legal weight, the 11 couples who exchanged vows and rings left feeling married. [Emphasis added.]These non-legal-marriages, these play-marriages, capture the essence of homosexual “marriage” itself, do they not? It’s not marriage, and it cannot by the nature of things be marriage, but the participants “feel” that it’s marriage. In today’s world, if you “feel” something is true, then it is true. The only real marriage here is the marriage of nominalism and sexual liberation. Which brings me, in a roundabout way, back to Reagan. Could he have maintained his famous optimism, his belief that for America there is always a bright dawn ahead, if he had known what has happened to our culture over the last ten years? (Not that we were in great shape before, but hell has many circles, and we are descending rapidly.) Furthermore, ever since he left the presidency, “conservative” beltway types have made a cult of Reaganite “optimism,” which they have changed from a religious orientation toward life into an ideological dogma. Whether it was Mitchell Daniels of the “conservative” Heritage Foundation declaring that “[i]mmigration restrictionism contradicts the modern conservative mentality of optimism and fearlessness about the future,” or the “conservative” author Dinesh D’souza of the “conservative” American Enterprise Institute urging us not to be judgmental about young people with metal studs embedded in their faces, because this, too, D’souza eagerly told us, is an expression of the “authenticity” that represents the true American spirit, today’s “conservatives” make it an article of faith that optimism is the key to successful “conservatism.” Whatever cultural apocalypse presents itself, these self-styled Reaganites insist that it would be wrong, anti-“conservative,” to think that it may constitute a really serious problem, because if these “conservatives” thought there were really serious problems in our society, and if they thought those problems were caused by, of all things, an excess of freedom, then the “conservatives” would lose their “optimism,” and cease to be effective “conservatives,” or even to be “conservatives” at all.
Reagan, for all his sunniness, was too honest and too good—and, at his core, too hard—to have fooled himself like that. In one of his first political speeches he said that an excess of freedom is anarchy, just as an excess of equality is tyranny. When he saw dangers, he saw them. It wasn’t optimism, but an acute sense of encroaching dangers,—i.e., it was rational fear—that propelled him into his political career in the first place. It’s been said that Reagan’s driving motivation as a politician was to save America and to save the world, just as he had saved so many people as a life guard in his youth. But to save people, you’ve got to see the danger that they’re in. Had Reagan possessed his normal mental faculties over these past ten years, I do not believe that he would, like his absurd “conservative” acolytes, have closed his eyes to, or made his peace with, the moral and cultural horrors—the open borders, the group rights, the multiculturalism, the attack on national identity, the degradation of education and of the popular culture, the trashing of all moral standards, the Islamist threat—that in their totality have progressively engulfed America, and the rest of the West as well. Had he been younger, I would like to believe that he would have made it his mission to save America from these things, just as he had made it his mission to save the world from Communism. Comments
Mr. Auster really gets one’s mind in gear, one of his (Mr. Auster’s) precious qualities. I too have been thinking about this idea myself lately in sort of a different way, a “cause and effect” way. While I am certainly no historian, I have this uncanny notion that when Reagan’s Alzheimer’s was made public, the country went to hell in a handbasket—because there was no “Gipper” to lead us (those who fell into the filth) our of the abyss. No other Conservative leader has taken the reins he left when he left office. I believe he would have fought the anti-Christian and anti-Semitic movement here with everything he had. I believe he would have raised money—through speeches and fundraisers—that would have had some positive effect. However, he was old and getting somewhat incoherent. The fall from his horse in the late 80s (hitting his head, which brought blood on the brain) likely brought on the disease or at the very least, left him open to it. As Mr. Auster eloquently postulates, I believe that Reagan would have fought homosexual marriage and other anti-Christian movements with every part of his being. We needed his voice to speak for us, because we were small voices by comparison. The disease that “silenced” and eventually killed him was a “watershed event” for the left. He was that “big” of a figure on the American political landscape. I don’t know if he was “an American original” (as Mr. Auster so wonderfully described George Washington in a thread yesterday) and if not, he surely came close to being one. Posted by: David Levin on June 8, 2004 2:36 AMIn one sense, the Alzheimer’s was a mercy: Reagan was unable to see the poison that has done so much to ruin the country he loved, As for those “beltway conservatives”, they “feel” conservative so therefore they are - right? One of this crowd even went so far as to declare that allowing homosexual marriage was a conservative idea that would strngthen marriage. How’s that for the ideology of optimism? They may claim to be the heirs of Reagan, but they are illegitimate heirs at best - mere usurpers. Posted by: Carl on June 8, 2004 3:08 AMA reader wrote in an e-mail: “Its true that Reagan had an optimistic side, but on every point on which he was optimistic, there was an implied pessimism. Reagan’s sometimes populist rhetoric and “anti-big government” position logically meant that he was pessimistic (and more than that) about the ability of a managerial elite to order people’s lives better than they could themselves, especially if they did so according to tradition. I also think that the theme of optimism was developed to such an extreme as a political tactic in contrast to Carter’s malaise speech and as a result of pollster Dick Wirthlin’s findings during the 1980 campaign. Subsequently, as you state in your essay, a bogus optimism has been used as an excuse to capitulate to the collapse of civilized standards.” I alluded to this on a post on a different thread. Reagan didn’t run as an “optimist” in his California gubernatorial race in 1966. Reagan saw that California and the United States were in trouble and had entered poitics to stave off the dangers he saw. Reagan’s 1976 challenge to Gerald Ford for the GOP Presidential nomination was in the same vein. Yes, America has really sunk since 1994, not that the Beltway Right has noticed. Reagan, if around now, would have tried to oppose our current collapse as Mr. Auster says. Posted by: David on June 8, 2004 2:18 PMI think Reagan would have opposed gay marriage, but I seriously doubt he would have fought it “with every part of his being” as Mr Levin states. One can’t discount the influence of Nancy on these issues. She was and is widely believed to have a strong dislike for the Christian conservative influence in the GOP. Reagan would have opposed gay marriage in the same way he opposed abortion, which is to say, to state public opposition to it. Reagan did little else. With 3 high court appointments, he only batted 1 for 3 (Scalia). When the Bork nomination went down, we got Kennedy (was that Nancy’s influence?). Perhaps the Bork nomination was the high water mark of the conservative movement. Also, I speak from the perspective of a gay male conservative who opposes gay marriage. Fellows, let’s not forget that Reagan lived in California since the 1930s and worked in Hollywood. So as far as seeing the advance of cultural decay goes, he was in a much better position than the average traditional in Itta Bena, Walla Walla or Painted Post. Gov. Reagan signed California’s (pro-) abortion bill in 1967. Here’s an interesting thought exercise: the legislatures of two big states, New York and Pennsylvania, had legalized abortion by 1970, yet had second thoughts in 1972 and repealed those acts. The governors, Nelson Rockefeller and Milton Shapp, vetoed the repeals. What would Ronald Reagan have done had his legislature offered him a similar option? (Some details can be seen on this page, which is also available in PDF form: I thank Reg Caesar for that piece of historical fact. I can’t believe it—maybe Nancy had more of an effect on his political decisions than I ever imagined. And being an actress, a woman, and most likely “feeling sympathy for the closet set”, perhaps she pushed him to sign that pro-abortion bill in CA as governor on ‘67. Of course, AIDS didn’t hit the national news until ‘81, so that obviously was not a factor. And Scott, as president, Bush Sr. gave us every indication that David Souter was a conservative—when he was anything BUT…Certainly, Ronald Reagan cannot be entirely to blame for Bork’s loss—his “villification” by the left and the press really hurt that nomination, as I recall. Perhaps though it WAS Nancy. Poor Bork. What talent wasted. Posted by: David Levin on June 9, 2004 2:51 AMReagan gets something of a bum rap on the 1967 abortion bill he signed. As I understand it, that bill legalized abortion in cases where the mother’s health was endangered. It was sold to the legislature, and to Reagan, with the claim that it would only permit a handful of medical emergency abortions per year. Once enacted, however, liberal judges and bureaucrats began “interpreting” the word “health” broadly. So broadly that things such as emotional distress and headaches were cited as justification for abortion. The end result was abortion-on-demand, but that was not how the bill was sold to either the legislature, the public, or Governor Reagan. Harry Blackmun later adopted this scam in the Doe vs. Bolton decision. In the Roe ruling, he had written that states could prohibit third trimester abortions unless the mother’s life or health were affected. In Doe, he defined health to include mental and emotional issues, effectively sancioning abortion through all nine months of pregnancy until the Supreme Court sort of reigned that in a little in the Casey decision, though the recent court rulings striking down partial birth abortion bans show how little effect Casey had. Posted by: Tim on June 9, 2004 4:27 PMWhere does this speculation that Nancy “softened” her husband’s views fit on VFR dance floor? When they met, Nancy still reflected her father’s right-wing views, while Ronald went with his own Irish Catholic Democrat father’s. She stood to his right then. (Though some writers would later fancy him a “closet moderate”.) So N moved up and left, while R moved up and right. That’s not the mambo. The Hegelian tango, or perhaps the minuet? Posted by: Reg Cæsar on June 9, 2004 8:19 PM |