July 4th thoughts from the Gipper
I am ripping this post completely from National Review's the Corner, but its so good, I didn't want to trust you guys to follow the link. From Ronald Reagan's farewell address to the nation:
You know, down the hall and up the stairs
from this office is the part of the White House where the president and
his family live. There are a few favorite windows I have up there that
I like to stand and look out of early in the morning. The view is over
the grounds here to the Washington Monument, and then the Mall and the
Jefferson Memorial. But on mornings when the humidity is low, you can
see past the Jefferson to the river, the Potomac, and the Virginia
shore. Someone said that's the view Lincoln had when he saw the smoke
rising from the Battle of Bull Run. I see more prosaic things: the
grass on the banks, the morning traffic as people make their way to
work, now and then a sailboat on the river.
I've
been thinking a bit at that window. I've been reflecting on what the
past eight years have meant and mean. And the image that comes to mind
like a refrain is a nautical one—a small story about a big ship, and a
refugee and a sailor. It was back in the early '80s, at the height of
the boat people. And the sailor was hard at work on the carrier Midway,
which was patrolling the South China Sea. The sailor, like most
American servicemen, was young, smart, and fiercely observant. The crew
spied on the horizon a leaky little boat. And crammed inside were
refugees from Indochina hoping to get to America. The Midway sent a
small launch to bring them to the ship and safety. As the refugees made
their way through the choppy seas, one spied the sailor on deck and
stood up and called out to him. He yelled, "Hello, American sailor.
Hello, freedom man."
A small moment with a big
meaning, a moment the sailor, who wrote it in a letter, couldn't get
out of his mind. And when I saw it, neither could I. Because that's
what it was to be an American in the 1980s. We stood, again, for
freedom. I know we always have, but in the past few years the world
again, and in a way, we ourselves rediscovered it.