“Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction.
We didn’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream.
It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same,
or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children’s
children what it was once like in the United States where men were free.”
Ronald Reagan
(Time Magazine cover from 2007 / Julie Cook / 2021)
So many boxes.
So many books.
The heavy dead-weight boxes of books are categorized by genre…
history, political, spiritual…Bibles, Pope John Paul II, St. Francis, Mother Teresa,
presidential biographies, WWII, Eastern Orthodox, Catholic, Anglican, The Holocaust,
saints, cookbooks…on and on it goes…
Unpacking this unending mountain of boxes, I stumbled upon my collection of books
regarding Ronald Reagan.
I gingerly pulled out the books and magazines from this latest deep abyss,
taking stock of what I wanted to keep readily available and what could be stored away.
In the treasure trove, I found the above Time Magazine.
It was dated 2007.
I was still teaching at that time and I remembered that I had the magazine sitting on my
desk in the classroom.
A student saw the magazine and had a knee jerk reaction…
they scrawled a written response to the title of the story line…
I had a fit as I can’t stand to deface something I want to save…
The cover image was powerful…the scribbled black ink “GWB” was nothing more
then graffiti.
Sigh.
“How The Right Went Wrong”
This student penned GWB—as in George W. Bush
At the time, in 2007, some of my young charges were less than pleased with then President
George W.Bush.
We were embroiled in a seemingly endless war in the Middle East.
And so I now wonder…where and when exactly did the Right go wrong?
I suppose once life slows down, I will re-read that article–
looking back to what 14 years ago we wondered what might be the problem with Conservatism.
In 2007 we wondered what went wrong.
In 2021 we now consider such a word as pariah.
A taboo sort of mindset.
It seems much more has gone wrong than merely the loss of the right verses the wrong.
Woe to those who call evil good
and good evil,
who put darkness for light
and light for darkness,
who put bitter for sweet
and sweet for bitter!
Isaiah 5:20
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