I
miss this guy. Moreover, I miss his America.
As
the years go by, and our nation continues down a self-destructive path that
troubles me greatly, I often think about the Reagan years, and how we could sure
use the Gipper these days. Then, I come to the stark realization that those days
are gone forever. Were a Ronald Reagan to come along now, he would be
eviscerated by the rabid left. He wouldn't stand a chance. The morals and values
of which he spoke so pationately would be ridiculed; he would be called
everything from sexist, to bigot, to racist and worse. While America has changed
since the Reagan years -- for the worse -- the Gipper and things that mattered
to him haven't, if only in the hearts and minds of a declining number of us. For
that, I am both grateful and sad.
In
honor of Valentine's Day, The
Foundry has published a letter Ronald Reagan wrote to his son Michael in
1971. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.
Dear
Mike:
Enclosed
is the item I mentioned (with which goes a torn up IOU). I could stop here but I
won’t.
You’ve
heard all the jokes that have been rousted around by all the “unhappy marrieds”
and cynics. Now, in case no one has suggested it, there is another viewpoint.
You have entered into the most meaningful relationship there is in all human
life. It can be whatever you decide to make it. Some men feel their masculinity
can only be proven if they play out in their own life all the locker-room
stories, smugly confident that what a wife doesn’t know won’t hurt her. The
truth is, somehow, way down inside, without her ever finding lipstick on the
collar or catching a man in the flimsy excuse of where he was till three A.M., a
wife does know, and with that knowing, some of the magic of this relationship
disappears. There are more men griping about marriage who kicked the whole thing
away themselves than there can ever be wives deserving of blame. There is an old
law of physics that you can only get out of a thing as much as you put in it.
The man who puts into the marriage only half of what he owns will get that
out.
Sure,
there will be moments when you will see someone or think back to an earlier time
and you will be challenged to see if you can still make the grade, but let me
tell you how really great is the challenge of proving your masculinity and charm
with one woman for the rest of your life. Any man can find a twerp here and
there who will go along with cheating, and it doesn’t take all that much
manhood. It does take quite a man to remain attractive and to be loved by a
woman who has heard him snore, seen him unshaven, tended him while he was sick
and washed his dirty underwear. Do that and keep her still feeling a warm glow
and you will know some very beautiful music. If you truly love a girl, you
shouldn’t ever want her to feel, when she sees you greet a secretary or a girl
you both know, that humiliation of wondering if she was someone who caused you
to be late coming home, nor should you want any other woman to be able to meet
your wife and know she was smiling behind her eyes as she looked at her, the
woman you love, remembering this was the woman you rejected even momentarily for
her favors.
Mike,
you know better than many what an unhappy home is and what it can do to others.
Now you have a chance to make it come out the way it should. There is no greater
happiness for a man than approaching a door at the end of a day knowing someone
on the other side of that door is waiting for the sound of his footsteps.
Love,
Dad
Dad
P.S.
You’ll never get in trouble if you say “I love you” at least once a
day.
I
miss Ronald Reagan. Even more so, I miss his America.
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