- By Ian Ransom
Ah, you gotta love The Gipper, especially on "Down Came The Berlin Wall" Day. Those were amazing years for America. Remember? So full of activity and genuine optimism, instead of lethargy and liberal platitudes. Simply by appearing on television, Ronald Reagan could cause pinheads to spontaneously combust, back then. It was better than any July 4th fireworks display. You couldn't walk down the street in those days without encountering the runny remnants of some leftist's brain.
"Mama, what is that awful stuff smushed there on the sidewalk?"
"Why, those are just the scrambled thoughts of some poor liberal, honey. You know how their skulls blow up when they sense government shrinking. Don't worry. People have jobs, now that Reagan is in office. Someone'll be along to clean up that perfidious progressive pudding."
I was not old enough to vote when Reagan first began to pull America safely from the sucking, belching tar pits of Jimmy Carter's ruinous administration. Jimmy Carter. I love it how, ever since Jimmy got his walking papers, the Left has burbled and cooed that "Carter is the best ex-President we've ever had!" Do I hear groans of understanding from the cyber-balcony? I hope so, because we all know that only a liberal could confect a line so ripe and steaming with freshly deposited waste material from the nether-regions of a male bovine. Only Democrats could get as giddy as gum-snapping schoolgirls over "best ex-presidents."
Yes, I cherish the initial Reagan years because I was just entering my teens, and my family's automobile dealership, which had barely survived Jimmy Carter, was flourishing again under Ronnie's economic plan.
We didn't have to be skinny, anymore.
We could take drives to places.
Trust me: kids remember that sort of thing. Reagan's plan rewarded scrappy entrepreneurs like my grandfather, who owned his business and who was the most dyed-in-the-wool Republican I've ever known. Most thankfully for the nation, Ronald Reagan didn't equate leadership with loquaciousness, and when he gave a speech, he didn't need teleprompters that churned-out vapid psychobabble sprinkled in fairy-dust.
Big Government shrunk. It shrunk to the harrowing dismay of the Liberal Establishment, which was forced back to its SSS (Secret Socialist Sweatlodge) locations in California, Vermont, and Massachusetts. There, drawing-boards were weighed down with new plans. Plans enabling Democrat men to make limp wrists limpier. Plans that helped left-wing women hone their She-Beast skills to frigid perfection.
Reagan is no longer with us, of course, but his legacy is alive and kicking amid this national nightmare. Sarah Palin and others are seeing to that by steady invocation of the timeless conservative principles embodied by the very mention of the man's name. Like Ronald Reagan, Sarah's no-nonsense moral backbone and good cheer strike mind-frazzling terror in liberals and all others who believe that aromatherapy is a form of prayer. Don't laugh--there are millions of people out there who actually believe this. They believe it so hard that they constipate themselves and are thus forced to seek out herbal colonics...which ought to suit them just fine, when you think about it, because an herbal colonic is basically the liberal person's version of meeting God face-to-face. Call it the Leftist Circle of Life.
In any case, on this auspicious day in which we remember Reagan and the collapse of the Berlin Wall, I plan to shock and befuddle as many of my humorless, Democrat California neighbors as I possibly can. All I have to do is wear my favorite tee-shirt: Reagan's face on the front. Sarah's face (and the words "Palin 2012") on the back. See, there's a particularly miserable specimen of a man-hating, bra-eschewing hippy-lady living just down the street. She's always out in her yard, tending to her mung beans, pot plants, and her precious heirloom tomatoes. She snarls at me through her moustache whenever I jog past her house on my daily run, even though I still give her a friendly wave without fail. She used to be nice to me; that is, until she noticed the Palin bumper-sticker on my SUV a few weeks ago. You gotta love those open-minded libs, huh? Wait'll she gets a load of the tee!
Don't worry, conservative friends, Sarah's face won't be vilified: I may be getting a little older, but I can still outrun a flying heirloom tomato.
- Ian
That was a great read! You had me laughing out loud, and you were spot on. Thanks.
ReplyDeleteMy friends and I came of age during Reagan’s presidency. He really led the country like none other since. He was the most powerful president, and yet was warm and personal. We had the feeling that we could just talk with him as if we knew him - as if he were our own grandfather. (We called him Grandpa.) Sarah reminds me of him.
ReplyDeleteI found what I wrote last year:
When I first heard her, I thought, “Wow! This woman’s got . . . (courage)
What was her name again? Sarah Palin?”
I told my wife, “I’m not going to let myself like her. Nope. I get my hopes up, and they always let me down.” But I was fighting back a smile - I was thinking: She’s Grandpa.
-
“Don’t worry, Grandpa’s in charge.” My friends and I would affectionately say this about president Reagan if we noticed any problems in the world. It’s that feeling again. We have a leader . . . that’s our leader . . . on our side.
-
She really is, “Of the people, by the people, and for the people.”
She is a brave, smart, exceptional leader.
As a president she will use the right people to accomplish the right things.
I hope that someday we might be inclined to say, if we notice any problems in the world,
“Don’t worry, Sarah’s in charge.”
Thanks for the feedback, good people. Sometimes I think I'm a little bit too acid-tongued (or acid-keyboarded?), and perhaps that's true, but humor can be a salvific thing, particularly when the wider world's skewed sense of political correctness has become so detestably obtrusive. The irony is maddening.
ReplyDeletePeople supposedly became "politically correct" so that the feelings of others would not be hurt, but when they turned political correctness into a veritable religion (as liberals have done), it ends up costing people their lives. So much for their feelings!
And Bill, I do very much agree with your comparison of Reagan and Palin. RR exuded the admirable confidence that comes from a very straightforward certainty about what he believed, as a conservative. Sarah has that same quality; it is palpable in people, and people who value stability are attracted to that kind of light, that kind of leadership. That's one of the things that, I believe, differentiates conservatives from liberals. We prize solidity and character whereas progressives so often appear to prize "characteristics," and they love to feed-off of uncertainty in the socio-cultural sense. They seem to promote a culture of "being uncertain," of being restless, unsatisfied.
Compare the speeches of Reagan (or Palin) with those of Obama. Night and day. Obama, in my opinion, really has no inner confidence in exactly what he believes, if he believes in anything (whatever that might be), save for bits and pieces of disjointed philosophies and platitudes paste-boarded together and made to sound appropriately vague.
This calculated vagueness appeals to people who feel vague about their own belief-systems, their beliefs about their nation, their destinies, etc. Platitudes replace attitudes, or, worse, they masquerade as attitudes. It's a real problem in our culture right now--our nation is downright sick with it, and one of the greatest symptoms was (IMO) the election of a pretender like Obama. I call it the "vague plague". We're going to need either a very strong leader to yank us out of this rut, as a relatively unified nation, or--I am very horrified to say--a catastrophe of such proportions that the entire house of cards is brought down and things are rebuilt from a necessary and natural conservative foundation.
Thankfully, we still have our Constitution, and I prefer to believe that strong leadership will win the day, when the day seems darkest (or grayest). Reagan proved that, and Sarah possesses the qualities to prove it as well. I don't think we're going to be able to reason with the far left, however, or even make peace with them. They lack decency and courtesy. But most Americans, I believe, will get it Right, eventually.