Where apart from Thatcher could we find a high official who approached Reagan? It is a mark of Reagan’s powerful legacy that others who do not fully understand him, or who lack the strengths to advance the policies he supported in the face of overwhelming establishment opposition, should now be eager to laud his service. Even those who hated what he stood for, and even hated him personally, are for the most part forced to pay obeisance.

Lady Thatcher was outstanding. Everyone, and eveything in that church became small, and faded away. In the end, we were left with her, and Reagan, and the nobility of the West, and what it stands for.

Who says the eulogists have to be heads of states and heads of government? The eulogists should be the people who are best able to invoke the deceased person and the meaning of his life. Mulroney’s and Bush Elder’s eulogies were pleasant, but barely different from eulogies they might have given for anyone. Bush Younger’s eulogy, written by a speech writer, was better, and ended beautifully, but was still superficial and trivial compared to the things that could and should have been said.

Lawrence, you couldn’t be more right. Bush the younger is the most left-wing President in history, with his extremist immigration and fiscal policies wrecking the United States. I have a personal stake in the US being a solvent republic as I’m Australian. I don’t want the US, our beloved superpower, to be some bankrupt, rorted, banana republic, overrun by illegal immigrants.

Unfortunately, Bush II will probably lose the election, meaning Kerry will take over and destroy the republic even further. I’m not sure how the conservatives can rectify the situation, but I’d like to lend my support.

The pleasant, but predictable, eulogies by the other speakers were completely eclipsed by Lady Thatcher’s, whose words were heart-felt and backed by her life. What need did Great Britain have in sending Prince Charles, who was caught on camera drifting off during the talks?

I appreciated the homily by Rev. Danforth in relating the life of Ronald Reagan to the Christian religion. This is a fact that cannot be overemphasized. I’m glad that at least someone spent a little time on that, as well as on the concept of good and evil, right and wrong, taken from the Bible.

I smiled, but was inwardly disgusted by, the comic relief provided by Bill and Hillary, who, I suppose, had to be invited. At least they appeared true to their guiding principle: Do your own thing. Did you see both of them rocking out to the music? At a state funeral? Yep!

I got some satisfaction in Bush the father being forced to utter the name of Ronald Reagan in a kindly and gentle way. Do you remember, during his term, how he always referred to R.R. as “my predecessor”? A few times he had to say the name, and he could barely choke it out. His voice would go hoarse, and it would raise an octave. He must have practiced out loud for this eulogy. He didn’t dare give himself away.

Some say Ronald Reagan’s life was providential. Perhaps his death was also. He died when most Americans felt sullied, in a malaise, with constant media attention to the casualties in Iraq and to the abuse of prisoners. It seemed as though America could do nothing right and things were coming undone. This funeral service, with all its faults, unified the country, restored some national dignity, cleansed our national soul, reminded us of our traditional ideals, and briefly introduced some of those ideals to a postmodern generation—just when such things were needed. So in death and in life, Ronald Reagan brought out the best in us.

I’m extremely annoyed by those “pleasant and predictible eulogies.” Something much more was called for. I guess this is Nancy’s fault, as she chose the eulogists.

She should have picked Reagan’s ideological soul mates to give the eulogies, instead of just one soul mate and three pleasant but empty men. What a funeral that would have been.

Ponnuru at NationalReview Corner cites GWB line:
“He (ed. Reagan) believed that bigotry and prejudice were the worst things a person could be guilty of.”

I don’t think Reagan believed it because it is plainly idiotic. A bigoted non-violent person is much preferable to an equal opportunity murderer. A question is does Bush believe this nonsense?

Good for Ramesh Ponnuru. His entire comment is worth copying:

———————

I’M SURE THIS IS A MINORITY OPINION [Ramesh Ponnuru]
but I didn’t much like President Bush’s eulogy. The best example of the kind of false note he struck was the following line: “He believed that bigotry and prejudice were the worst things a person could be guilty of.” I doubt that Reagan believed that proposition, and if he had, his holding of that view would not have been praiseworthy. I am sure, on the other hand, that Bush believes this proposition, or thinks that he does.

—————-
Bush is a liberal idiot. Ponnuru, to his credit, recognizes that.

On a happier note, there was a particularly beautiful moment in the ceremony at Andrews Air Force base as Reagan’s casket was brought to the plane for his final departure from Washington to the West, and the band played that stirring slow movement from … I think it was Dvorjak’s New World Symphony, where you feel you’re seeing the sun rise over the Great Plains. This captured the hope and confidence that Reagan expressed in his farewell message of ten years ago, that for America, a bright dawn always lies ahead.

“Bush the younger is the most left-wing President in history”

That sounds like a stretch. Have we forgotten Clinton *that* quickly?

This week has done wonders for the youth. You can tell they sense something large has happened in the life of the Nation. The mythic sense is important for a people, it gives them hope that our civic life is important, and can be noble. This has been a moment of high culture. Just think, the guy who used to be Jack Kemp was onced asked what amounted to high culture in American life and he said the movie ” The Wizzard Of Oz”. No kidding :)

It is the essence of modern liberalism to believe that bigotry and prejudice—i.e., any distinctions between different groups—is the worst things a person can do, worse than lying, worse than betrayal, worse than theft, worse then armed robbery, worse than rape, worse than murder, worse than mass murder, worse than treason.

The way this belief was born was very simple. At the end of World War II, people began to say (Otto Frank is the first person I know of who said it) that the evil of the Nazis was “intolerance.” As a result of this wildly off-base definition, ordinary intolerance, prejudice, and discrimination became associated with the ultimate crime committed in the history of the world, while the worst crimes, including genocide itself, got downgraded to something less serious. This is the moral inversion that defines modern liberalism, and the idiot in the White House is a card carrying member.

Mr. Auster,

Tom Fleming describes the liberal in his new book, The Morality of Everday Life,

“[T]here is a consistency of tone, a certain universal high-mindedness that is impatient with distinctions and disdainful of irrational attachments. Sentiments of loyalty, because they are not entirely rational, do not yield their secrets to analysis or measurement.”

Bad news. Ramesh Ponnuru has posted a follow-up at The Corner:

—————-

I STAND CORRECTED [Ramesh Ponnuru]
A reader emails to say that Bush’s line is an echo of something Reagan wrote in one of his letters: “I was raised from my childhood by parents who believed bigotry and prejudice were the worst things a person could be guilty of.” Ronald Reagan to Leonard Kirk, March 23, 1983. Reagan: A Life in Letters, ed. Kiron K. Skinner, Annelise Anderson, Martin Anderson (New York, 2003), p. 13. It still seems to me to be a strange sentiment.
Posted at 06:39 PM

—————-

This is bad, very bad. But there would seem to be some mitigating factors that would relieve Reagan of the charge of “idiot” that I threw at Bush:

(1) Reagan was writing a private letter, quoting his parents, not exactly expressing his own views.

(2) We don’t know the context of his letter to Leonard Kirk; in that context, the sentiment may be less off-base.

(3) Reagan to our knowledge never said anything like this in any public pronouncement.

(4) Bush HAS made “anti-discrimination,” anti-“racial profiling,” etc., the center of his political philosophy, and he put that idiot idea in the center of a speech made to the whole world.

In conclusion, I think Reagan in a thoughtless moment was giving way to a liberal sentiment that was not at all typical of his political philosophy, and was not thinking through the implications of what he was saying. It remains inconceivable that he would have, for example, given the shameful speech decrying American historic guilt that Bush gave in Africa, or that he would have been pals with radical American Moslem groups; or that he would have forced old ladies and children to have random security checks in airports while preventing Moslem men from being checked. When Bush says it, it’s in conformity with his whole politics. When Reagan said it, it seems more like a nod to a conventional liberal sentiment that he didn’t fully embrace. To put it another way that VFR readers will understand, Reagan’s unprincipled exceptions to liberalism were far more extensive than Bush’s.

Nevertheless, the comment does show that Reagan had imbibed to a certain degree the folly of modern liberalism which makes anti-discrimination the highest virtue. In this connection, let us not forget his greatest failure: that he let indiscriminate mass immigration into the United States continue unabated.

Mr. Auster,

But didn’t Reagan - who (as I recall) originally opposed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 — sign the Martin Luther King Day law?

There was a certain amount of acceptance on his part that the liberal agenda could not be undone. I imagine if the left had made a fuss about racial profiling, etc. in his day he might have compromised there too.

He did sign it and it was extremely regrettable that he did so. He should have taken a principled stand against it. He should have said: “This holiday is too political. We don’t have national holidays in this country to advance causes. We have holidays to honor men who have, with the passage of time, been accepted as true national figures. King has only been dead 15 years. Let’s let more time pass and see if he continues to deserve this extraordinary honor.”

But he didn’t say that. I think he just figured the holiday would pass over his veto, and it would tar him, so that there was nothing to gain. Still, he should have taken a stand.

The deeper problem my previous comment points to is that Reagan, though he on the right edge of the spectrum of modern American politics, was still a part of that spectrum, and in that sense he remained a liberal.

Here’s an example of what Reagan was probably thinking of when he heard the words prejudice and bigotry, as told by 89-year-old former broadcaster George Putnam at NewsMax:

“One evening after my newscast, a man and his wife appeared at the studio, and told how he had played football on an Illinois team with Ronnie Reagan. Those were the days when we played 60 minutes football - offense and defense. Ronnie played guard on defense and halfback on offense. The key to their team was the only black guy who played center.

“The night before the big game of the season, the local restaurateur provided a steak dinner to Ronnie’s team. Just before the dinner was served, the manager of the restaurant told the team that they could eat their dinner in the dining room but the black center would have to eat in the kitchen. Ronnie was furious. He quietly talked with members of the team, asked them if they had a few pennies. They put a few dollars together, walked out of the restaurant with their black buddy, went to a local grocery and purchased some bread and cheese and sat down to a menial repast, leaving the steak and a sumptuous feast behind.”

Reagan was offended, in a direct, human way, by the idea that his teammate was a lesser being who had to eat in the kitchen, and, to his credit, he indignantly refused to accept that. But to say that such discrimination is the worst thing a person can be guilty of requires specific context and definition for it not to be taken to mad extremes. If we take _literally_ the phrase “bigotry and prejudice are the worst things a person can be guilty of,” and take “bigotry and prejudice” in the sense in which they are currently used today, then, for example, since racial profiling is a form of bigotry and prejudice, and since checking two or more Moslem men prior to the boarding of an airliner is considered racial profiling under current guidelines, then if an airline security official does check a second Moslem man, he has committed “the worst thing a person can be guilty of.” This is the insanity that universalist liberal formulae result in, and the only way liberals can escape the insanity is by making lots and lots of unprincipled exceptions. As Jim Kalb said, liberalism requires people to be irrational.

Regarding the story of the black teammate, it’s worth pointing out that Reagan was not engaging in a political stunt, but taking a personal stand on behalf of an individual - a far cry from today’s politically correct posturing and repression of deviations from the party line.
Also, Reagan did that before it was politically popular to do so. As far as the MLK holiday and what Reagan should have done, you are exactly right, he should have made a principled stand, even if that meant his veto being over-ridden. Because his signing of the MLK observance didn’t really help him with the left anyway, so what did he gain? Our present occupant of the Oval Office has taken that type of error and made it into an art form. He panders to all these interest groups, betrays his supposed principles, and still fails to win over the group being pandered, while simultaneously eroding his own base.

When Reagan’s parents said that bigotry and prejudice was one of the worse things a person could be guilty of, it was at a time in which many terrible things we now take for granted were simply unthinkable. We should not take Bush’s comment, or Reagan’s letter, as the utterance of a PC sentiment, but rather as the recognition that it is a terrible sin to fail to deal with each individual as a precious and unique life - a sin which pervades the left and collectivism of all kinds. It was Reagan’s understanding of this that led him to his incredible project of overturning the Soviet Union.

This is a clear illustration of anti-anti-racism: “At the end of World War II, people began to say (Otto Frank is the first person I know of who said it) that the evil of the Nazis was “intolerance.” As a result of this wildly off-base definition, ordinary intolerance, prejudice, and discrimination became associated with the ultimate crime committed in the history of the world, while the worst crimes, including genocide itself, got downgraded to something less serious.”

Such an intense story is the life of Anne Frank. She is such an icon that our descendants must revere the original movie (I hope it has been digitalized). Her incredible book, I pray, will be memorized if we descend into the world of George Orwell’s 1984 (as the gifted Oscar Werner did in Fahrenheit 454), where language itself is changed to comport with thought. Jesus works in mysterious ways and will continue to do so through people such as Anne Frank.

Perhaps the Bushes were asked to speak simply because they were successors in office. Without Ronald Reagan, it’s hard to imagine either entering 1600 without a tour ticket, so their presence does add to the Big Man’s luster, if not quite in the way intended.

Brian Mulroney viewed in political terms is a strange choice. After all, Reagan revived a major party, and Mulroney more or less destroyed one. (Mrs Mulroney expressed the wish that Walter Mondale win, and in a way he did— in Canada!) I suspect the reason for his presence was of a more personal nature. They did seem to get along well, as one would expect two genial Irishmen to. Reagan once bumped into John Lennon in the sound booth at Monday Night Football, after attempts to keep them apart failed. They clicked, and Reagan taught Lennon the rules of gridiron then and there. (Given time they could have discussed their naughty Irish fathers, saintly English mothers, and show biz.) Can you imagine a 64-year-old Lennon giving a eulogy?

Yes. John Lennon was capable of an inspiring eulogy. He wanted to be an American, in case anyone forgot. He probably would have given a musical eulogy, if asked, and it would have been sincere.

I’d like to thank Australian Steve Edwards for his introduction and offer to help the traditionalist conservative cause. While he can’t vote in our elections, he can certainly help out in many other ways.

I personally have given up writing Congressmen with the exception of Rep. Tom Tancredo of Colorado, one of only two or three in the House who is standing up to Bush and the Open Border Crowd in the GOP. But there will I am sure be a Conservative Party forming after the upcoming election, whether Bush wins or not. Getting conservative judges to run for local office and conservative businessmen and women to run for county and statewide office is also very important.

I have actually been asking a similar question—what conservative pac’s are forming that I can get involved with? Some are very specifically involved in one issue (illegal immigration, abortion, etc.). Others here at VFR have discussed The Constitution Party which is running candidates in many states this November. Vdare.com has some wonderful people who are fighting the illegal immigration issue. I would highly recommend reading some of their writer’s columns.

I would like to second Mr. Levin’s expression of thanks to Mr. Edwards. Mr. Edwards, one of the very best ways to help us here in the USA is to work at reversing the ravages of liberalism in your native Australia.

The Australians seem to be waking up about immigration. The fight needs to go on to enable Australia’s survival. Encourage your politicians to take in the whites fleeing from the genocidal regimes of Zimbabwe, Namibia, and South Africa. Working for the repeal of the totalitarian gun laws there would also help. (There’s nothing like a fully armed citizenry to put a damper on the grandiose statist dreams of liberal politicians.) Besides, if things keep going downhill here, we might very well need a place to flee to.

Our Australian allies are well-liked, and I hope they recognize this. Not to be trivial, but Nicole Kidman is the most beautiful Catholic girl in the world. I have no clue why the love of her life, the moron Tom Cruise, saw fit to reject her.

If intolerance were the problem that sent the national socialist dictatorship into a moral chasm, this would imply that mass-murder of civilians that was carried out without discrimination, would have been better. The evil was the power and the freedom for aggression, and the indulgence of the leader’s conspiracy theories, all the way out to the foremost rank of mass murder programs. Lord Acton’s statement on power describes what happened. When power is great enough, the ruler can feed his paranoid tendencies, which are themselves hugely exacerbated by the power, and gratify them. In order to try to save socialism from well-deserved dishonor, the apologists for absolute power had to invent misleading suggested causes of corruption, such as that racial intolerance turns an otherwise beneficial dictatorship into a mass-murder machine. Stalin, Mao and the Khmer Rouge ran larger or more penetrating civilian-killing systems, yet none of them was, in prosecuting these ravages, especially driven by racial intolerance.

Interseting to say the least. I shall avoid intellectual importance.

Wonderful project. I adore it (even though I think it unwise in the long-term because of WMD’s). What about spending billions on virtual meetings between humans with exquisite satellite holographs? In any event, I hope that this time around the architect will be an American, who will be practical and will not allow the safety of his countrymen to take a back seat, as did the Asian that designed the original towers. We build to last: Empire State Building, large-deck aircraft carriers, B-52’s, Marines, and the Louisiana Superdome, largest such structure in the world that would require billions to recreate and is still gorgeous, well-located, and awesome.

Its secrets are unknown. It has enormous rooms for any-sized parties. Everyone is close to the game, even in the steep but close high seats. (LSU won the National Championship in the Dome, just in case any of the always mighty and tough Sooners forgot.) The in-house parking is enormous. It has several restaurants. Its enormity can only be realized by visiting it; yet it is not in any way ornate. Its functionality is perfectly balanced with its size. Tour it for a few dollars or, as I have done surreptiously for free, frequent one of its restaurants. I have been to a number of events, and it never fails to awe me; remember the Romanian Nadia Comaneche. I was right at mat-side with my pushy and beautiful cousin.

Carl is absolutely correct about the importance of Australia as a pro-conservative country, on the whole, that has been our ally of late and a good one. As funny as it seems thru Carl postulation—“If things keep going downhill here, we might need a place to flee to”—it is rather chilling to think that things here might indeed come to that.

On a somewhat related story, did anyone at VFR see this:

http://www.twincities.com/mld/twincities/8894273.htm?1c

I am trying to figure out why, after, 20 years, we are flying in 5,000 more Hmong from Thailand to become new American citizens in Minnesota—people who cannot speak our language, and people who the article admits are going to have to directly onto welfare. Is it from an old agreement in 1975-76 between the U.S. and Thailand because many Hmong evidently helped the CIA during Vietnam and Cambodia? It is just a very strange story and the writer did not ask the tough questions he should have and by doing so, failed to get to the bottom of the story, which is to answer, “Why?”.

Ron Reagan made the following statement in his eulogy. Who, in your opinion, was he referring to; Bush or Kerry?


“Dad was also a deeply, unabashedly religious man. But he never made the fatal mistake of so many politicians wearing his faith on his sleeve to gain political advantage. True, after he was shot and nearly killed early in his presidency, he came to believe that God had spared him in order that he might do good. But he accepted that as a responsibility, not a mandate. And there is a profound difference.”

This has been discussed a lot on the Web. It seems to me he’s referring to GW Bush.

Mrs. Thatcher’s comments, and those of the Reagan children, were well worth hearing. What may have been the crocodile tears of the Bushes were not. My father wise-cracked that the Bush presence did, unintentionally, make Reagan look bigger and better by comparison.
Contrary to what John Bolton seems to suggest, Communist regimes have often focused hostility on minority groups or different nationalities or supposed foreigners at some point, as well as enemy social classes. The Soviet attacks on Jews, Ukrainians, Tatars, Volga Germans and some of the Caucasian peoples are cases in point. The Bulgarian regime picked on the Turkish minority, and the Viets on the Chinese.

Jonah Goldberg, of all people, was forced to notice the extreme contrast between Bush 41.1 and Reagan, due to the airing of many old Reagan speeches last week:

http://www.nationalreview.com/goldberg/goldberg200406140834.asp

Multiple sources, including Michael Reagan, say that Reagan personally selected the speakers. Of course, this would have been back before 1994, so he undoubtedly didn’t pick Bush 43. Probably he asked for Thatcher, Mulroney, George H.W., and whoever would happen to be President at the time of death.

Whoever made the choices they were terrible choices. (If Reagan himself made the choice, then he only repeated his bad choice of Bush as his VP.)

I said as soon as I saw the list of speakers that (other than Thatcher) this was a terrible list who would not give eulogies worthy of the occasion, and I was right. The funeral had much less impact than it ought to have had because of the utterly mediocre nature of the eulogies.

are you the “larry auster” from detroit…and mumford h.s.???

No, I’m not from Detroit. But by coincidence, yesterday I looked up myself on an Internet search engine and was surprised to find there are about six Lawrence Austers in the U.S. This was disconcerting.