One of my prized possessions is a Time Magazine given to me by a childhood friend of my wife. Dated January 2, 1984 it lists the Men of the Year 1983. One of them some people will still remember. His name was Yuri Andropov.
The other one, we will never forget. His name was Ronald Reagan.
I loved Ronald Reagan. He was elected president on my 17th birthday, at the time when a boy starts looking beyond the classroom to the world outside and wonders what his place will be in it and who will make the decisions on which his hopes depend. I still take his election personally - in that quirky way we all imagine cosmic events (like whether your team wins or loses) are determined by our relation to that event. His election was my birthday present.
I first heard about Reagan in 1976 when he was campaigning for president and I was trying to get out of junior high school intact. A heavy set, politically sharp kid named Kirk (Bolis, I think) gave me his bumper sticker and explained conservatism to me. Back then it made good sense. Now that it has become so enmeshed in the power game I don't recognize it any more. Those power games are the eternal advantage of liberalism.
My father told me the difference between liberals and conservatives was that the former insisted that problems had to be solved now, while conservatives understood they sometimes took a long time. That has always seemed very wise to me.
It was something Reagan seemed to get.
In 1984 I married Karen and her brother gave me a desk. I put my Reagan Bush bumper sticker on the side of the desk figuring that way I could keep it forever. Somebody threw my desk out in one of our moves.
That bothers me more than the ounce of gold that disappeared - probably in the same move.
Reagan was hated by the radical and presumptive moral conscience of America. He didn't care for the poor, they insisted. He was racist, they cried. The night of the election, Bruce Springsteen addressed his concert goers. "This is a dark night for America," I believe were his words. I wonder if that wasn't behind his sudden rise to popular superstardom in 1985.
Reagan simply knew these were human problems and that politics on the grand scale, politics run by inhuman bureaucracies and morally decrepit unions, wasn't going to solve the problems of the poor, the minorities, the immigrants. He also had a great deal more confidence in the poor and minorities to solve their problems than the Nanny State will ever have.
Reagan understood that between the idealized statements of the public forum and the actual exchange of resources on the street was a vast unaccountable bureaucracy that would siphon unspeakable amounts of those resources into the abyss of its own corruption. He knew that the poor wouldn't see much of the money the government took in. He knew that politicians weep for the oppressed with one eye, while hunting for a vote - or a victim - with the other. He knew that voters salved their consciences by paying taxes so they could avoid actively loving their neighbors.
Reagan didn't trust unaccountable power - not in Congress, not in the Judiciary, and not in the everexpanding halls of the bureaucracy that endlessly sucks the moral life out of our country.
He knew, as any school teacher knows, that the more laws we have on the books the more lawless a people becomes.
Reagan transcended politics. He infuriated the left in his day because they could not, they did not have the categories to - and they still don't - understand him. Reagan was a shrewd politician precisely because he saw through the illusions of politics. He saw them as a means and a stewardship - by no means an end in themselves.
They called him the teflon president. This was a term made up by journalists frustrated in their endeavor to destroy him. They couldn't understand why their petty attacks had no effect. It was because he had integrity and because we needed him. The journalists were like a group of playground brats attacking the teacher. When we saw how unphased teacher was, we stopped fearing the brats. The brats bided their time.
Reagan knew what to say and when because he had a sure instinct for human feeling. He remembered how America had once seen herself and he believed she could still be beautiful.
What came from Reagan's heart was politically effective, so presidents since him have tried to wear his jacket.
It hasn't fit.
He knew what he stood for and he was mature enough to stand for it without bombast and vacuity. He stood calmly for us all.
Reagan had entered politics relatively late in life, running for governor of California after his 1964 speech at the Republican convention. That speech was a classic and needs to be listened to annually by everyone who believes in humane conservativism.
Because in the end what set Reagan apart was his humanity. As simple as that seems, it simply isn't a common trait. He honored everybody, even those who attacked him. When he said of the Societ Union, on March 8, 1983, "They are the focus of evil in the modern world," he gave them the honor of straightforward dialogue. When he said, on January 29, 1981, "The only morality they recognize is what will further their cause, meaning they reserve unto themselves the right to commit any crime, to lie, to cheat..." he did us the honor of saying what we all knew to be true, what they had written in their manifestos, and what we feared.
So we trusted him.
He honored his political opponents. He honored the media. He honored Nancy and protected her honor and gave us men a model for how to treat a lady. He honored the White House. He honored the oval office. He honored his country.
The world honors him today in a way they would not when he was president.
It is oddly fitting that he should die between Memorial Day and D-day. I remember his speech on June 6, 1984, remembering what our fathers had sacrificed for us. He couldn't fight for medical reasons, so he did what he could. And then he honored the soldiers by remembering them and fulfilling the purpose of their deaths.
And it must be insisted that they did not die on the beaches of Omaha or Utah or on the inland bridges (as my great Uncle Arthur did) or at Iwo Jima or Guadalcanal or anywhere else so our freedoms could be severed from the duties they fulfilled. Reagan knew why they died. We dishonor them when we excuse sin and grant rights founded in the arbitrary will of a state that has radicalized its people and has already begun to reap the whirlwind.
Because Reagan was a man of honor, I will honor him. I will not forget my debt to him. I will strive to help the nation he shared with me rebuild itself on a foundation of virtue, rooted in humane duty, defending the right to fulfill the duties, and denying the infantile right of the self-indulgent to accomplish what neither Hitler, Stalin, nor Osama could have honestly hoped.
I will remember Ronald Reagan.
Because I love him.
