With Barack Obama about to give a graduation speech at Notre Dame, Paul at Powerline asks whether Obama can begin to approach President Reagan's commencement speech at Notre Dame on May 17, 1981. Here's an excerpt from that inspiring speech:
The years ahead are great ones for this country, for the cause of freedom and the spread of civilization. The West won't contain communism, it will transcend communism. It won't bother to. . . denounce it, it will dismiss it as some bizarre chapter in human history whose last pages are even now being written.
William Faulkner, at a Nobel Prize ceremony some time back, said man ``would not only [merely] endure: he will prevail'' against the modern world because he will return to ``the old verities and truths of the heart.'' And then Faulkner said of man, ``He is immortal because he alone among creatures . . . has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance.''
One can't say those words -- compassion, sacrifice, and endurance -- without thinking of the irony that one who so exemplifies them, Pope John Paul II, a man of peace and goodness, an inspiration to the world, would be struck by a bullet from a man towards whom he could only feel compassion and love. It was Pope John Paul II who warned in last year's encyclical on mercy and justice against certain economic theories that use the rhetoric of class struggle to justify injustice. He said, ``In the name of an alleged justice the neighbor is sometimes destroyed, killed, deprived of liberty or stripped of fundamental human rights.''
For the West, for America, the time has come to dare to show to the world that our civilized ideas, our traditions, our values, are not -- like the ideology and war machine of totalitarian societies -- just a facade of strength. It is time for the world to know our intellectual and spiritual values are rooted in the source of all strength, a belief in a Supreme Being, and a law higher than our own.
When it's written, history of our time won't dwell long on the hardships of the recent past. But history will ask -- and our answer determine the fate of freedom for a thousand years -- Did a nation borne of hope lose hope? Did a people forged by courage find courage wanting? Did a generation steeled by hard war and a harsh peace forsake honor at the moment of great climactic struggle for the human spirit?
If history asks such questions, it also answers them. And the answers are to be found in the heritage left by generations of Americans before us. They stand in silent witness to what the world will soon know and history someday record: that in the [its] third century, the American Nation came of age, affirmed its leadership of free men and women serving selflessly a vision of man with God, government for people, and humanity at peace.
A few years ago, an Australian Prime Minister, John Gorton, said, ``I wonder if anybody ever thought what the situation for the comparatively small nations in the world would be if there were not in existence the United States, if there were not this giant country prepared to make so many sacrifices.'' This is the noble and rich heritage rooted in great civil ideas of the West, and it is yours.
My hope today is that in the years to come -- and come it shall -- when it's your time to explain to another generation the meaning of the past and thereby hold out to them their promise of the future, that you'll recall the truths and traditions of which we've spoken. It is these truths and traditions that define our civilization and make up our national heritage. And now, they're yours to protect and pass on.
I have one more hope for you: when you do speak to the next generation about these things, that you will always be able to speak of an America that is strong and free, to find in your hearts an unbounded pride in this much-loved country, this once and future land, this bright and hopeful nation whose generous spirit and great ideals the world still honors.
There are many reasons why Reagan was a great man and a great president. One is that he never lost his optimism and his ability to inspire others. Another is that he thought in terms of the really big picture -- as high as the heavens and easily 1000 years into the future. Let's hear some of his words again:
When it's written, history of our time won't dwell long on the hardships of the recent past. But history will ask -- and our answer determine the fate of freedom for a thousand years -- Did a nation borne of hope lose hope? Did a people forged by courage find courage wanting? Did a generation steeled by hard war and a harsh peace forsake honor at the moment of great climactic struggle for the human spirit?
Ronald Regan thought and spoke like a president for the ages. Barack Obama holds the title of "president" but still thinks and talks like a community organizer. His idea of a good day's work is shaking a few concessions out of a car company or a bank.
I miss having a real president.
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