You might still check out Richard Perle and his memory of the 1986 Iceland summit.
http://www.aei.org/news/newsID.20653/news_detail.asp

Nice note that Reagan's ideas won the intellectual - reality war.

Thanks for linking Karrie's brief notes; very personal.

Show's over?

I know a lot of apartchiks who earnestly, deeply, wish it were so, too.

The passing of the greatest president of the last century will focus the electorate on what's important, and what is not. What worked and what didn't. Who stood for what then...and now.

The left is 'warning' somebody not to make this a Wellstone moment.

What rot. I don't think the right could bring itself that low, even on a script. By the time the eulogy has been given on Friday, chances are MUCH better that somebody, somewhere on the left, will have vented and created such a charicature of classlessness and pettiness in action that there won't need to be anything beyond the simple restatement of a past president's creed and accomplishments to be a boost for Bush.

That open-door-into-nose thing again. It's like watching a bird flying pell mell toward a glass building.

Very different men, true, but they share important character and philosophical traits. The ones we need now.

>>>"Need a Reagan Fix?"

No, quite the opposite, thank you.

Karrie:

Politically, I am more left than even my father. More left than the Democrats (not difficult).

This morning, I woke with a strange sense of sadness - a sense that history had finally caught up to the present, its mouth open wide, ready as Saturn to devour its own children.

My whole life (and I'm getting old now) the Left in my country has left me with a sense of nihilistic defeat, sometimes enraged, sometimes sad, but always with the impression that the coming darkness would never ever end.

Why does that vision speak so strongly to so many young and talented people?

Compare and contrast with the previous post here, about a place and time when the darkness was nearly absolute. Stalin is now gone. Russia is still ailing, but it's hard to say it isn't better. There's good evidence that the darkness doesn't have to win.

Youth is wasted on the young.

Michael, thank you so very much for posting that comment from your friend. It was the right touch at the right time. I left a comment that I'll repeat here.

"It brings to mind a rather funny episode when Reagan was elected. I'm a counselor and was director of an inpatient psychiatric program in Texas. Just prior to the election, we had two patients both claiming to be Jimmy Carter. The arguments between the two were sad, but funny at the same time. After Reagan was pronounced the winner, about a week or so later, one of the patients decided that he was Ronald Reagan. The other patient said "See, I told you he was an imposter."

I hadn't remembered that until you (Kerrie) noted some of your (her) recollections. Thanks again for sharing.

"My whole life (and I'm getting old now) the Left in my country has left me with a sense of nihilistic defeat, sometimes enraged, sometimes sad, but always with the impression that the coming darkness would never ever end."

Reagan held us in his arms and gave us courage and confidence in the face of the above. The magic of Ronald Reagan. Never met him, but I love him like a grand father. He made many of us feel like someone was really in charge. The real chief.

Well (as he used to say), he gave us 30 or 40 years of his life, we could spend a little time remembering, before he disappears into the pages of the history books.

But you're right - there are plenty of places to go, and there are still things happening in the world today.

I’m mourning, not for Reagan, but for one of the ten or so greatest guitar players of all time, who also just died.

http://home.earthlink.net/~stayclean/quine.html

Gee, aren't you capable of mourning for both? Evidently not.

>>>"I’m mourning, not for Reagan, but for one of the ten or so greatest guitar players of all time, who also just died."

He's so great, only 3 people have heard of him, including his mom. He's that great.

How did he die? Hunger?

David, you can be forgiven for not knowing who Robert Quine was, because apparently there is a great deal that you do not know.

Quine played with, among others, Richard Hell and the Voidoids, Lou Reed, Tom Waits, and Matthew Sweet. To quote the bard, he could play guitar like ringing a bell. He was known and loved by music fans throughout the world.

Just because YOU didn't know who he was doesn't mean you have the right to mock the man and his death. Sad.

Brooks,

you young people, and your "rock" and "roll" music.

"Richard Hell and the Voidoids",,,,,,,,,,

Good grief David, you didn't know who THEY were!!!

Probably one of the top ten bands of all time.

Since we're on the topic of music...

And since Mark ended his earlier post with a George Bernard Shaw quote (which, funny me, I mistakenly thought Billy Corgan originally penned for the longest time when I was a kid)...

Here's a George Bernard Shaw quote worth considering: "Hell is full of musical amateurs."

Richard Hell ... wasn't he, like, a Joey Ramone (RIP) rival or something? I think the Clash's Joe Strummer (RIP) said something about him once, but don't remember (and it's not worth googling).

But the Clash's Sandinista album sort of showed the end of punk rock rage (during Carter); plus they added a few anti-commie lines (How many did the Chinese miss?).

Didn't Reagan kill punk?

My bad: http://www.punkfix.net/reviews/sandinista.html
If you can find an Afghan rebel
That the Moscow bullets missed
Ask him what he thinks of voting Communist
Or ask the Dalai Lama in the hills of Tibet
How many monks did the Chinese get?
In the war-torn swamp ask any mercenary
How many British bullets in his armory?

from Washington Bullets