Saturday, June 19, 2004
Clinton still has 'heat' - but it's the Democrats who are getting burnt
By Mark Steyn
There was a photograph in The New York Post a few weeks ago of Bill Clinton and some other fellow entering a room. Seven-eighths of the picture was Clinton with a big broad smile and his arms outstretched, like a cheesy Vegas lounge act acknowledging the applause of the crowd before launching into his opening number ("I Get a Kick Out of Me"). The gaunt, cadaverous fellow wedged into the left-hand sliver of the photograph proved on closer inspection to be Senator John Kerry, looking like a gloomy, aged retainer trying to remind the big guy that he's running late. In this case, four years late.
If I were a Democrat, that picture would have been more depressing than one of the oxymoronic "Kerry rallies". Clinton in the formulation adopted by various aggrieved campaign advisers and political observers, "sucks all the oxygen" out of the Senator's campaign. "His glamour is undersung," panted Tina Brown - about Clinton, not Kerry - after wangling an invite to the White House. "A man in a dinner jacket with more heat than any star in the room. He is vividly in the present tense and dares you to join him there."
The problem for Kerry is that the Clinton presidency is now half a decade in the past, but the guy is still vividly in the present tense, daring Tina and Co to join him there. And if it is a choice between Bill's heat-exuding tuxedo or John Kerry, it's no contest. This month alone, Bill Clinton is promoting his doorstopper autobiography (My Lie - whoops, My Life), plus promoting a movie about himself (The Hunting of the President), as well as promoting his new album of celebrity duets with Celine Dion, Robbie Williams and many more, and promoting his new range of Clintagra male performance products which enable middle-aged men to maintain erection for two full terms.
Okay, those last two aren't due until the autumn. But he did release a CD of a new, more sensitive version of Peter and the Wolf in which, instead of capturing the wolf and leading him away never to be heard of again, Peter realises the error of his lupophobia and releases the wolf back into the wild. That's more or less what has happened to Clinton: instead of being confined to the obscurity of retirement, the wolf is back in the wild.
On CBS tonight, Sixty Minutes will be running its in-depth one-hour interview with the former president, in which he reveals that he regards his impeachment as a "badge of honour". "I don't see it as a stain," he says, "it" being the impeachment, not the DNA evidence. "I stood up to it and beat it back."
Clinton and the veteran news anchor Dan Rather are reported to have hugged each other on camera. No word on whether the president also made Dan wear the Monica beret and the little blue cocktail dress, but from the pre-released excerpts it sounds highly likely.
Mr Clinton also expands on the details of his belated confession to Hillary. In Mrs Clinton's version (from last year's unreadable doorstopper autobiography), she says she could "hardly breathe" and was "gulping for air", which sounds more like Monica's problem. Now Bill tells us that she made him sleep on the couch. I assumed he was speaking metaphorically, but apparently not: he claims he was banished to an actual couch in a living room next to their bedroom, for two months.
Is that really true? In that summer of 1998, when he was lobbing cruise missiles at abandoned Osama training camps in Afghanistan, the President was doing so on the basis of a couple of hours' tossing on the couch? If you say so. Today, of course, the Clintons are back sleeping together, even if only at the Reagan funeral, where the camera caught them blearily slumped in the pew with eyes closed during the big eulogies.
A year after impeachment, as I wrote at the time, a Hillary adviser confirmed to Talk magazine that their physical passion had been rekindled and that Air Force One was now back in the hangar. A year later, they moved to separate states. Who knows what the truth is?
The point is, Bill Clinton never reaches, as independent counsel and Clinton nemesis Ken Starr would say, completion. As concerned Kerry consultants put it, he "sucks up all the available oxygen". Last week, at the launch of The Hunting of the President, the new documentary about the heroically-embattled Bill, he strolled out on stage after the movie and talked for so long that Gene Lyons, one of the co-authors of the book on which it was based, announced that the panel discussion with the film creators would have to be cancelled. In The "I'm The President!" Show Starring Bill Clinton, there's only one speaking part, and everyone else is bit players and extras.
This would be bad news for Kerry, except that he's such a terrible candidate people like him more the less they see of him. He took a week off as a mark of respect for the late President Reagan and his numbers inched up. If he had taken another week off as a mark of respect for the late Ray Charles, he could have opened up a clear lead. If he took the summer off as a mark of respect for the late Sir Peter Ustinov and the late Queen Juliana of the Netherlands, he would be heading for a landslide. So Clinton sucking up Kerry's oxygen is the best news there is for the Senator.
After September 11, I said that Bill Clinton suddenly seemed "so September 10th". These past few days, we've been told that he's the Dems' Reagan - a sunny, charismatic optimist who could sell the American people anything. But he chose not to sell them anything but himself.
Why, you wonder, would they want to go through one more summer season of Monica and Paula and all the rest? Because, so his defenders have convinced themselves, it makes them look good: unlike the Bush administration with the scandal of Abu Ghraib and torture, in the Clinton administration the biggest scandal was about oral sex. Say what you like, but, in the Clinton era, the only naked guy with women's panties on his head and a dog leash round his neck would have been the President breaking in the new intern pool.
This comparison is valid in the narrow sense that Bill Clinton, like Abu Ghraib, has been blown out of all proportion. But Clinton is what you wind up with when you have Reagan's communication skills but nothing to communicate: you're left with pure celebrity - Tina Brown's "heat" - and celebrity depends on living presence. You can't go away, because the heat fades instantly.
The Clintons' Democratic Party was great for the Clintons but disastrous for the Democratic Party: during the 1990s, they lost the House and the Senate and a ton of governorships and state legislatures, and eventually, with nothing else left to lose, they lost the presidency. Clinton's heat left the party so parched for talent they had no successful governors to run for president and were forced to turn to a stiff hack weathervane senator in the hope they could so damage Bush they could drag their boy across the finishing line.
If you think a great political party should be a star vehicle for a guy who won't get off the stage, fine. But, if you don't, then it is time, as Bill Clinton used to say, to move on. Monica's no longer on her knees. There's no reason why anyone else should be.
Friday, June 18, 2004
23rd Street Lullaby by Patti Scialfa : A Review
Patti Scialfa's new album, 23rd Street Lullaby is a sweetly nostalgic evocation of coming of age in New York City. It leaves behind the updated Spectorish girl group sound of Rumble Doll, her fine album of ten years ago, for a production that could be characterized as modern folk. There is an organic feel and an acoustic clarity to most of the songs that is traditional, with production that sounds contemporary without being slavishly modern.
The album 23rd Street Lullaby most readily brings to mind is Rickie Lee Jone's Pirates, another series of nicely drawn vignettes of people making their way through sometimes hostile urban landscapes, finding heroism in the ordinariness of the day to day outworking of their lives and romances. Other works prefiguring the sound of Lullaby are the unabashedly romantic cityscapes of Mink DeVille's work, specifically the great albums of the 70s, the Jersey soul of Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes, Steve VanZandt, and some other guy Scialfa has had a little contact with. Adding to the poignancy and romanticism of the album is more Roman Catholic imagery than a Cosa Nostra film festival.
In her great essay on Springsteen's The Wild, the Innocent, and the E Street Shuffle, Ariel Swartley describes the characters portrayed in the album's songs as living "on islands close enough to see the mainland, too far away to make the crossing light or easy." On 23rd Street Lullaby, Scialfa shows us the characters who have made it to the shore, struggling with the implications of their lost dreams and long survival.
Thursday, June 17, 2004
Just Like ’84
This Bush boom is a lot like the Reagan boom 20 years ago.
by Lawrence Kudlow
A year after the Bush tax cuts the U.S. economy stands on the front end of an economic boom. Recent government reports on consumer spending, industrial production, corporate investment, and business sales suggest that overall growth in the second quarter could come in around 6 percent at an annual rate. That would put the trailing four-quarter recovery rate at 5.7 percent — the fastest pace since 1984.
That year, if you recall, followed the big Reagan tax cuts. This year follows the big Bush tax cuts. A coincidence? No. The incentive power of lower marginal tax rates on economic growth is one of the most underrated facets of mainstream economic thought.
Most economists obsess over Federal Reserve interest-rate policies, or the impact of energy prices, or consumer spending, or budget and trade deficits. Even when they observe tax changes, they look either at the temporary effects of tax rebates or the big-budget deficit impact on Keynesian aggregate demand.
It rarely occurs to economic thinkers that people work or invest in order to generate the highest possible after-tax return. When it pays more, after tax, to take investment risks, more individuals are willing to change their behavior and assume greater risk. Tax risk less, and get more of it. Tax production more, and get less of it.
This was the essence of Reaganomics. It recognized the power of the individual to make choices in daily economic life. It also recognized the crucial economic theory of marginality. At the margin, what truly matters is the extra work effort, the extra investment dollar, and the extra unit of profit, all measured in after-tax terms.
We all must work to earn a living. But what really drives an economy into full throttle is when people are induced to work harder — putting more hours into the new job or new business start-up. We own our own labor. Each of us decides how much of it to supply. This decision is largely driven by after-tax returns to that labor — or to production, investment, and risk-taking.
The Reagan tax cuts two decades ago were focused primarily on personal income, reducing the top marginal rate from 70 percent to 50 percent, and then 28 percent. The Bush tax cuts of 2003 were aimed principally at investment, lowering the government’s take by roughly 50 percent. Almost immediately an economy buffeted by recession, stock market collapse, and corporate scandals — all inherited from the prior administration and smacked by a brutal terrorist attack and the necessary launching of two wars — suddenly came alive.
New government data show that over the past year consumers are spending at a 9 percent pace at retail, companies are investing at a 9.5 percent rate in new business equipment, and manufacturing industries are producing at a near 6.5 percent clip, all while our high-tech industries are expanding at a 30 percent rate. Overall, business sales are rising at an 11 percent pace.
This is a remarkable comeback for the American economy. Owing to the post-tax-cut surge of investment funding for business expansion, 1.4 million new jobs have been created over the past nine months. As a result of new job creation, personal incomes have grown 5.7 percent over the past twelve months. Wage and salary income has increased 4.8 percent. After-tax, after-inflation disposable income has climbed 4.3 percent.
Election-year critics carp at the unfolding of a strong recovery. It’s a repeat of 20 years ago. Reagan told Gorbachev to “tear down that wall.” Mondale supporters tried to tear down the recovery statistics.
Today, John Kerry similarly argues that incomes are shrinking. The data say otherwise. He once talked about the jobless recovery. But the avalanche of new jobs rendered that charge null and void. His advisors talk about 1.2 million net jobs lost since Bush took office. That too will be erased as we head to 3 million new jobs this year.
Here’s another 20-year parallel. Mondale wanted to raise taxes. So does Kerry. This is no way to win a presidential election. Until the Democrats recognize the economic-growth incentive power of tax cuts, they’ll never be competitive.
The bad news bears in the Kerry camp don’t understand that elections are decided on the margin. The most recent trend is clearly the responsibility of the incumbent. Voters know this. They may be waiting to see if the recovery has legs into the summer and early fall; that’s why recent polls suggest the race is too close to call.
But just as in 1984, the current tax-cut-sponsored recovery has very strong legs. Prosperity numbers will keep rolling in. Optimism will continue to mount. Bush’s election-year bet on the incentive power of lower tax rates on economic growth will pay off handsomely in 2004, just as Reagan’s bet did two decades ago.
— Larry Kudlow, NRO's Economics Editor, is CEO of Kudlow & Co. and host with Jim Cramer of CNBC's Kudlow & Cramer.
This Bush boom is a lot like the Reagan boom 20 years ago.
by Lawrence Kudlow
A year after the Bush tax cuts the U.S. economy stands on the front end of an economic boom. Recent government reports on consumer spending, industrial production, corporate investment, and business sales suggest that overall growth in the second quarter could come in around 6 percent at an annual rate. That would put the trailing four-quarter recovery rate at 5.7 percent — the fastest pace since 1984.
That year, if you recall, followed the big Reagan tax cuts. This year follows the big Bush tax cuts. A coincidence? No. The incentive power of lower marginal tax rates on economic growth is one of the most underrated facets of mainstream economic thought.
Most economists obsess over Federal Reserve interest-rate policies, or the impact of energy prices, or consumer spending, or budget and trade deficits. Even when they observe tax changes, they look either at the temporary effects of tax rebates or the big-budget deficit impact on Keynesian aggregate demand.
It rarely occurs to economic thinkers that people work or invest in order to generate the highest possible after-tax return. When it pays more, after tax, to take investment risks, more individuals are willing to change their behavior and assume greater risk. Tax risk less, and get more of it. Tax production more, and get less of it.
This was the essence of Reaganomics. It recognized the power of the individual to make choices in daily economic life. It also recognized the crucial economic theory of marginality. At the margin, what truly matters is the extra work effort, the extra investment dollar, and the extra unit of profit, all measured in after-tax terms.
We all must work to earn a living. But what really drives an economy into full throttle is when people are induced to work harder — putting more hours into the new job or new business start-up. We own our own labor. Each of us decides how much of it to supply. This decision is largely driven by after-tax returns to that labor — or to production, investment, and risk-taking.
The Reagan tax cuts two decades ago were focused primarily on personal income, reducing the top marginal rate from 70 percent to 50 percent, and then 28 percent. The Bush tax cuts of 2003 were aimed principally at investment, lowering the government’s take by roughly 50 percent. Almost immediately an economy buffeted by recession, stock market collapse, and corporate scandals — all inherited from the prior administration and smacked by a brutal terrorist attack and the necessary launching of two wars — suddenly came alive.
New government data show that over the past year consumers are spending at a 9 percent pace at retail, companies are investing at a 9.5 percent rate in new business equipment, and manufacturing industries are producing at a near 6.5 percent clip, all while our high-tech industries are expanding at a 30 percent rate. Overall, business sales are rising at an 11 percent pace.
This is a remarkable comeback for the American economy. Owing to the post-tax-cut surge of investment funding for business expansion, 1.4 million new jobs have been created over the past nine months. As a result of new job creation, personal incomes have grown 5.7 percent over the past twelve months. Wage and salary income has increased 4.8 percent. After-tax, after-inflation disposable income has climbed 4.3 percent.
Election-year critics carp at the unfolding of a strong recovery. It’s a repeat of 20 years ago. Reagan told Gorbachev to “tear down that wall.” Mondale supporters tried to tear down the recovery statistics.
Today, John Kerry similarly argues that incomes are shrinking. The data say otherwise. He once talked about the jobless recovery. But the avalanche of new jobs rendered that charge null and void. His advisors talk about 1.2 million net jobs lost since Bush took office. That too will be erased as we head to 3 million new jobs this year.
Here’s another 20-year parallel. Mondale wanted to raise taxes. So does Kerry. This is no way to win a presidential election. Until the Democrats recognize the economic-growth incentive power of tax cuts, they’ll never be competitive.
The bad news bears in the Kerry camp don’t understand that elections are decided on the margin. The most recent trend is clearly the responsibility of the incumbent. Voters know this. They may be waiting to see if the recovery has legs into the summer and early fall; that’s why recent polls suggest the race is too close to call.
But just as in 1984, the current tax-cut-sponsored recovery has very strong legs. Prosperity numbers will keep rolling in. Optimism will continue to mount. Bush’s election-year bet on the incentive power of lower tax rates on economic growth will pay off handsomely in 2004, just as Reagan’s bet did two decades ago.
— Larry Kudlow, NRO's Economics Editor, is CEO of Kudlow & Co. and host with Jim Cramer of CNBC's Kudlow & Cramer.
Let's Rewrite One for the Gipper
By Ann Coulter
I read the New York Times last week and apparently a fellow named "Iran-Contra" died recently. But that's all I'll say about the people who have consistently been on the wrong side of history and whose publisher is a little weenie who can't read because he has "dyslexia." The three key ingredients to Ronald Reagan's sunny personality were: (1) his unalterable faith in God; (2) for nearly 30 years, he didn't fly; and (3) he read Human Events religiously but never read the New York Times.
Even in his death liberals are still trying to turn our champion into a moderate Republican – unlike the religious-right nut currently occupying the White House! The world's living testament to the limits of genetics, Ron Jr., put it this way at Reagan's funeral:
Dad was also a deeply, unabashedly religious man. But he never made the fatal mistake of so many politicians of wearing his faith on his sleeve to gain political advantage.
Wow. He's probably up in Heaven – something Ron Jr. doesn't believe in – having a chuckle about that right now. To hear liberals tell it, you'd think Reagan talked about God the way Democrats do, in the stilted, uncomfortable manner of people pretending to believe something they manifestly do not. (In a recent Time magazine poll, only 7 percent of respondents say they believe Kerry is a man of "strong" religious faith, compared to 46 percent who believe Bush is.) Or, for that matter, the way Democrats talk about free-market capitalism.
The chattering classes weren't so copacetic about Reagan's religious beliefs when he was in office. In 1984, Newsweek breathlessly reported that:
Reagan is known to have read and discussed with fundamentalist friends like [Jerry] Falwell and singer Pat Boone such pulp versions of biblical prophecies as Hal Lindsey's best-selling "The Late Great Planet Earth," which strongly hints of a nuclear Armageddon.
One hundred Christian and Jewish "leaders" signed a letter warning that Reagan's nuclear policy had been unduly influenced by a "theology of nuclear Armageddon." In the second presidential debate that year, President Reagan was actually asked to clarify his position on "nuclear Armageddon."
Most confusing to Democrats, at the time Reagan was doing all of this Bible-reading and consorting with preachers, he hadn't even been accused of cheating on his wife. What kind of angle was he playing? liberals asked themselves.
Meanwhile, President Bush says he appeals to "a higher father" and liberals act like they've never heard such crazy talk from a president.
Newsweek's Eleanor Clift says Bush is unlike Reagan because Reagan "reached out, and he was always seeking converts." That's true, actually. I think Reagan would have favored converting Third World people to Christianity. (Now why does that idea ring a bell?) Clift continued: "That is the big difference between Ronald Reagan and the president we have today. The president today would like to consign his political opponents to oblivion."
Here is how Reagan "reached out" to Democrats:
* Reagan on abortion: "We cannot survive as a free nation when some men decide that others are not fit to live and should be abandoned to abortion or infanticide."
* Reagan on gay rights: "Society has always regarded marital love as a sacred expression of the bond between a man and a woman. It is the means by which families are created and society itself is extended into the future. In the Judeo-Christian tradition it is the means by which husband and wife participate with God in the creation of a new human life. It is for these reasons, among others, that our society has always sought to protect this unique relationship. In part the erosion of these values has given way to a celebration of forms of expression most reject. We will resist the efforts of some to obtain government endorsement of homosexuality."
* Reagan on government programs to feed the "hungry": "We were told four years ago that 17 million people went to bed hungry each night. Well, that was probably true. They were all on a diet."
Would that more Republicans would "reach out" to Democrats the way Reagan did!
Most peculiar, the passing of America's most pro-life president is supposed to be a clarion call for conservatives to support the disemboweling of human embryos – in contrast to that heartless brute President Bush always prattling on about the value of human life. Someone persuaded poor, dear Nancy Reagan that research on human embryos might have saved her Ronnie from Alzheimer's. Now the rest of us are supposed to shut up because the wife of America's greatest president (oh, save your breath, girls!) supports stem-cell research.
Ironically, the always market-oriented Ronald Reagan would probably have asked his wife, "Honey, if embryonic stem-cell therapy is such a treasure trove of medical advances, why isn't private research and development funding flocking to it?"
President Bush has never said that fetal stem cells cannot be used for research. He said "federal money" cannot be used to fund such research. If leading scientists believed fetal stem-cell research would prove to be so fruitful in curing Alzheimer's, why is the private money not pouring in hand over fist? Do you realize how many billions a cure for Alzheimer's would be worth, let alone all the other cures some are claiming fetal stem-cell research would lead to? Forget Alzheimer's – do you know how much middle-aged men would pay for a genuine baldness cure? Then again, Porsche sales would probably fall off quite a bit if we ever cured baldness.
But you can't blame Nancy. As everyone saw once again last week, she's still madly in love with the guy. She'd probably support harvesting full-grown, living humans if it would bring back Ronnie. Of course, I thought it was cute and not creepy that she consulted an astrologer about Reagan's schedule after he was shot. That didn't make astrology a hard science. But liberals who once lambasted Nancy for having too much influence on Reagan's schedule now want to anoint her Seer of Technology.
The lesson to draw from what liberals said about Reagan then and what they are forced to say about him now is that the electable Republican is always the one liberals are calling an extremist, Armageddon-believing religious zealot. That certainly bodes well for President George W. Bush this November, thank – you should pardon the expression – God.
By Ann Coulter
I read the New York Times last week and apparently a fellow named "Iran-Contra" died recently. But that's all I'll say about the people who have consistently been on the wrong side of history and whose publisher is a little weenie who can't read because he has "dyslexia." The three key ingredients to Ronald Reagan's sunny personality were: (1) his unalterable faith in God; (2) for nearly 30 years, he didn't fly; and (3) he read Human Events religiously but never read the New York Times.
Even in his death liberals are still trying to turn our champion into a moderate Republican – unlike the religious-right nut currently occupying the White House! The world's living testament to the limits of genetics, Ron Jr., put it this way at Reagan's funeral:
Dad was also a deeply, unabashedly religious man. But he never made the fatal mistake of so many politicians of wearing his faith on his sleeve to gain political advantage.
Wow. He's probably up in Heaven – something Ron Jr. doesn't believe in – having a chuckle about that right now. To hear liberals tell it, you'd think Reagan talked about God the way Democrats do, in the stilted, uncomfortable manner of people pretending to believe something they manifestly do not. (In a recent Time magazine poll, only 7 percent of respondents say they believe Kerry is a man of "strong" religious faith, compared to 46 percent who believe Bush is.) Or, for that matter, the way Democrats talk about free-market capitalism.
The chattering classes weren't so copacetic about Reagan's religious beliefs when he was in office. In 1984, Newsweek breathlessly reported that:
Reagan is known to have read and discussed with fundamentalist friends like [Jerry] Falwell and singer Pat Boone such pulp versions of biblical prophecies as Hal Lindsey's best-selling "The Late Great Planet Earth," which strongly hints of a nuclear Armageddon.
One hundred Christian and Jewish "leaders" signed a letter warning that Reagan's nuclear policy had been unduly influenced by a "theology of nuclear Armageddon." In the second presidential debate that year, President Reagan was actually asked to clarify his position on "nuclear Armageddon."
Most confusing to Democrats, at the time Reagan was doing all of this Bible-reading and consorting with preachers, he hadn't even been accused of cheating on his wife. What kind of angle was he playing? liberals asked themselves.
Meanwhile, President Bush says he appeals to "a higher father" and liberals act like they've never heard such crazy talk from a president.
Newsweek's Eleanor Clift says Bush is unlike Reagan because Reagan "reached out, and he was always seeking converts." That's true, actually. I think Reagan would have favored converting Third World people to Christianity. (Now why does that idea ring a bell?) Clift continued: "That is the big difference between Ronald Reagan and the president we have today. The president today would like to consign his political opponents to oblivion."
Here is how Reagan "reached out" to Democrats:
* Reagan on abortion: "We cannot survive as a free nation when some men decide that others are not fit to live and should be abandoned to abortion or infanticide."
* Reagan on gay rights: "Society has always regarded marital love as a sacred expression of the bond between a man and a woman. It is the means by which families are created and society itself is extended into the future. In the Judeo-Christian tradition it is the means by which husband and wife participate with God in the creation of a new human life. It is for these reasons, among others, that our society has always sought to protect this unique relationship. In part the erosion of these values has given way to a celebration of forms of expression most reject. We will resist the efforts of some to obtain government endorsement of homosexuality."
* Reagan on government programs to feed the "hungry": "We were told four years ago that 17 million people went to bed hungry each night. Well, that was probably true. They were all on a diet."
Would that more Republicans would "reach out" to Democrats the way Reagan did!
Most peculiar, the passing of America's most pro-life president is supposed to be a clarion call for conservatives to support the disemboweling of human embryos – in contrast to that heartless brute President Bush always prattling on about the value of human life. Someone persuaded poor, dear Nancy Reagan that research on human embryos might have saved her Ronnie from Alzheimer's. Now the rest of us are supposed to shut up because the wife of America's greatest president (oh, save your breath, girls!) supports stem-cell research.
Ironically, the always market-oriented Ronald Reagan would probably have asked his wife, "Honey, if embryonic stem-cell therapy is such a treasure trove of medical advances, why isn't private research and development funding flocking to it?"
President Bush has never said that fetal stem cells cannot be used for research. He said "federal money" cannot be used to fund such research. If leading scientists believed fetal stem-cell research would prove to be so fruitful in curing Alzheimer's, why is the private money not pouring in hand over fist? Do you realize how many billions a cure for Alzheimer's would be worth, let alone all the other cures some are claiming fetal stem-cell research would lead to? Forget Alzheimer's – do you know how much middle-aged men would pay for a genuine baldness cure? Then again, Porsche sales would probably fall off quite a bit if we ever cured baldness.
But you can't blame Nancy. As everyone saw once again last week, she's still madly in love with the guy. She'd probably support harvesting full-grown, living humans if it would bring back Ronnie. Of course, I thought it was cute and not creepy that she consulted an astrologer about Reagan's schedule after he was shot. That didn't make astrology a hard science. But liberals who once lambasted Nancy for having too much influence on Reagan's schedule now want to anoint her Seer of Technology.
The lesson to draw from what liberals said about Reagan then and what they are forced to say about him now is that the electable Republican is always the one liberals are calling an extremist, Armageddon-believing religious zealot. That certainly bodes well for President George W. Bush this November, thank – you should pardon the expression – God.
Maybe this bodes well for this year's Carolina team. The Lakers have Kupchak as GM and had Fox on the bench. The Pistons had Rasheed on the court, with Coach Brown as head coach, and Dave Hanners, John Kuester, and Pat Sullivan as assistants. From today's New York Times:
Brown's Pistons Do the Little Things, and Win Without Superstars
By CHRIS BROUSSARD
AUBURN HILLS, Mich., June 16 - He waited 21 seasons, watched less gifted men win championships and hopped from franchise to franchise like a rabbit. But when it finally happened, when one of basketball's greatest coaches finally attained the ultimate prize, it was fascinatingly fitting.
Larry Brown, who at least once a day tells his team to "play the right way," who would rather uphold the spirit of competition than engage in Hack-a-Shaq, who gets the greatest pleasure out of the smallest hint of improvement, won his first N.B.A. championship Tuesday night with a club that was the embodiment of what he has preached for more than 30 years.
The Detroit Pistons, the champions of the 2003-4 season, hustled each night for 48 minutes, shared the ball and the glory, played perhaps their best game on their last day of the season, and defeated a team that tried to steal a title based on the notion of superstar entitlement.
The proper way was the only way for Larry Brown, 63, to win the championship.
"Anyone that's been around Coach Brown knows that he's a big believer in some basic principles of how to win basketball games and how to put together a team," Stu Jackson, the chairman of the senior men's committee for USA Basketball, said on Wednesday. "And that is a team that's based upon, as he terms it, playing the right way - playing excellent defense, playing unselfishly on offense, everybody committing themselves to rebounding the basketball and committing themselves to the team before themselves. The Detroit Pistons exemplify those principles, so it's very fitting."
The Pistons know they are an oddity. They are the first N.B.A. champion since the 1979 Seattle SuperSonics to lack a bona fide superstar. Their offense is built for five players, not one or two. All of them are role players.
In an age when players are celebrated as superstars, given lucrative endorsement deals and featured in commercials before averaging double figures in points or winning a round of games in the playoffs, the Pistons believe they can be an example.
Their main offensive weapon, Richard Hamilton, moves without the ball, scores in the flow of the system and does not play as if he gets a point for every crossover dribbling display that eats up 15 seconds of the shot clock.
"I told them before the game, 'It would be a great statement if we had an opportunity to win because we do play the right way,' " said Brown, who will coach the American basketball team at the Athens Olympics this summer. "And we are truly a team.
"The sport is about players playing the right way and showing kids that you can be a team and be successful, and it's great for our league."
Sure, a squad built around a superstar or two will win another championship very soon, perhaps even next season, perhaps even the Lakers. But the Pistons showed that there is another way to get it done.
"I think players and teams will realize that it just doesn't have to be one or two guys getting 30 every night for you to have a chance to win a world championship," Joe Dumars, the Pistons' president, said. "If I can get Shaq and Kobe, I will. But if you can't, just don't doom yourself to obscurity, saying, 'Hey, we can't win.' I don't believe that. I've never believed that."
No player embodied the Pistons' sentiment more than the temperamental Rasheed Wallace, who was perceived to be a troublemaker before being traded to Detroit in February. After scoring 18 points a game and playing in two All-Star Games the previous four seasons, Wallace was contented to play defense, rebound and be the third offensive option, often scoring in single digits, once he came to Detroit.
His toughness, his talk on defense and his team-first attitude lifted the Pistons from being the third-best team in the Eastern Conference to the best team in the league.
"There's no way I would be standing up here, or any of us would have been in this kind of situation, without him," Brown said of Wallace from the podium after the Pistons clinched the championship by winning Game 5.
Wallace will be a free agent on July 1, but the rest of the Pistons' core is young and under contract. If Wallace signs with Detroit, which can and will offer him more money than any other team, the Pistons' chances of repeating as champions are strong.
The recruiting has begun.
"I already told him, 'I'm going to have to take your whole family for ransom if you think about leaving here,' " Hamilton said with a smile. " 'They won't see you in Philly or Portland no more.' This is something special. We did everything possible to keep him here. Everybody loves him. He loves the city of Detroit and he loves the guys in that locker room, and that's all you can ask for."
Wallace also loves Brown, who bonded with Wallace around their common experience as University of North Carolina alumni.
"Larry deserves all the accolades," said Wallace, whose family will have a large say about where he will play. "He deserves everything because I think he's been looked over for the last few years. But he's finally done it, finally got over the hump."
Brown had accomplished nearly everything else in the game. He has coached two college teams, two American Basketball Association teams and seven N.B.A. teams. He won the N.C.A.A. championship in 1988 with Kansas, and now is the first coach to win an N.C.A.A. and an N.B.A. title. He won a gold medal as an assistant coach at the 2000 Sydney Olympics, and may very well win one as a head coach this summer.
In his 25 professional seasons - 21 in the N.B.A., 4 in the A.B.A. - he has won 1,162 games against 820 losses. In his seven collegiate seasons, he never won fewer than 20 games.
But until Tuesday, Brown had never earned the highest prize in basketball. No N.B.A. coach had won his first title after coaching so long. Red Auerbach and Bill Fitch were the previous record-holders, having won their first championships in their 11th seasons.
"Within basketball circles, people are very happy for Larry," said Jackson, who is also the league's executive vice president for basketball operations. "He has always represented his profession admirably. He's an excellent teacher, he's an excellent tactician and strategist, and he's a good guy who represents the basketball world very well."
He represents it even better now that he has a championship ring.
Brown's Pistons Do the Little Things, and Win Without Superstars
By CHRIS BROUSSARD
AUBURN HILLS, Mich., June 16 - He waited 21 seasons, watched less gifted men win championships and hopped from franchise to franchise like a rabbit. But when it finally happened, when one of basketball's greatest coaches finally attained the ultimate prize, it was fascinatingly fitting.
Larry Brown, who at least once a day tells his team to "play the right way," who would rather uphold the spirit of competition than engage in Hack-a-Shaq, who gets the greatest pleasure out of the smallest hint of improvement, won his first N.B.A. championship Tuesday night with a club that was the embodiment of what he has preached for more than 30 years.
The Detroit Pistons, the champions of the 2003-4 season, hustled each night for 48 minutes, shared the ball and the glory, played perhaps their best game on their last day of the season, and defeated a team that tried to steal a title based on the notion of superstar entitlement.
The proper way was the only way for Larry Brown, 63, to win the championship.
"Anyone that's been around Coach Brown knows that he's a big believer in some basic principles of how to win basketball games and how to put together a team," Stu Jackson, the chairman of the senior men's committee for USA Basketball, said on Wednesday. "And that is a team that's based upon, as he terms it, playing the right way - playing excellent defense, playing unselfishly on offense, everybody committing themselves to rebounding the basketball and committing themselves to the team before themselves. The Detroit Pistons exemplify those principles, so it's very fitting."
The Pistons know they are an oddity. They are the first N.B.A. champion since the 1979 Seattle SuperSonics to lack a bona fide superstar. Their offense is built for five players, not one or two. All of them are role players.
In an age when players are celebrated as superstars, given lucrative endorsement deals and featured in commercials before averaging double figures in points or winning a round of games in the playoffs, the Pistons believe they can be an example.
Their main offensive weapon, Richard Hamilton, moves without the ball, scores in the flow of the system and does not play as if he gets a point for every crossover dribbling display that eats up 15 seconds of the shot clock.
"I told them before the game, 'It would be a great statement if we had an opportunity to win because we do play the right way,' " said Brown, who will coach the American basketball team at the Athens Olympics this summer. "And we are truly a team.
"The sport is about players playing the right way and showing kids that you can be a team and be successful, and it's great for our league."
Sure, a squad built around a superstar or two will win another championship very soon, perhaps even next season, perhaps even the Lakers. But the Pistons showed that there is another way to get it done.
"I think players and teams will realize that it just doesn't have to be one or two guys getting 30 every night for you to have a chance to win a world championship," Joe Dumars, the Pistons' president, said. "If I can get Shaq and Kobe, I will. But if you can't, just don't doom yourself to obscurity, saying, 'Hey, we can't win.' I don't believe that. I've never believed that."
No player embodied the Pistons' sentiment more than the temperamental Rasheed Wallace, who was perceived to be a troublemaker before being traded to Detroit in February. After scoring 18 points a game and playing in two All-Star Games the previous four seasons, Wallace was contented to play defense, rebound and be the third offensive option, often scoring in single digits, once he came to Detroit.
His toughness, his talk on defense and his team-first attitude lifted the Pistons from being the third-best team in the Eastern Conference to the best team in the league.
"There's no way I would be standing up here, or any of us would have been in this kind of situation, without him," Brown said of Wallace from the podium after the Pistons clinched the championship by winning Game 5.
Wallace will be a free agent on July 1, but the rest of the Pistons' core is young and under contract. If Wallace signs with Detroit, which can and will offer him more money than any other team, the Pistons' chances of repeating as champions are strong.
The recruiting has begun.
"I already told him, 'I'm going to have to take your whole family for ransom if you think about leaving here,' " Hamilton said with a smile. " 'They won't see you in Philly or Portland no more.' This is something special. We did everything possible to keep him here. Everybody loves him. He loves the city of Detroit and he loves the guys in that locker room, and that's all you can ask for."
Wallace also loves Brown, who bonded with Wallace around their common experience as University of North Carolina alumni.
"Larry deserves all the accolades," said Wallace, whose family will have a large say about where he will play. "He deserves everything because I think he's been looked over for the last few years. But he's finally done it, finally got over the hump."
Brown had accomplished nearly everything else in the game. He has coached two college teams, two American Basketball Association teams and seven N.B.A. teams. He won the N.C.A.A. championship in 1988 with Kansas, and now is the first coach to win an N.C.A.A. and an N.B.A. title. He won a gold medal as an assistant coach at the 2000 Sydney Olympics, and may very well win one as a head coach this summer.
In his 25 professional seasons - 21 in the N.B.A., 4 in the A.B.A. - he has won 1,162 games against 820 losses. In his seven collegiate seasons, he never won fewer than 20 games.
But until Tuesday, Brown had never earned the highest prize in basketball. No N.B.A. coach had won his first title after coaching so long. Red Auerbach and Bill Fitch were the previous record-holders, having won their first championships in their 11th seasons.
"Within basketball circles, people are very happy for Larry," said Jackson, who is also the league's executive vice president for basketball operations. "He has always represented his profession admirably. He's an excellent teacher, he's an excellent tactician and strategist, and he's a good guy who represents the basketball world very well."
He represents it even better now that he has a championship ring.
Tuesday, June 15, 2004
Thought-provoking column, as is so often the case, from Pat Buchanan:
Was Reagan the 1st neoconservative?
By Patrick J. Buchanan
Would Ronald Reagan have invaded Iraq? Would he have declared a doctrine of preventive war to keep any rival nation from rising to where it might challenge us? Would he have crusaded for "world democratic revolution"? Was Reagan the first neoconservative?
This claim has been entered in the wake of his death. Yet, it seems bogus, a patent forgery, a fabricated claim to the Reagan legacy, worked up in the same shop where they made the documents proving Saddam was buying up all the yellowcake in Niger.
Ronald Reagan was one of us, a Cold War anti-communist union leader in the 1940s when neocons were still in mourning for Leon Trotsky. He was a militant free-market conservative in the 1950s when they were still wild about Harry. He was a fiery Goldwaterite in the 1960s when neocons were going all the way with LBJ.
None can say with certitude how Reagan would have responded to 9-11. Yet, it is hard to believe he would have invaded Iraq, absent hard evidence of Saddam's involvement in Sept. 11. For, in spite of Reagan's reputation as a cowboy, prudence – that most conservative of virtues – was a hallmark of his presidency in the Cold War conflict.
In 1981, when Gen. Jaruzelski crushed Solidarity on the orders of Moscow, Reagan refused to put the regime in default on its debts, which would have collapsed the credit rating of the Warsaw Pact.
When he challenged Moscow directly, it was on the battleground of ideas. He declared its ideology, communism, to be an unnatural and evil system, not long for this world, as it denied children of God their human dignity and thus could not and did not work.
When he aided resistance movements in Afghanistan, Angola and Nicaragua, it was on the periphery of Moscow's empire. And he aligned America again with patriotism, nationalism and anti-imperialism. In Iraq, it is the United States, no matter the purity of the president's motives, that is perceived as the occupying and imperial power.
While Reagan restored U.S. military might and produced the ships, planes, guns, satellites and smart bombs that won the Gulf War in six weeks, he believed in speaking softly and carrying a big stick.
His strike on Libya in 1986 in retaliation for the bombing of the Berlin discotheque frequented by U.S. soldiers was a measured response. In Grenada, he seized an opportunity to sweep Moscow's most vulnerable pawn off the board. When the Soviets shot down the Korean airliner, he concluded the action had not been ordered by Moscow and declined to turn the atrocious crime into an international crisis.
When the Soviet Union deployed mobile SS-20 missiles in Eastern Europe, Reagan countered with Pershing and cruise missiles in Western Europe. But when Gorbachev agreed to take down the SS-20s, Reagan agreed to take out the Pershings. He was proud of the first strategic arms reduction treaty of the Cold War. Among the reasons he loved the Strategic Defense Initiative was that he hated nuclear weapons and wanted to see them gone from the face of the earth. Ronald Reagan was anti-war, because Ronald Reagan was pro-life.
And because he had confidence in himself, his convictions and his country, he was always ready to sit down and talk to the adversaries of the United States.
Where the neocons are implacable enemies of the Saudi monarchy, Reagan sold the Saudis AWACS and F-16s. Where the neocons are fearful of the outcome of our clash with radical Islam, Reagan was serenely self-confident of the outcome of our clash with communism. Where they are bellicose and compulsive interventionists, Reagan was cautious.
The one occasion where he did intervene was Lebanon. It was a blunder to put Marines in the middle of that cauldron of hate. But when the U.S. embassy and Beirut barracks were bombed with hundreds dead, Reagan retaliated, but pulled the Marines out.
For there was never a vital U.S. interest in Lebanon. Ronald Reagan had the courage to concede and correct a mistake, but is today denounced for not going in with massive punitive force.
As for the neoconservative demand that we put incessant pressure on dictators to reform or perish, Reagan got along fine with kings, autocrats, generals and presidents-for-life, as long as they took America's side in the war that mattered: the Cold War. When Congress voted sanctions on South Africa, Reagan vetoed them, the State Department be damned.
He took the world as he inherited it. His mission was simple and clear: Defend the country he loved against the pre-eminent threat of the Soviet Empire, avoid war, for time was our side, and accept the assistance of any friend who would stand with us.
Reagan did not harbor some Wilsonian compulsion to remake the world in the image of Vermont. When Dick Allen, his security adviser, asked him what was his basic strategy for dealing with the Soviet Union, Reagan replied with a smile, "How about, 'We win, they lose.'"
Was Reagan the 1st neoconservative?
By Patrick J. Buchanan
Would Ronald Reagan have invaded Iraq? Would he have declared a doctrine of preventive war to keep any rival nation from rising to where it might challenge us? Would he have crusaded for "world democratic revolution"? Was Reagan the first neoconservative?
This claim has been entered in the wake of his death. Yet, it seems bogus, a patent forgery, a fabricated claim to the Reagan legacy, worked up in the same shop where they made the documents proving Saddam was buying up all the yellowcake in Niger.
Ronald Reagan was one of us, a Cold War anti-communist union leader in the 1940s when neocons were still in mourning for Leon Trotsky. He was a militant free-market conservative in the 1950s when they were still wild about Harry. He was a fiery Goldwaterite in the 1960s when neocons were going all the way with LBJ.
None can say with certitude how Reagan would have responded to 9-11. Yet, it is hard to believe he would have invaded Iraq, absent hard evidence of Saddam's involvement in Sept. 11. For, in spite of Reagan's reputation as a cowboy, prudence – that most conservative of virtues – was a hallmark of his presidency in the Cold War conflict.
In 1981, when Gen. Jaruzelski crushed Solidarity on the orders of Moscow, Reagan refused to put the regime in default on its debts, which would have collapsed the credit rating of the Warsaw Pact.
When he challenged Moscow directly, it was on the battleground of ideas. He declared its ideology, communism, to be an unnatural and evil system, not long for this world, as it denied children of God their human dignity and thus could not and did not work.
When he aided resistance movements in Afghanistan, Angola and Nicaragua, it was on the periphery of Moscow's empire. And he aligned America again with patriotism, nationalism and anti-imperialism. In Iraq, it is the United States, no matter the purity of the president's motives, that is perceived as the occupying and imperial power.
While Reagan restored U.S. military might and produced the ships, planes, guns, satellites and smart bombs that won the Gulf War in six weeks, he believed in speaking softly and carrying a big stick.
His strike on Libya in 1986 in retaliation for the bombing of the Berlin discotheque frequented by U.S. soldiers was a measured response. In Grenada, he seized an opportunity to sweep Moscow's most vulnerable pawn off the board. When the Soviets shot down the Korean airliner, he concluded the action had not been ordered by Moscow and declined to turn the atrocious crime into an international crisis.
When the Soviet Union deployed mobile SS-20 missiles in Eastern Europe, Reagan countered with Pershing and cruise missiles in Western Europe. But when Gorbachev agreed to take down the SS-20s, Reagan agreed to take out the Pershings. He was proud of the first strategic arms reduction treaty of the Cold War. Among the reasons he loved the Strategic Defense Initiative was that he hated nuclear weapons and wanted to see them gone from the face of the earth. Ronald Reagan was anti-war, because Ronald Reagan was pro-life.
And because he had confidence in himself, his convictions and his country, he was always ready to sit down and talk to the adversaries of the United States.
Where the neocons are implacable enemies of the Saudi monarchy, Reagan sold the Saudis AWACS and F-16s. Where the neocons are fearful of the outcome of our clash with radical Islam, Reagan was serenely self-confident of the outcome of our clash with communism. Where they are bellicose and compulsive interventionists, Reagan was cautious.
The one occasion where he did intervene was Lebanon. It was a blunder to put Marines in the middle of that cauldron of hate. But when the U.S. embassy and Beirut barracks were bombed with hundreds dead, Reagan retaliated, but pulled the Marines out.
For there was never a vital U.S. interest in Lebanon. Ronald Reagan had the courage to concede and correct a mistake, but is today denounced for not going in with massive punitive force.
As for the neoconservative demand that we put incessant pressure on dictators to reform or perish, Reagan got along fine with kings, autocrats, generals and presidents-for-life, as long as they took America's side in the war that mattered: the Cold War. When Congress voted sanctions on South Africa, Reagan vetoed them, the State Department be damned.
He took the world as he inherited it. His mission was simple and clear: Defend the country he loved against the pre-eminent threat of the Soviet Empire, avoid war, for time was our side, and accept the assistance of any friend who would stand with us.
Reagan did not harbor some Wilsonian compulsion to remake the world in the image of Vermont. When Dick Allen, his security adviser, asked him what was his basic strategy for dealing with the Soviet Union, Reagan replied with a smile, "How about, 'We win, they lose.'"
Prayerful Farewell
Ronald Reagan’s glorious send-off.
by Michael Novak
Last week did not feel like a funeral week, it was one of the happiest weeks I can remember. It was wonderful to celebrate Ronald Reagan as he deserves to be celebrated. It was wonderful to see the outpouring of love and esteem and gratitude from the people of this country, whom he loved so much.
My wife and I were tremendously touched to be included in the happy, capacious category of "friends and family" for the funeral in the National Cathedral on Friday. We entered through the West Portal, over whose central door Frederick Hart's surpassing "Ex Nihilo" shows figures who struggle to be free from the chaos of darkness and nothingness, reaching upward for liberty, striving for life. Lech Walesa, Vaclav Havel, Natan Sharansky came through those doors and into the cathedral for this funeral.
Providence had its touches all over this death of Ronald Reagan, on June 5, just as the 60th anniversary of D-Day was getting underway in Europe. And thus were the two liberations — of 1944 and 1989 — linked together forever in the public mind.
Liberation, liberation, liberation — the theme was everywhere. The new president of Iraq was inside, in his seat in this Christian cathedral earlier than anyone else in his section. (We arrived very early ourselves, before most of the dignitaries, thinking that our seats would be far out of the ordinary pews).
Lady Thatcher in her bravely wrought eulogy (pre-recorded earlier, but even so, against the advice of her doctors whose duty is to guard her against further strokes), gave witness to how grim things had looked in the late 1970s, and how happy she had been at reinforcements from her great friend, the new president of the United States, in 1981. She chronicled how much then happened, which would not have happened without him, at least not for a far longer time.
The beauty of the occasion was overwhelming. But the main thing for my wife, Karen, and me was gratitude, for being able to be there to say in person, as one can do in silence, our "thanks." To bow heads and be silent in Ronald Reagan's presence, in the Presence of God.
And what a festival of faith it was, and what a powerful sense of the Presence of Providence hovering over each one (a theme apparently picked up by the headstone above Ronald Reagan's gravesite). This was no civil religion. This was the traditional American faith in the God of Providence, our Creator, our Judge, our Lawmaker — and in this case, in Ronald Reagan's case, faith in Jesus Christ, the Lord and Savior of all who accept Him into their lives.
Like virtually all our Founders, Ronald Reagan was reticent, painfully reticent, about the Christian dimension of his faith. That was left to his children to describe at the service at the California interment. It was put quite appropriately by former senator, newly appointed ambassador to the United Nations, the Reverend John Danforth: This is a civil burial service for a great national leader, and it is also a service of the faith of Jesus Christ, and they come together here. In deference to all those others present (a Christian reticence), most of the language and signs were not specifically Christian. But there are some that are required by the rite of Christian burial itself, and these were not scanted, but pronounced with dignity and humility.
As a Roman Catholic, I am always deeply touched by the soaring columns and distant ceiling of the National Cathedral, its lightsomeness, its stately and prayerful gothic feeling. All this draws me into a long-ago Catholic inspiration, as does the festival of figures of saints on the far front wall (the apse) behind the altar and the choir. I like being surrounded in a church by images of the communion of saints — all those clouds of witnesses who have gone before us, in whose company our own troubles and exaggerated sense of significance fall into a more comforting perspective.
The National Cathedral makes Catholics feel more palpably at home in the nation's religious traditions than any other non-Catholic shrine in America.
A partly evangelical, partly Catholic, partly Hebrew feeling to the funeral made it appear quite the right match for the biography of Ronald Reagan, and indeed for the circles of his friends.
The stateliness, religious decorum, and attentive precision of the military ceremonial team were a feast for the soul as well as for the nation's dramatic sense. We have felt in our bones and our memories the funerals of Abraham Lincoln and John F. Kennedy, in tragic circumstances. They, too, were stately and majestic and marked by popular outpouring. They inspired awe for the power of fate.
In this case, we had lived through ten years of the internal exile of Ronald Reagan as he waited patiently for the summons of his Creator. So an awesome sense of the God of Destiny, the heavy weight of the governing machinery over human affairs, descended upon us (and I presume upon all who were watching on television). President Reagan's death came at this time, in this way, just as his coming upon the world's stage had also been contrived by the Divine Dramatist, so that he might cross destinies with Lady Thatcher and their affectionate friend Pope John Paul II, and, yes, Mikhail Gorbachev. Oh! What a drama they enacted! How beautifully they improvised their appointed lines. How enormously significant for billions of people still unborn were the consequences.
We in our generation were so lucky to be witnesses. We owe so much gratitude to God.
And it still remains true, what Reagan's mother Nelle taught him: Providence writes meaning in every single human life. Each human life is important.
The significance of Reagan's message was not only political. And that, too, is what people responded to.
— Michael Novak is the winner of the 1994 Templeton Prize for progress in religion and the George Frederick Jewett Scholar in Religion, Philosophy, and Public Policy at the American Enterprise Institute. Novak's own website is www.michaelnovak.net.
Ronald Reagan’s glorious send-off.
by Michael Novak
Last week did not feel like a funeral week, it was one of the happiest weeks I can remember. It was wonderful to celebrate Ronald Reagan as he deserves to be celebrated. It was wonderful to see the outpouring of love and esteem and gratitude from the people of this country, whom he loved so much.
My wife and I were tremendously touched to be included in the happy, capacious category of "friends and family" for the funeral in the National Cathedral on Friday. We entered through the West Portal, over whose central door Frederick Hart's surpassing "Ex Nihilo" shows figures who struggle to be free from the chaos of darkness and nothingness, reaching upward for liberty, striving for life. Lech Walesa, Vaclav Havel, Natan Sharansky came through those doors and into the cathedral for this funeral.
Providence had its touches all over this death of Ronald Reagan, on June 5, just as the 60th anniversary of D-Day was getting underway in Europe. And thus were the two liberations — of 1944 and 1989 — linked together forever in the public mind.
Liberation, liberation, liberation — the theme was everywhere. The new president of Iraq was inside, in his seat in this Christian cathedral earlier than anyone else in his section. (We arrived very early ourselves, before most of the dignitaries, thinking that our seats would be far out of the ordinary pews).
Lady Thatcher in her bravely wrought eulogy (pre-recorded earlier, but even so, against the advice of her doctors whose duty is to guard her against further strokes), gave witness to how grim things had looked in the late 1970s, and how happy she had been at reinforcements from her great friend, the new president of the United States, in 1981. She chronicled how much then happened, which would not have happened without him, at least not for a far longer time.
The beauty of the occasion was overwhelming. But the main thing for my wife, Karen, and me was gratitude, for being able to be there to say in person, as one can do in silence, our "thanks." To bow heads and be silent in Ronald Reagan's presence, in the Presence of God.
And what a festival of faith it was, and what a powerful sense of the Presence of Providence hovering over each one (a theme apparently picked up by the headstone above Ronald Reagan's gravesite). This was no civil religion. This was the traditional American faith in the God of Providence, our Creator, our Judge, our Lawmaker — and in this case, in Ronald Reagan's case, faith in Jesus Christ, the Lord and Savior of all who accept Him into their lives.
Like virtually all our Founders, Ronald Reagan was reticent, painfully reticent, about the Christian dimension of his faith. That was left to his children to describe at the service at the California interment. It was put quite appropriately by former senator, newly appointed ambassador to the United Nations, the Reverend John Danforth: This is a civil burial service for a great national leader, and it is also a service of the faith of Jesus Christ, and they come together here. In deference to all those others present (a Christian reticence), most of the language and signs were not specifically Christian. But there are some that are required by the rite of Christian burial itself, and these were not scanted, but pronounced with dignity and humility.
As a Roman Catholic, I am always deeply touched by the soaring columns and distant ceiling of the National Cathedral, its lightsomeness, its stately and prayerful gothic feeling. All this draws me into a long-ago Catholic inspiration, as does the festival of figures of saints on the far front wall (the apse) behind the altar and the choir. I like being surrounded in a church by images of the communion of saints — all those clouds of witnesses who have gone before us, in whose company our own troubles and exaggerated sense of significance fall into a more comforting perspective.
The National Cathedral makes Catholics feel more palpably at home in the nation's religious traditions than any other non-Catholic shrine in America.
A partly evangelical, partly Catholic, partly Hebrew feeling to the funeral made it appear quite the right match for the biography of Ronald Reagan, and indeed for the circles of his friends.
The stateliness, religious decorum, and attentive precision of the military ceremonial team were a feast for the soul as well as for the nation's dramatic sense. We have felt in our bones and our memories the funerals of Abraham Lincoln and John F. Kennedy, in tragic circumstances. They, too, were stately and majestic and marked by popular outpouring. They inspired awe for the power of fate.
In this case, we had lived through ten years of the internal exile of Ronald Reagan as he waited patiently for the summons of his Creator. So an awesome sense of the God of Destiny, the heavy weight of the governing machinery over human affairs, descended upon us (and I presume upon all who were watching on television). President Reagan's death came at this time, in this way, just as his coming upon the world's stage had also been contrived by the Divine Dramatist, so that he might cross destinies with Lady Thatcher and their affectionate friend Pope John Paul II, and, yes, Mikhail Gorbachev. Oh! What a drama they enacted! How beautifully they improvised their appointed lines. How enormously significant for billions of people still unborn were the consequences.
We in our generation were so lucky to be witnesses. We owe so much gratitude to God.
And it still remains true, what Reagan's mother Nelle taught him: Providence writes meaning in every single human life. Each human life is important.
The significance of Reagan's message was not only political. And that, too, is what people responded to.
— Michael Novak is the winner of the 1994 Templeton Prize for progress in religion and the George Frederick Jewett Scholar in Religion, Philosophy, and Public Policy at the American Enterprise Institute. Novak's own website is www.michaelnovak.net.
Monday, June 14, 2004
From Slate magazine, the best tribute I've read to the great Ray Charles:
It's a Shame About Ray
The passing of an American musical icon.
By Stanley Crouch
The true giants of American music are going fast these days, and the loss of Ray Charles is the latest example. We cannot stay in any previous period, artistic or historical. We can be bitter about the inevitable or we can recognize that this is a fact, as real as the fact of cold death.
One of my favorite Ray Charles moments occurred during an interview with Dick Cavett, about 35 years ago. On that particular evening, I and everyone watching saw something special. The two men sat in their chairs and spoke in that measured tone that can soon become boring in television unless something happens to lend an extra dimension to the conversation. Cavett, with all of his liberal certainty, was consistently shocked by Charles' answers to his questions. As the interview went on, one could see Cavett realize he had made some miscalculations. He'd assumed that because Charles was both black and blind, the interview would be given over to whining and crying about how hard it was for a Negro with a handicap in a country that was as racist as it was disdainful of the crippled, the blind, and the deaf.
But Charles surprised us all, black or white. He spoke of his self-determination, his independence, and how he had been well prepared to live his life as a sightless Negro by his mother. Charles told Cavett that his mother had never allowed him to escape any household duties or chores because of his blindness. His mother, he said, made sure that he made up his bed, cleaned up his room, washed dishes, and did whatever the other children were required to do. Her son was going to be prepared to live in the world, and she had no time for debilitating self-pity. She told him that there were always at least two ways things could be done: the way everyone else did them, and the way he would have to discover for himself.
Charles continued, telling Cavett how much he enjoyed riding on motorcycles and how much pleasure he drew from flying. Cavett, by then, had become cautious; he realized that he was in the presence of a black man who did not fit any of the clichés of the day and who had decided not to play a part that would make everyone happy by arousing their pity—always the problem of the handicapped genius. Charles said to him that if he were in a plane and something happened to the pilot, he had no doubt that he could safely land the plane in if he had a good ground crew guiding him. He might get banged up, but he would not be killed, Charles said with absolute confidence.
It was that kind of confidence that gave a charismatic clarity to Ray Charles' music and that allowed him to last much longer than any of the trends that brought him to public attention. Charles maintained his position in our pantheon of the rightly honored because his importance did not depend on audience whims. While he may have benefited from a couple of trends in his long career, his talent allowed him to transcend the high tide of momentary public fixation that dooms so many careers in popular entertainment. He was one of the invincibles—there were always plenty of people in America, and the world over, who wanted to hear his distinct sound.
His sound was his own, even though he had begun as a Nat Cole imitator. (It is always stunning to realize that an original artist had to build his or her own style along the way.) Charles could raise the heat on the bandstand and in the audience by the nature of his beat and by his extreme tempo control, which he made clear with his version of "Drown in My Own Tears," so slow that every drop of skill in his fellow musicians had to be brought forward to keep from either dragging it down or rushing it out of frustration. In his classic "Baby, It's Cold Outside," with the incomparable Betty Carter, he created one of the finest examples of romantic give-and-take between man and woman that we have in American music. Then there were his versions of Tin Pan Alley standards that always simmered with his special kind of soul. He conquered country-and-western music, and he sang "America the Beautiful" as it had never been sung before, with power and irony. We don't even need to talk about rhythm and blues or the blues or his love of jazz. He had a full house of talent.
But perhaps what Ray Charles did with all of his authority was help make the country and the world as blind as he was. Charles was one of those special few who expands the democratic experience by proving that neither color nor a handicap mean that one is less a man or less a woman. We couldn't ask more of a person in 73 years. He used every second.
It's a Shame About Ray
The passing of an American musical icon.
By Stanley Crouch
The true giants of American music are going fast these days, and the loss of Ray Charles is the latest example. We cannot stay in any previous period, artistic or historical. We can be bitter about the inevitable or we can recognize that this is a fact, as real as the fact of cold death.
One of my favorite Ray Charles moments occurred during an interview with Dick Cavett, about 35 years ago. On that particular evening, I and everyone watching saw something special. The two men sat in their chairs and spoke in that measured tone that can soon become boring in television unless something happens to lend an extra dimension to the conversation. Cavett, with all of his liberal certainty, was consistently shocked by Charles' answers to his questions. As the interview went on, one could see Cavett realize he had made some miscalculations. He'd assumed that because Charles was both black and blind, the interview would be given over to whining and crying about how hard it was for a Negro with a handicap in a country that was as racist as it was disdainful of the crippled, the blind, and the deaf.
But Charles surprised us all, black or white. He spoke of his self-determination, his independence, and how he had been well prepared to live his life as a sightless Negro by his mother. Charles told Cavett that his mother had never allowed him to escape any household duties or chores because of his blindness. His mother, he said, made sure that he made up his bed, cleaned up his room, washed dishes, and did whatever the other children were required to do. Her son was going to be prepared to live in the world, and she had no time for debilitating self-pity. She told him that there were always at least two ways things could be done: the way everyone else did them, and the way he would have to discover for himself.
Charles continued, telling Cavett how much he enjoyed riding on motorcycles and how much pleasure he drew from flying. Cavett, by then, had become cautious; he realized that he was in the presence of a black man who did not fit any of the clichés of the day and who had decided not to play a part that would make everyone happy by arousing their pity—always the problem of the handicapped genius. Charles said to him that if he were in a plane and something happened to the pilot, he had no doubt that he could safely land the plane in if he had a good ground crew guiding him. He might get banged up, but he would not be killed, Charles said with absolute confidence.
It was that kind of confidence that gave a charismatic clarity to Ray Charles' music and that allowed him to last much longer than any of the trends that brought him to public attention. Charles maintained his position in our pantheon of the rightly honored because his importance did not depend on audience whims. While he may have benefited from a couple of trends in his long career, his talent allowed him to transcend the high tide of momentary public fixation that dooms so many careers in popular entertainment. He was one of the invincibles—there were always plenty of people in America, and the world over, who wanted to hear his distinct sound.
His sound was his own, even though he had begun as a Nat Cole imitator. (It is always stunning to realize that an original artist had to build his or her own style along the way.) Charles could raise the heat on the bandstand and in the audience by the nature of his beat and by his extreme tempo control, which he made clear with his version of "Drown in My Own Tears," so slow that every drop of skill in his fellow musicians had to be brought forward to keep from either dragging it down or rushing it out of frustration. In his classic "Baby, It's Cold Outside," with the incomparable Betty Carter, he created one of the finest examples of romantic give-and-take between man and woman that we have in American music. Then there were his versions of Tin Pan Alley standards that always simmered with his special kind of soul. He conquered country-and-western music, and he sang "America the Beautiful" as it had never been sung before, with power and irony. We don't even need to talk about rhythm and blues or the blues or his love of jazz. He had a full house of talent.
But perhaps what Ray Charles did with all of his authority was help make the country and the world as blind as he was. Charles was one of those special few who expands the democratic experience by proving that neither color nor a handicap mean that one is less a man or less a woman. We couldn't ask more of a person in 73 years. He used every second.
Sunday, June 13, 2004
Well, Greensboro is at it again, instituting an idiotic "Truth and Reconciliation" commision of lefties to commiserate over the Klan/Nazi killings of the Communist Workers Party members twenty-five years ago! Below is a comment I posted at Ed Cone's Greensboro based blog, edcone.com.
Nice job of reporting by the N&R-mentioning that the protesters were participating in a rally against Nazis and the Klan, yet failing to note that the rally instigators were members of the Communist Workers Party.
Let's stipulate up front that the people killed should not have been shot in cold blood. That's not the kind of society this nation's founders envisioned. By the same token, the founders of the USA didn't envision the kind of society that the members of the CWP would have liked to see, either. And by the CWP members having this rally and broadcasting their intentions, it had the equivalent of waving their red flag (literally and figuratively) in front of the bull of the Klan/Nazi members and sympathizers.
There may be legitimate debate over whether Greensboro law enforcement provided an adequate bull ring. Even in that life threatening sport, the spectators are separated from the participants. By the CWP deciding to hold their "protest" in a predominately black residential area of Greensboro, they showed themselves to be no different than other Communists worldwide-willing to possibly sacrifice innocents to the service of their bloodthirsty ideology in the name of promoting a false egalitarianism.
It's unfortunate that Greensboro, after 25 years, seemingly still hasn't moved past this incident. Rather than empanel a commission to engage in an orgy of leftist navel gazing, the purpose of getting beyond the Klan/Nazi and CWP confrontation would be better served in another way: recognizing both sides for what they were, and moving past the incident to call people to work toward the precepts in our Constitution, not effectively memorializing people who would have seen it replaced with Marx and Engel's Manifesto.
Nice job of reporting by the N&R-mentioning that the protesters were participating in a rally against Nazis and the Klan, yet failing to note that the rally instigators were members of the Communist Workers Party.
Let's stipulate up front that the people killed should not have been shot in cold blood. That's not the kind of society this nation's founders envisioned. By the same token, the founders of the USA didn't envision the kind of society that the members of the CWP would have liked to see, either. And by the CWP members having this rally and broadcasting their intentions, it had the equivalent of waving their red flag (literally and figuratively) in front of the bull of the Klan/Nazi members and sympathizers.
There may be legitimate debate over whether Greensboro law enforcement provided an adequate bull ring. Even in that life threatening sport, the spectators are separated from the participants. By the CWP deciding to hold their "protest" in a predominately black residential area of Greensboro, they showed themselves to be no different than other Communists worldwide-willing to possibly sacrifice innocents to the service of their bloodthirsty ideology in the name of promoting a false egalitarianism.
It's unfortunate that Greensboro, after 25 years, seemingly still hasn't moved past this incident. Rather than empanel a commission to engage in an orgy of leftist navel gazing, the purpose of getting beyond the Klan/Nazi and CWP confrontation would be better served in another way: recognizing both sides for what they were, and moving past the incident to call people to work toward the precepts in our Constitution, not effectively memorializing people who would have seen it replaced with Marx and Engel's Manifesto.
Well, Greensboro is at it again, instituting an idiotic "Truth and Reconciliation" commision of lefties to commiserate over the Klan/Nazi killings of the Communist Workers Party members twenty-five years ago! Below is a comment I posted at Ed Cone's Greensboro based blog, edcone.com.
Nice job of reporting by the N&R-mentioning that the protesters were participating in a rally against Nazis and the Klan, yet failing to note that the rally instigators were members of the Communist Workers Party.
Let's stipulate up front that the people killed should not have been shot in cold blood. That's not the kind of society this nation's founders envisioned. By the same token, the founders of the USA didn't envision the kind of society that the members of the CWP would have liked to see, either. And by the CWP members having this rally and broadcasting their intentions, it had the equivalent of waving their red flag (literally and figuratively) in front of the bull of the Klan/Nazi members and sympathizers.
There may be legitimate debate over whether Greensboro law enforcement provided an adequate bull ring. Even in that life threatening sport, the spectators are separated from the participants. By the CWP deciding to hold their "protest" in a predominately black residential area of Greensboro, they showed themselves to be no different than other Communists worldwide-willing to possibly sacrifice innocents to the service of their bloodthirsty ideology in the name of promoting a false egalitarianism.
It's unfortunate that Greensboro, after 25 years, seemingly still hasn't moved past this incident. Rather than empanel a commission to engage in an orgy of leftist navel gazing, the purpose of getting beyond the Klan/Nazi and CWP confrontation would be better served in another way: recognizing both sides for what they were, and moving past the incident to call people to work toward the precepts in our Constitution, not effectively memorializing people who would have seen it replaced with Marx and Engel's Manifesto.
Nice job of reporting by the N&R-mentioning that the protesters were participating in a rally against Nazis and the Klan, yet failing to note that the rally instigators were members of the Communist Workers Party.
Let's stipulate up front that the people killed should not have been shot in cold blood. That's not the kind of society this nation's founders envisioned. By the same token, the founders of the USA didn't envision the kind of society that the members of the CWP would have liked to see, either. And by the CWP members having this rally and broadcasting their intentions, it had the equivalent of waving their red flag (literally and figuratively) in front of the bull of the Klan/Nazi members and sympathizers.
There may be legitimate debate over whether Greensboro law enforcement provided an adequate bull ring. Even in that life threatening sport, the spectators are separated from the participants. By the CWP deciding to hold their "protest" in a predominately black residential area of Greensboro, they showed themselves to be no different than other Communists worldwide-willing to possibly sacrifice innocents to the service of their bloodthirsty ideology in the name of promoting a false egalitarianism.
It's unfortunate that Greensboro, after 25 years, seemingly still hasn't moved past this incident. Rather than empanel a commission to engage in an orgy of leftist navel gazing, the purpose of getting beyond the Klan/Nazi and CWP confrontation would be better served in another way: recognizing both sides for what they were, and moving past the incident to call people to work toward the precepts in our Constitution, not effectively memorializing people who would have seen it replaced with Marx and Engel's Manifesto.
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