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Dear Mr. President and Family
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Posted by: getta
Today I watched as the world said Good-Bye to one of it's sons. Today I watched as the people remembered you for what you had done. There were the stories of time long past - that either made me laugh or made me cry. I wasn't always sure what it was I should do - so I just listened.
You weren't my favorite actor - (John Wayne) was. You weren't my favorite President - that's if I did have one. But if I think about it - I guess I would have to say John F Kennedy with the Young President Bush coming in second. He is alike like you Mr. President. He loves the country and the flag. He believes in democracy and the right of ever man and women to live free. He is also having a hard time these days. The Evil Empire these days is in the Middle East.
I watched Nancy and your children today being brave and standing tall. I had forgotten somethings from the past. But as I listened today as people gave their accounts of the time that has gone by. It all came back to me as if it was yesterday. There were Good Times and there were Bad Times. You made me laugh at times. You were a cowboy(my father was one too). He is up there where you are now. God took him last year at the age of 88. Like Nancy -my mother was 82 at the time of his passing. I guess after watching and thinking today. Some of my tears were for him. I miss him.
There is one thing though Mr. President that you did for me that you have know idea you did do. You gave me the best Birthday Present I have ever had. What was it? It was the Fall of the Berlin Wall on - October 3rd 1990. I am an American with German heritage you see. My (2) brothers were in the military(Army) in West Germany when that concrete wall was first being built. I was 11 yrs old when that wall started going up and I wondered even then - would I be around to see it come down.
So I want to Thank You for this and for your leadership along the way. I will pray for your family that they remain strong.
In memory of you and for all the things you did for us the American people. God Bless you and may God speed.
God Bless the USA
Georgetta Richardson
Posted by: penny5
God Bless the former first lady and her family during this difficult time. God Bless all who have lost loved ones and God bless the USA.
Posted by: koppen
The Shining City Upon A Hill (Ronald Reagan)
On January 25, 1974
There are three men here tonight I am very proud to introduce. It was a
year ago this coming February when this country had its spirits lifted
as they have never been lifted in many years. This happened when planes
began landing on American soil and in the Philippines, bringing back men
who had lived with honor for many miserable years in North Vietnam
prisons. Three of those men are here tonight, John McCain, Bill Lawrence
and Ed Martin. It is an honor to be here tonight. I am proud that you
asked me and I feel more than a little humble in the presence of this
distinguished company.
There are men here tonight who, through their wisdom, their foresight
and their courage, have earned the right to be regarded as prophets of
our philosophy. Indeed they are prophets of our times. In years past
when others were silent or too blind to the facts, they spoke up
forcefully and fearlessly for what they believed to be right. A decade
has passed since Barry Goldwater walked a lonely path across this land
reminding us that even a land as rich as ours can't go on forever
borrowing against the future, leaving a legacy of debt for another
generation and causing a runaway inflation to erode the savings and
reduce the standard of living. Voices have been raised trying to
rekindle in our country all of the great ideas and principles which set
this nation apart from all the others that preceded it, but louder and
more strident voices utter easily sold cliches.
Cartoonists with acid-tipped pens portray some of the reminders of our
heritage and our destiny as old-fashioned. They say that we are trying
to retreat into a past that actually never existed. Looking to the past
in an effort to keep our country from repeating the errors of history is
termed by them as “taking the country back to McKinley.” Of course I
never found that was so bad -- under McKinley we freed Cuba. On the span
of history, we are still thought of as a young upstart country
celebrating soon only our second century as a nation, and yet we are the
oldest continuing republic in the world.
I thought that tonight, rather than talking on the subjects you are
discussing, or trying to find something new to say, it might be
appropriate to reflect a bit on our heritage.
You can call it mysticism if you want to, but I have always believed
that there was some divine plan that placed this great continent between
two oceans to be sought out by those who were possessed of an abiding
love of freedom and a special kind of courage.
This was true of those who pioneered the great wilderness in the
beginning of this country, as it is also true of those later immigrants
who were willing to leave the land of their birth and come to a land
where even the language was unknown to them. Call it chauvinistic, but
our heritage does not set us apart. Some years ago a writer, who
happened to be an avid student of history, told me a story about that
day in the little hall in Philadelphia where honorable men, hard-pressed
by a King who was flouting the very law they were willing to obey,
debated whether they should take the fateful step of declaring their
independence from that king. I was told by this man that the story could
be found in the writings of Jefferson. I confess, I never researched or
made an effort to verify it. Perhaps it is only legend. But story, or
legend, he described the atmosphere, the strain, the debate, and that as
men for the first time faced the consequences of such an irretrievable
act, the walls resounded with the dread word of treason and its price --
the gallows and the headman's axe. As the day wore on the issue hung in
the balance, and then, according to the story, a man rose in the small
gallery. He was not a young man and was obviously calling on all the
energy he could muster. Citing the grievances that had brought them to
this moment he said, “Sign that parchment. They may turn every tree into
a gallows, every home into a grave and yet the words of that parchment
can never die. For the mechanic in his workshop, they will be words of
hope, to the slave in the mines -- freedom.” And he added, “If my hands
were freezing in death, I would sign that parchment with my last ounce
of strength. Sign, sign if the next moment the noose is around your
neck, sign even if the hall is ringing with the sound of headman’s axe,
for that parchment will be the textbook of freedom, the bible of the
rights of man forever.” And then it is said he fell back exhausted. But
56 delegates, swept by his eloquence, signed the Declaration of
Independence, a document destined to be as immortal as any work of man
can be. And according to the story, when they turned to thank him for
his timely oratory, he could not be found nor were there any who knew
who he was or how he had come in or gone out through the locked and
guarded doors.
Well, as I say, whether story or legend, the signing of the document
that day in Independence Hall was miracle enough. Fifty-six men, a
little band so unique -- we have never seen their like since -- pledged
their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor. Sixteen gave their
lives, most gave their fortunes and all of them preserved their sacred
honor. What manner of men were they? Certainly they were not an
unwashed, revolutionary rebel, nor were then adventurers in a heroic
mood. Twenty-four were lawyers and jurists, 11 were merchants and
tradesmen, nine were farmers. They were men who would achieve security
but valued freedom more.
And what price did they pay? John Hart was driven from the side of his
desperately ill wife. After more than a year of living almost as an
animal in the forest and in caves, he returned to find his wife had died
and his children had vanished. He never saw them again, his property was
destroyed and he died of a broken heart -- but with no regret, only
pride in the part he had played that day in Independence Hall. Carter
Braxton of Virginia lost all his ships -- they were sold to pay his
debts. He died in rags. So it was with Ellery, Clymer, Hall, Walton,
Gwinnett, Rutledge, Morris, Livingston, and Middleton. Nelson, learning
that Cornwallis was using his home for a headquarters, personally begged
Washington to fire on him and destroy his home--he died bankrupt. It has
never been reported that any of these men ever expressed bitterness or
renounced their action as not worth the price. Fifty-six rank-and-file,
ordinary citizens had founded a nation that grew from sea to shining
sea, five million farms, quiet villages, cities that never sleep -- all
done without an area re-development plan, urban renewal or a rural legal
assistance program.
Now we are a nation of 211 million people with a pedigree that includes
blood lines from every corner of the world. We have shed that
American-melting-pot blood in every corner of the world, usually in
defense of someone's freedom. Those who remained of that remarkable band
we call our Founding Fathers tied up some of the loose ends about a
dozen years after the Revolution. It had been the first revolution in
all man’s history that did not just exchange one set of rulers for
another. This had been a philosophical revolution. The culmination of
men's dreams for 6,000 years were formalized with the Constitution,
probably the most unique document ever drawn in the long history of
man's relation to man. I know there have been other constitutions, new
ones are being drawn today by newly emerging nations. Most of them, even
the one of the Soviet Union, contains many of the same guarantees as our
own Constitution, and still there is a difference. The difference is so
subtle that we often overlook it, but is is so great that it tells the
whole story. Those other constitutions say, “Government grants you these
rights” and ours says, “You are born with these rights, they are yours
by the grace of God, and no government on earth can take them from you.”
Lord Acton of England, who once said, “Power corrupts, and absolute
power corrupts absolutely,” would say of that document, “They had solved
with astonishing ease and unduplicated success two problems which had
heretofore baffled the capacity of the most enlightened nations. They
had contrived a system of federal government which prodigiously
increased national power and yet respected local liberties and
authorities, and they had founded it on a principle of equality without
surrendering the securities of property or freedom.” Never in any
society has the preeminence of the individual been so firmly established
and given such a priority.
In less than twenty years we would go to war because the God-given
rights of the American sailors, as defined in the Constitution, were
being violated by a foreign power. We served notice then on the world
that all of us together would act collectively to safeguard the rights
of even the least among us. But still, in an older, cynical world, they
were not convinced. The great powers of Europe still had the idea that
one day this great continent would be open again to colonizing and they
would come over and divide us up.
In the meantime, men who yearned to breathe free were making their way
to our shores. Among them was a young refugee from the Austro-Hungarian
Empire. He had been a leader in an attempt to free Hungary from Austrian
rule. The attempt had failed and he fled to escape execution. In
America, this young Hungarian, Koscha by name, became an importer by
trade and took out his first citizenship papers. One day, business took
him to a Mediterranean port. There was a large Austrian warship under
the command of an admiral in the harbor. He had a manservant with him.
He had described to this manservant what the flag of his new country
looked like. Word was passed to the Austrian warship that this
revolutionary was there and in the night he was kidnapped and taken
aboard that large ship. This man's servant, desperate, walking up and
down the harbor, suddenly spied a flag that resembled the description he
had heard. It was a small American war sloop. He went aboard and told
Captain Ingraham, of that war sloop, his story. Captain Ingraham went to
the American Consul. When the American Consul learned that Koscha had
only taken out his first citizenship papers, the consul washed his hands
of the incident. Captain Ingraham said, “I am the senior officer in this
port and I believe, under my oath of my office, that I owe this man the
protection of our flag.”
He went aboard the Austrian warship and demanded to see their prisoner,
our citizen. The Admiral was amused, but they brought the man on deck.
He was in chains and had been badly beaten. Captain Ingraham said, “I
can hear him better without those chains,” and the chains were removed.
He walked over and said to Kocha, “I will ask you one question; consider
your answer carefully. Do you ask the protection of the American flag?”
Kocha nodded dumbly “Yes,” and the Captain said, “You shall have it.” He
went back and told the frightened consul what he had done. Later in the
day three more Austrian ships sailed into harbor. It looked as though
the four were getting ready to leave. Captain Ingraham sent a junior
officer over to the Austrian flag ship to tell the Admiral that any
attempt to leave that harbor with our citizen aboard would be resisted
with appropriate force. He said that he would expect a satisfactory
answer by four o'clock that afternoon. As the hour neared they looked at
each other through the glasses. As it struck four he had them roll the
cannons into the ports and had then light the tapers with which they
would set off the cannons -- one little sloop. Suddenly the lookout
tower called out and said, “They are lowering a boat,” and they rowed
Koscha over to the little American ship.
Captain Ingraham then went below and wrote his letter of resignation to
the United States Navy. In it he said, “I did what I thought my oath of
office required, but if I have embarrassed my country in any way, I
resign.” His resignation was refused in the United States Senate with
these words: “This battle that was never fought may turn out to be the
most important battle in our Nation's history.” Incidentally, there is
to this day, and I hope there always will be, a USS Ingraham in the
United States Navy.
I did not tell that story out of any desire to be narrowly chauvinistic
or to glorify aggressive militarism, but it is an example of government
meeting its highest responsibility.
In recent years we have been treated to a rash of noble-sounding
phrases. Some of them sound good, but they don't hold up under close
analysis. Take for instance the slogan so frequently uttered by the
young senator from Massachusetts, “The greatest good for the greatest
number." Certainly under that slogan, no modern day Captain Ingraham
would risk even the smallest craft and crew for a single citizen. Every
dictator who ever lived has justified the enslavement of his people on
the theory of what was good for the majority.
*We are not a warlike people. Nor is our history filled with tales of
aggressive adventures and imperialism, which might come as a shock to
some of the placard painters in our modern demonstrations. The lesson of
Vietnam, I think, should be that never again will young Americans be
asked to fight and possibly die for a cause unless that cause is so
meaningful that we, as a nation, pledge our full resources to achieve
victory as quickly as possible.
I realize that such a pronouncement, of course, would possibly be laying
one open to the charge of warmongering -- but that would also be
ridiculous. My generation has paid a higher price and has fought harder
for freedom that any generation that had ever lived. We have known four
wars in a single lifetime. All were horrible, all could have been
avoided if at a particular moment in time we had made it plain that we
subscribed to the words of John Stuart Mill when he said that “war is an
ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things.”
*
The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which
thinks nothing is worth a war is worse. The man who has nothing which he
cares about more than his personal safety is a miserable creature and
has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of
better men than himself.
The widespread disaffection with things military is only a part of the
philosophical division in our land today. I must say to you who have
recently, or presently are still receiving an education, I am awed by
your powers of resistance. I have some knowledge of the attempts that
have been made in many classrooms and lecture halls to persuade you that
there is little to admire in America. For the second time in this
century, capitalism and the free enterprise are under assault. Privately
owned business is blamed for spoiling the environment, exploiting the
worker and seducing, if not outright raping, the customer. Those who
make the charge have the solution, of course -- government regulation
and control. We may never get around to explaining how citizens who are
so gullible that they can be suckered into buying cereal or soap that
they don't need and would not be good for them, can at the same time be
astute enough to choose representatives in government to which they
would entrust the running of their lives.
Not too long ago, a poll was taken on 2,500 college campuses in this
country. Thousands and thousands of responses were obtained.
Overwhelmingly, 65, 70, and 75 percent of the students found business
responsible, as I have said before, for the things that were wrong in
this country. That same number said that government was the solution and
should take over the management and the control of private business.
Eighty percent of the respondents said they wanted government to keep
its paws out of their private lives.
We are told every day that the assembly-line worker is becoming a
dull-witted robot and that mass production results in standardization.
Well, there isn't a socialist country in the world that would not give
its copy of Karl Marx for our standardization.
Standardization means production for the masses and the assembly line
means more leisure for the worker -- freedom from backbreaking and
mind-dulling drudgery that man had known for centuries past. Karl Marx
did not abolish child labor or free the women from working in the coal
mines in England – the steam engine and modern machinery did that.
Unfortunately, the disciples of the new order have had a hand in
determining too much policy in recent decades. Government has grown in
size and power and cost through the New Deal, the Fair Deal, the New
Frontier and the Great Society. It costs more for government today than
a family pays for food, shelter and clothing combined. Not even the
Office of Management and Budget knows how many boards, commissions,
bureaus and agencies there are in the federal government, but the
federal registry, listing their regulations, is just a few pages short
of being as big as the Encyclopedia Britannica.
During the Great Society we saw the greatest growth of this government.
There were eight cabinet departments and 12 independent agencies to
administer the federal health program. There were 35 housing programs
and 20 transportation projects. Public utilities had to cope with 27
different agencies on just routine business. There were 192
installations and nine departments with 1,000 projects having to do with
the field of pollution.
One Congressman found the federal government was spending 4 billion
dollars on research in its own laboratories but did not know where they
were, how many people were working in them, or what they were doing. One
of the research projects was “The Demography of Happiness,” and for
249,000 dollars we found that “people who make more money are happier
than people who make less, young people are happier than old people, and
people who are healthier are happier than people who are sick.” For 15
cents they could have bought an Almanac and read the old bromide, “It's
better to be rich, young and healthy, than poor, old and sick.”
The course that you have chosen is far more in tune with the hopes and
aspirations of our people than are those who would sacrifice freedom for
some fancied security.
Standing on the tiny deck of the Arabella in 1630 off the Massachusetts
coast, John Winthrop said, “We will be as a city upon a hill. The eyes
of all people are upon us, so that if we deal falsely with our God in
this work we have undertaken and so cause Him to withdraw His present
help from us, we shall be made a story and a byword throughout the
world.” Well, we have not dealt falsely with our God, even if He is
temporarily suspended from the classroom.
When I was born my life expectancy was 10 years less than I have already
lived – that’s a cause of regret for some people in California, I know.
Ninety percent of Americans at that time lived beneath what is
considered the poverty line today, three-quarters lived in what is
considered substandard housing. Today each of those figures is less than
10 percent. We have increased our life expectancy by wiping out, almost
totally, diseases that still ravage mankind in other parts of the world.
I doubt if the young people here tonight know the names of some of the
diseases that were commonplace when we were growing up. We have more
doctors per thousand people than any nation in the world. We have more
hospitals that any nation in the world.
When I was your age, believe it or not, none of us knew that we even had
a racial problem. When I graduated from college and became a radio sport
announcer, broadcasting major league baseball, I didn’t have a Hank
Aaron or a Willie Mays to talk about. The Spaulding Guide said baseball
was a game for Caucasian gentlemen. Some of us then began editorializing
and campaigning against this. Gradually we campaigned against all those
other areas where the constitutional rights of a large segment of our
citizenry were being denied. We have not finished the job. We still have
a long way to go, but we have made more progress in a few years than we
have made in more than a century.
One-third of all the students in the world who are pursuing higher
education are doing so in the United States. The percentage of our young
Negro community that is going to college is greater than the percentage
of whites in any other country in the world.
One-half of all the economic activity in the entire history of man has
taken place in this republic. We have distributed our wealth more widely
among our people than any society known to man. Americans work less
hours for a higher standard of living than any other people. Ninety-five
percent of all our families have an adequate daily intake of nutrients
-- and a part of the five percent that don't are trying to lose weight!
Ninety-nine percent have gas or electric refrigeration, 92 percent have
televisions, and an equal number have telephones. There are 120 million
cars on our streets and highways -- and all of them are on the street at
once when you are trying to get home at night. But isn't this just proof
of our materialism -- the very thing that we are charged with? Well, we
also have more churches, more libraries, we support voluntarily more
symphony orchestras, and opera companies, non-profit theaters, and
publish more books than all the other nations of the world put together.
Somehow America has bred a kindliness into our people unmatched
anywhere, as has been pointed out in that best-selling record by a
Canadian journalist. We are not a sick society. A sick society could not
produce the men that set foot on the moon, or who are now circling the
earth above us in the Skylab. A sick society bereft of morality and
courage did not produce the men who went through those year of torture
and captivity in Vietnam. Where did we find such men? They are typical
of this land as the Founding Fathers were typical. We found them in our
streets, in the offices, the shops and the working places of our country
and on the farms.
We cannot escape our destiny, nor should we try to do so. The leadership
of the free world was thrust upon us two centuries ago in that little
hall of Philadelphia. In the days following World War II, when the
economic strength and power of America was all that stood between the
world and the return to the dark ages, Pope Pius XII said, “The American
people have a great genius for splendid and unselfish actions. Into the
hands of America God has placed the destinies of an afflicted mankind.”