"He instinctively can find the shining greatness of our American culture and does a good job of highlighting it (although he also does have those rare lapses when he writes about hockey, but that is something caused by impurities in the Eastern waters or something)." Erik Keilholtz
Under the patronage of St. Tammany
Mark C. N. Sullivan is an editor at a Massachusetts university. He is married and the father of three children. Email
The Indian Peace flag of 1803, above, presented by the US government to friendly Indian nations. The sentiment returned.
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Ragtime pianist "Perfessor" Bill Edwards writes: In the early 20th century, musicians in New Orleans took many pieces from the popular liturgy and adapted them for funeral marches and subsequent celebration parades back from the cemetery. Listen to his playing of "Battle Hymn of the Republic."
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'Were we fools then, or are we dishonest now?' Roger Kimball at Armavirumque links to a "chrestomathy of bile" drawn from the "mountain of vituperation Reagan called forth from journalists and academics."
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Reagan's brand of conservatism is unique to America, John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge write in a useful article at Opinion Journal:
Traditional conservatism was based on six principles: a suspicion of the power of the state; a preference for liberty over equality; unashamed patriotism; a belief in established institutions and hierarchies; a pessimistic, backward-looking pragmatism; and elitism. This was the creed that Burke shaped into a philosophy in the 18th century--and that most famous conservatives, from Prince Metternich to Winston Churchill, understood in their bones. Mr. Reagan's conservatism exaggerated the first three of Burke's principles and contradicted the last three.
If Reaganism had been merely a more vigorous form of old-style conservatism, then it would have been more predictable. In fact, Mr. Reagan-- who began his political life as a New Deal Democrat--took a resolutely liberal approach to Burke's last three principles: hierarchy, pessimism and elitism.
The heroes of Burke's conservatism were paternalist squires, who knew their place in society and made sure everybody else did as well. Mr. Reagan's heroes were rugged individualists, defined by the fact that they do not know their place. He packed his kitchen cabinet with entrepreneurs who built up businesses out of nothing and he worshipped the cowboy. He kept a bronze saddle in the Oval Office and--rather magnificently--rushed to appoint Malcolm Baldridge as commerce secretary when he discovered that he liked going to rodeos.
"This is not a drill!" members of the Capitol Police Department screamed. "There is an incoming aircraft! You have one minute!"
Among those chased out of the building were former Secretary of State Alexander M. Haig Jr.; former Vice President Dan Quayle; Dr. Jeanne J. Kirkpatrick, a former United States ambassador to the United Nations; former Attorney General Edwin Meese III; Richard V. Allen, a former national security adviser; Kenneth M. Duberstein, a former White House chief of staff; Rupert Murdoch, chairman and chief executive of the News Corporation; Tom Korologos, a Reagan White House aide and longtime Republican lobbyist who was recently an adviser in Baghdad to L. Paul Bremer III, the top American civilian administrator in Iraq; Bob Colacello, a Vanity Fair writer who is working on a biography of Mrs. Reagan; and Margaret D. Tutwiler, a former Reagan White House aide who became the State Department spokeswoman in the first Bush administration and the ambassador to Morocco in the second.
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Speak softly and carry big stick: From a collection of Mexican lobby cards for Ronald Reagan movies.
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