Nothing proves Mr. Auster’s point better here than having the misfortune of watching Dan Rather weep for RR on tv the other day, are you kidding me !

When President Carter dies, the Republican establishment will fall all over itself to heap up encomia over him. Should Mr. Carter meet our Maker on President Bush’s watch, Bush will be fulsome in his praise. After all, once you take out the bellicosity, the Bush world-view is closer to Carter’s than to Reagan’s. That isn’t to contradict Mr. Auster, only to note how degraded mainstream “conservatism” is. As I watched elder Bush and Barbara paying tribute to Mr. Reagan on television, I had the same sense of pro forma praise through gritted teeth that one gets from overt liberals. Liberal hypocrisy, indeed. HRS

Mr. Sutherland may be right about Bush 43 and the Republican establishment. But I was speaking of conservatives, not Republicans.

Also, I more-or-less agree with his observation about the elder Bushes. But Bush 41 is a man I have so little regard for that nothing he says makes any impact on me. (I don’t resent or dislike Bush 41, I just regard him as an absolute nothing, the ultimate empty suit.)

Ambassador Matlock’s book, “Autopsy on an Empire,” offers all sorts of insights into the difference between Bush 41 and his “team” and Reagan that confirm Mr. Auster and Mr. Sutherland’s views. In particular, read his account of the disgusting behavior of Bush and Scowcroft during the Soviet coup of August 1991. It was certainly fortunate that the fate of the world did not depend on what they did or did not do at that moment of supreme danger.

I would hope conservatives would show a little respect for Carter as a former President of the United States. One should hesitate to speak ill of the dead regardless of their politics. Reagan was not a bad man, many people disagreed with his policies. Carter was not a bad man, people disagreed with his policies, and for what it is worth he was a much more religious man than Reagan could have ever hoped to have been. Reagan simply had better speech writers.

How should we handle the death of Carter? Contrary to what Matt suggests, it is certainly arguable that Carter is a bad man, or at any rate was far from the moral exemplar many people have always insisted he was. The man who uttered the infamous “inordinate fear of Communism” speech, who freed the men who tried to kill President Truman, and allowed Castro to export his criminals and mentally ill to the United States is hardly admirable on moral grounds. All that is quite aside from his sheer incompetence.

Mr. Auster hit another home run (pardon the baseball metaphor) with his 2:44 PM post regarding Bush 43 being “the ultimate empty suit”. Those are precisely my sentiments. Whoever writes his p.c. speeches—like the one he gave quoting part of Ike’s famous speech during WWII about “the Crusade” we were in, but leaving out “Crusade” for fear of offending his Saudi buddies—should be held accountable when Bush loses in November. This White House is in an uter and complete “disconnect” with the rest of the country. Do I mean “bunker mentality”? Yes. How can anyone get “excited” about the upcoming election and particularly about Bush 43? Without that “excitement”, it’s over. That is the advantage Kerry would have if he were an inspiring candidate, which he is not. This may go down as the most boring election in U.S. history—two very unpopular candidates who few people want to see in that office in the next four years!

Mr. Levine,

Upon further reflection perhaps Mr. Reagan was a bad man. After all, he conducte an illegal war in Nicaragua and paid for it by selling weapons to Iran and lied about both events. In addition, after 200 Marines died in Lebanon he cowardly retreated, creating the terrorist problem we now have (and ignored Iraq’s use of chemical weapons against thier own people—so much for Reagan as moral exemplar). I direct you to this Slate article http://slate.msn.com/id/2101829/ which demonstrates he didn’t even do what he promised (reduce the size of government) and instead presided over deficits and wild spending. This is without going into the large number of his employees who were indicted.

I just want to clarify that lower-case “matt” commenting in these Reagan threads is not the same Matt as I, the long-time VFR commenter. All that I have to say about President Reagan at this point is “Rest in Peace, Mr. President. You will be sorely missed; and may God bless you and keep you”.

What is the foundation of this wonderful Website, and why does it deserve attention and monetary support? “Hypocrisy being the tribute that vice pays to virtue, we’re ingesting a truckload of liberal hypocrisy right now on the subject of Ronald Reagan. Liberals who despised and mocked Reagan when he was in office now praise him, though, as Steve Malzberg points out, with manifest reluctance and insincerity.” (See the Website’s most recent article.)

Of course, Matt is a huge and beloved asset that one would be wise to pay careful attention to. (Yes one can end a sentence with a preposition.)

And don’t ignore Mr. Jim Kalb’s related, great Website, Turnabout.

Mr. (lower case) matt tells us that the difference between the presidents Reagan and Carter boils down to the fact that Reagan had better speech writers. In other words had the fate swapped their respective speech writing teams it would have been Carter we would credit for his huge contribution to the demise of the Soviet Empire and Reagan would have been remembered for being a pitiable dupe, time and again hoodwinked by the scoundrels in the Kremlin. Mr. matt seems to believe that it is not what a president does, but what he says that makes the difference and impresses the international gallery of hoodlums. Or, too carry his belief one logical step further, an outcome of an international conflict could be settled by a simple exchange of faxes containing speeches prepared by the writing teams from the respective governments. Just imagine such an exchange between Carter and Brezhnev followed by a telephone call: “Hello Jimmy, it is me, Leonid. I just read your speech and, I hate to admit, it beats mine. OK, you win. I am taking my armies out of Afghanistan. Well, at least until I assemble a better speech writing team.”

The countless millions of the Eastern Europe who emerged from the communist dungeon after decades of oppression will never forget Reagan’s “Evil Empire” appellation and the urge “Mr. Gorbachov, tear down this wall”. For us these words were the sound of the approaching steps of freedom. Mr. Carter could have never accomplished that feat even with Reagan’s speech writers.
And another thing, - these phrases were considered “too inflammatory” by Reagan’s speech writers and he had to firmly insist that they be included. Thank God he did not budge!

I recently read that GHWB is going to mark his 80th birthday by parachuting out of an aircraft. He celebrated his 75th the same way. This reminded me of a post by Mr. Sutherland on this Forum months ago that both GHWB and GWB have a rather frivolous nature.

I remember during the first months of GHWB’s Presidency in 1989 that several Bush 41 staffers were openly mocking and sneering at former President Reagan. This was in anoynomous quotes in the Washington Post. The Bushies were boasting that the mean old conservatives were now gone. Yes, there are hypocritical tributes being paid to Reagan from several directions.

Bush 41’s frivolousness was made clear in his Inaugural address, when he said that “freedom is a kite flying ever higher and higher.”

It reached its nadir when he was jogging past some reporters after he broke his no-new-taxes pledge, and they asked him about it, and he said as he ran by, “Read my hips.”

“Freedom is a kite flying ever higher and higher.”

LOL! GHWB - truly the emptiest of the empty suits.

I had forgotten the “freedom is a kite” phrase. However, let us not forget “a thousand points of light” and “New World Order,” two of Bush 41’s other meaningless “contributions.”
They should live forever, along with his son’s “compassionate conservatism” in the annals of hot air.

Bush’s phrase from his acceptance speech, describing America as “… a brilliant diversity spread like stars, like a thousand points of light in a broad and peaceful sky,” is not at all meaningless. It is a beautiful image of a self-governing society. It is perhaps the most poetic expression of the old Republican vision of America. When Michael Dukakis said he had no idea what Bush meant, that only proved his alienation from any idea of America other than the managerial.

The fact that Bush himself didn’t mean it because he’s an empty suit is not the issue here. The phrase itself is not meaningless.

Also, while “compassionate conservatism” is a contradiction and I oppose it, it is not meaningless. It has substantive content. It means things like the Faith-based initiative, in which the government gives assistance to private institutions that are already doing good work. Another term for compassionate conservatism is big-government conservatism.

Actually, I think Bush 43’s best contribution to the hall of infamy’s idiotic remarks section is “Islam is a religion of peace.”

What Bush ought to say is: “Liberalism is a religion that tells us that if there is a religion of war that is totally alien to every thing we are and that is specifically devoted to our destruction, then we must call it a religion of peace.”

Who cares what any Bush says at this point? Judge them by what they do. They will be found wanting enough.

As for the thousand points of light, it was better than the Bush average, but what do you suppose GHW Bush thought the diversity he spoke of meant? I suspect that he is enough of a limousine liberal that he was thinking of some (to his eye) gloriously diverse polyethnic mosaic. Not my view of America, nor of genuine diversity. HRS

People will remember Ronald Reagan and honor him more at his passing than Jimmy Carter simply because Reagan has passed the test of time and Carter has not. In the years since the Reagan presidency, on those issues where he was criticized, he has been proven substantially correct and his critics (which often included Carter) have been shown to be wrong. The opposite is true for Carter. Nothing succeeds like success….

Incidentally, it’s more correct to say that “compassionate conservatism” is a redundancy. Conservatism is by its nature compassionate; the problem, as has been pointed out, is when the imperative for private compassionate action that conservatism impels us to do is improperly conflated into a government mandate.

“Conservatism is by its nature compassionate … “

There is nothing to be gained by trying to reconcile compassion with conservatism. The notion of compassion originated with Rousseau, who, in his Essay on Inequality, said that the fundamental human emotion is pity or compassion for our fellow beings. This is the origin of the sentimental or romantic side of leftism. It has nothing to do with traditional morality, and nothing to do with conservatism. Compassion, as Irving Babbitt explains in his indispensable book Democracy and Leadership, is an expansive impulse, in the same way that greed or the desire for power is an expansive impulse, and therefore needs to be restrained, not lauded and indulged in. The “compassionate” person, like Clinton, like GW Bush, is compelled to keep finding situations in which to express his compassion, and as conspicuously as possible. This is very different from the human response that Ronald Reagan often showed to people, usually in private.

The believers in compassion makes virtue identical with our own, expansive desires, since the highest virtue, compassion, is instinctive to us and all we have to do is let it out, which is done by getting rid of social institutions which restrain our true, virtuous selves. Traditional morality says that the truth lies outside ourselves, and that we should follow that truth and restrain our usual impulses.

Compassion is thus the radical opposite of conservatism. It is the liberal sentiment par excellence.

By way of illustration of my above point about the difference between liberal compassion and ordinary decency, remember Mrs. Clinton’s self-serving remark about how we have to act like human beings to the service people who work for us, waiters, domestics, office help, and so on? Her comment exemplified the “conspicuous” compassion that serves to highlight the speaker’s own goodness (suggesting that no one before her had had this revolutionary thought that one ought to treat one’s subordinates like human beings—what a paragon!), rather than to be good. We heard the actual stories of how awful she was to the people under her.

Now consider this observation about Reagan, from Linda Chavez:

“It was vintage Ronald Reagan, whose humility and kindness never ceased to amaze me. I saw it when the president went out of his way to greet the kitchen and hotel staff whenever he gave a speech. No matter how his staff and the Secret Service might be trying to hurry him along, the president would always take time to greet the service workers. This was no mere political act, since most of these people probably hadn’t voted for him, and many weren’t likely even U.S. citizens. He did it because he had a sense of duty to the public….

“The world will remember President Reagan for having helped defeat communism and for restoring America’s faith in itself and its leaders. But I will remember him as the kind and generous soul who never forgot the little people, even when he was the most powerful man in the world.”

Reagan left the presidency 15 years ago, yet we never heard this before, because he didn’t broadcast it. It wasn’t about himself and his need to show off his “compassion”; it was about duty, about following something outside himself.

http://www.townhall.com/columnists/lindachavez/lc20040609.shtml

The politics and jurisprudence of compassion for evil, is a lot like a definition of the liberalism of recent generations. It means empathy for evil and for weakness; fellow-feeling for the crippled, and for the permanently disadvantaged. It is empathy for deserved sufferings, but never for virtue or the misfortunes of the good. The empathy for evil coincides with hatred against virtue and human merit of all meaningful kinds. It is not like Christianity speaking of those persecuted for righteousness’ sake. It is like Materialism insisting that no one can help it; no one earns a better position in the world, and no one deserves to suffer the results of their misbehavior. Compassion of this kind is implicitly political; it wants society to intervene, while the purveyor of this compassion has only to stand there and emote.

Charles Krauthammer sums up the hypocrisy in liberals’ meaningless praise of Reagan for his “optimism” and “sunniness”:

“[Reagan’s] success [in defeating the Soviet Union] is an understandable embarrassment to the critics who opposed his every policy. They supported the freeze, denounced the military buildup, ridiculed strategic defenses, opposed aid to the Nicaraguan anti-communists and derided Reagan for telling the truth about the Soviet empire.

“So now they praise his sunny smile. Normally, people speak well of the recently deceased to honor the dictum of being kind to the dead. When Reagan’s opponents speak well of him now, however, they are trying to be kind to themselves.”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A33147-2004Jun10.html

It’s rather curious to see a remark like this from Krauthammaer, a liberal himself. Mensheviks like Krauthammer have been wrapping themselves on Reagan nostaligia along with the Bushites, as if they were the legitimate political heirs of the former President.

Reagan loved the real America, not the abstract corporatist proposition promoted by the likes of Krauthammer. Though he never served in the military like the untalented Mr. Kerry (or Jimmy Carter, for that matter), and even made some serious mistakes (Sandra Day O’Connor, Anthony Kennedy), Reagan was a true patriot - something utterly beyond the comprehension of Krauthammer, Max Boot, and the Bushites.

Krauthammer is a neoconservative on foreign policy. The neocons always strongly supported Reagan’s foreign policy. Carl is acting as though Krauthammer opposed Reagan on foreign policy when he was president, and is hypocritically praising him now. Not true at all.

Also, Reagan was a commissioned officer in the U.S. Army Reserve. He served in the Reserve Cavalry during the ’30s, and during the war was made captain, serving in a filmmaking unit. (Actually he was made major near the end of the war but quietly threw away the promotion papers because he thought captain sounded dashing while major sounded stuffy.) He would never have been ok’d for military duty, however, because of his very poor eyesight.

The neoconservatives were right to support Reagan’s foreign policy, but they are dead wrong today when they attempt to implicate him in their Propositional Nation ideology. As I wrote the other day, “[Reagan] knew that ideas were real things, powerful things; but he did not fancy that they were more real than men, or that men should diminish so that certain ideas might triumph. Reagan was a natural democrat, a man of the people; but he never followed the Jacobin spirit of the age, once captured by Burke with lapidary precision: ‘that all government, not being a democracy, is a usurpation.’”

http://cellasreview.blogspot.com/2004_06_01_cellasreview_archive.html#108673451653653753

Do we really want to concede the word “compassion” to the left, just because they abuse it for their own purposes? Can a Christian really argue that when one sees a fellow human being suffering, he should feel nothing? The key question is what one does with that feeling. The liberal engages in overt “compassion” that is designed to broadcast how compassionate he is and make him feel good about himself, regardless of whether he is really helping the suffering one.

In other words, liberalism includes a central element of moral narcissism. Conservatism does not, and rationally understands the limits of our ability to ameliorate suffering. But I don’t think it is linguistically or logically precise to simply say that “compassion” is exclusively a liberal sentiment wrapped in moral narcissism; compassion is antithetical to conservatism; compassion was invented by Rousseau; etc. Why do we constantly cede elements of our language as soon as the left claims them, instead of correcting them and pointing out their abuses?

With occasional exceptions, I’ve always disliked the word “compassion.” My first encounter with the word was not in its liberal guise, but its Buddhist guise. Buddhism makes compassion the highest divine quality. I was always offended by this. Compassion to me always suggested that the compassionate one from on high looks down on those on whom he is having compassion. There was something phony and self-regarding about it. I liked the concept of divine love. I disliked the concept of divine compassion. So when I became aware of liberals using it I had a somewhat similar reaction, though my reaction wasn’t articulate. But when I read Rousseau (and Babbitt on Rousseau) and saw how Rousseau made pity or compassion the highest value and that this highest value is a natural instinct which man naturally experiences in the absence of unequal institutions, and that this thinking is the very origin of liberalism, it all came together.

Thanks to Mr. Auster for the outline of Reagan’s military carrer, which I was unaware of. It still supports my point that an even an exemplary military background is simply not a measure of suitability for the Presidency - which is basically John Kerry’s claim. Reagan didn’t serve overseas, wasn’t in combat, and didn’t receive any medals. It didn’t matter. He was a far better President than George H. W. Bush, who did.

I agree with Mr. Cella’s remark about Krauthammer and the neoconservatives. They were right to support Reagan’s foreign policy. Neocons’ praise of Reagan isn’t completely hollow like that of the left. It’s the appropriation of Reagan as a fellow neoconservative that I find objectionable - especially from folks like Krauthammer and Max Boot, who are so leftist on social issues that I don’t even count them as bona fide neoconservatives. Reagan was not a neocon, despite his having embraced a few neocon ideas.

Of course, since neoconservatives have utterly caved to the left on two issues in the past year - racial preferences and gay marriage - the distinctions between them and left-liberals are becoming fewer. In contrast to many Paleos, I tend to see the neocons as having been lead to the left by the Bushites, not the other way around - not that it took much pull on the Bushites’ part.

More on “compassion”: I’m not trying to outlaw the word. But in my experience, 99 percent of the time that it’s used, it’s used in a false or egregious sense. I’m sure Mr. Coleman has had the experience (as all conservatives have had) of being accused by a liberal of showing a “lack of compassion.” The word “compassion,” for the reasons I’ve given, has a particular susceptibility to this kind of abuse.

True love (as well as mercy and forgiveness) is self-forgetful. But, at least in my view, compassion suggests the compassionate one looking down on the unfortunate and being conscious of his compassion for them. I just find that notion objectionable.

I would say that the biblical word “mercy” makes an interesting contrast with “compassion”. Interestingly, some modern translations have substituted “compassion” in some key verses where “mercy” was previously found. For example: “I desire mercy, and not sacrifice” is a famous statement from Hosea 6:6 quoted (via the Septuagint) in Matthew 9:13. The distinction in my mind is that “mercy” implies action to alleviate another’s condition, while “compassion”, without any context, can just be the feeling of the subject, without any necessarily implied action resulting from that feeling.

The example of Jesus is to feel compassion, then show mercy through actions; liberalism focuses on the feeling of compassion itself, liberalism being moral narcissism. If the liberal is not moved to any action at all, or to action that does more harm than good, he still gives himself credit for having felt compassion.

However, there are still examples in which the feeling of compassion is the subject of the Bible verse, with the actions of mercy described later. Matthew 9:36: “And seeing the multitudes, he felt compassion for them, because they were distressed and downcast like sheep without a shepherd.” (NASB) Matthew 15:32: “And Jesus called His disciples to Him, and said, ‘I feel compassion for the multitude, because they have remained with Me now for three days and have nothing to eat; and I do not wish to send them away hungry, lest they faint on the way.’” (NASB) The feeding of the 4000 followed this latter verse.

The feeling of compassion without the actions of mercy are not commendable, but the feelings of compassion are a prerequisite to actions of mercy, are they not? As long as we have the examples of Jesus’ feelings of compassion discussed in scripture, I am not going to allow Rousseau or any other liberal/leftist to taint the word. Rather, I will deny the genuineness of their faux “compassion”. What was Rousseau’s record of behavior towards his own children, for example? I would rather challenge liberals/leftists to the core of their morally narcissistic beings than to abandon the word to them.

Mr. Coleman and I have a different sense of this and that’s fine. Personally I don’t feel that I’m giving up the word “compassion” to the liberals because to me (in 99.5 percent of its usage) it inherently is a liberal concept.

As I reported in a previous post, Bush 41 celebrated his 80th birthday by parachuting out of an aircraft. I wrote that this was evidence of the frivolous and unserious nature of both GHWB and GWB.

Today I saw an NBC report on a birhday celebration by the Bush family. Barbara Bush said of her husband in a jocular manner, “I wish he would grow up.” Precisely.

David, Maybe GHWB is simply trying to fly up ever higher and higher like that great kite of freedom.

Come to think of it, he really “kited” the check left to him of Reagan’s policies after he took office. He’s a real “kite” guy, I suppose. Too bad he didn’t go into the kite business instead of a career as a politician. We’d possibly be in better shape today.