OK, here's what happened. My wife and I both gave items to be sold at a fund raiser, and I went to the fund raiser to buy something....anything....to help out in that way also. I came across a music CD of a group that I like. My wife later asked me what I bought and I showed her the CD with a certain sense of satisfaction. She rolled her eyes and said "That's the CD I gave you for Christmas a few years back. It's been in with our other CDs since then. You didn't like it!" I said that I never saw the CD before. She countered that she donated it a few days ago. Still suspicious, I listened to it again. Same CD alright.... and I didn't like it this time either. Oh to have that memory of youth again.
December 17th, 1971....I do remember a little bit of that week for I spent it in Sydney, Australia on my second R&R from Vietnam. Sydney has a Mediterranean type of weather all year round and December would be the beginning of their summer. I'd like to relate this little story from that trip. The Sydney Opera House was in construction. It would not officially open for almost two years but it was still a magnificent site at that time. I was standing on a bank to what would be the left of the Opera House if you were looking at it from the harbor. A middle aged man came up to me and introduced himself as a local Baptist pastor. He had a request for what he knew to be an American serviceman on R&R. That I was on R&R would have been very obvious. He asked me if I lifted weights and I told him that I did. His church had just purchased a new set of weights for the youth group and he said that they would really appreciate an American serviceman giving them of few tips on beginning weightlifting. I politely declined the invitation. He paused and then asked again...for the sake of the youth. I paused and declined again. I had $500 burning a whole in my pocket. That decision of mine has haunted me ever since. After the Internet came into being I researched Sydney Baptist churches a number of times in a vain attempt to locate the pastor.....twenty to thirty years after the fact.
This post is a trip down memory lane, not mine per se but America's. The Decades television channel just aired an interview from the Dick Cavett Show with then California Governor Ronald Reagan from that date in 1971, and it got me thinking of where I was when it aired. Ronald Reagan and America are the topics of this post. The interview was broadcast because Reagan died on June 5th, 2004.
Our collapse as a nation had already begun when the interview was first aired. The 60s had decimated our youth. The seeds of Watergate would be planted in the minds of President Nixon's advisors within of month of that interview. The Watergate scandal which led to the resignation of a United States president, as serious as it was, was nothing....absolutely nothing compared to the corruption we would experience in the Clinton administration and the treasonous deception of the current administration. We were outraged as a nation then.....but could hardly care less today.
I watched Reagan tonight and even though he was a little uncomfortable on the show, for there were half cheers and half boos when he was introduced, his genuine love for America was evident as I sat here watching in what are the ruins of that great American Experiment.
We may elect them or they make take power by force but God gives nations its leaders. It may be to strengthen the nation and it may be to destroy it. Reagan was given as a reprieve. There was a certain sense of maturation in the Christian church at the time, remnants of which are still with us, but it withered away under George H. W. Bush. We were outraged by the Clintons but also oblivious to our own culpability in what we were becoming. September 11th shook us to the core. George W. Bush responded as he should have, and our military was faithful and gallant as they have always been, but as in Vietnam we were a people half iron and half clay. We were then given Barack Hussein Obama.
This campaign has become a curse in that it gives a false hope and it keeps us from falling on our knees in mortification of what we have become. There was one line in that interview with then Governor Reagan that took my breath away in its humility and its sincerity of reverence for Almighty God. He was asked if he would run for president in 1972. His answer was...."No...Lord willing...I'll complete my second term as governor." Oh, to hear government officials use that phrase again! Lord willing....this election will even come about. Lord willing....we may survive as a republic. Lord willing....mercy will be extended for yet another year. All other thinking is but vanity and futility.
December 17th, 1971....I do remember a little bit of that week for I spent it in Sydney, Australia on my second R&R from Vietnam. Sydney has a Mediterranean type of weather all year round and December would be the beginning of their summer. I'd like to relate this little story from that trip. The Sydney Opera House was in construction. It would not officially open for almost two years but it was still a magnificent site at that time. I was standing on a bank to what would be the left of the Opera House if you were looking at it from the harbor. A middle aged man came up to me and introduced himself as a local Baptist pastor. He had a request for what he knew to be an American serviceman on R&R. That I was on R&R would have been very obvious. He asked me if I lifted weights and I told him that I did. His church had just purchased a new set of weights for the youth group and he said that they would really appreciate an American serviceman giving them of few tips on beginning weightlifting. I politely declined the invitation. He paused and then asked again...for the sake of the youth. I paused and declined again. I had $500 burning a whole in my pocket. That decision of mine has haunted me ever since. After the Internet came into being I researched Sydney Baptist churches a number of times in a vain attempt to locate the pastor.....twenty to thirty years after the fact.
This post is a trip down memory lane, not mine per se but America's. The Decades television channel just aired an interview from the Dick Cavett Show with then California Governor Ronald Reagan from that date in 1971, and it got me thinking of where I was when it aired. Ronald Reagan and America are the topics of this post. The interview was broadcast because Reagan died on June 5th, 2004.
Our collapse as a nation had already begun when the interview was first aired. The 60s had decimated our youth. The seeds of Watergate would be planted in the minds of President Nixon's advisors within of month of that interview. The Watergate scandal which led to the resignation of a United States president, as serious as it was, was nothing....absolutely nothing compared to the corruption we would experience in the Clinton administration and the treasonous deception of the current administration. We were outraged as a nation then.....but could hardly care less today.
I watched Reagan tonight and even though he was a little uncomfortable on the show, for there were half cheers and half boos when he was introduced, his genuine love for America was evident as I sat here watching in what are the ruins of that great American Experiment.
We may elect them or they make take power by force but God gives nations its leaders. It may be to strengthen the nation and it may be to destroy it. Reagan was given as a reprieve. There was a certain sense of maturation in the Christian church at the time, remnants of which are still with us, but it withered away under George H. W. Bush. We were outraged by the Clintons but also oblivious to our own culpability in what we were becoming. September 11th shook us to the core. George W. Bush responded as he should have, and our military was faithful and gallant as they have always been, but as in Vietnam we were a people half iron and half clay. We were then given Barack Hussein Obama.
This campaign has become a curse in that it gives a false hope and it keeps us from falling on our knees in mortification of what we have become. There was one line in that interview with then Governor Reagan that took my breath away in its humility and its sincerity of reverence for Almighty God. He was asked if he would run for president in 1972. His answer was...."No...Lord willing...I'll complete my second term as governor." Oh, to hear government officials use that phrase again! Lord willing....this election will even come about. Lord willing....we may survive as a republic. Lord willing....mercy will be extended for yet another year. All other thinking is but vanity and futility.
