A Few Words By and About Ronald Reagan

By Burt Prelutsky
Monday, March 5, 2007

It is alleged that Groucho Marx, upon once being invited to join a country club, declined on the grounds that he refused to belong to any group that would have Groucho Marx as a member.

I think of that wisecrack every time I hear a liberal try to make a case for America’s surrendering its sovereignty to the United Nations. As long ago as 1964, in his famous “Rendezvous with Destiny” speech, Ronald Reagan pointed out that one could muster a two-thirds vote on the floor of the General Assembly among nations representing less than a tenth of the world’s population.

And if Groucho didn’t want to mingle even with those eager to associate with him, imagine how he would feel about spending any more time than was absolutely necessary with the likes of North Korea, Cuba, Syria and the Sudan.

In Reagan’s remarkable address, which is so timely it could have easily been given this afternoon, he said, “Now it doesn’t require expropriation or confiscation of private property to impose socialism on a people. What does it mean whether you hold the deed or the title to your business or property if the government holds the power of life and death over that business or property?”

But just in case that wasn’t good enough for the Socialists in our midst, the Supreme Court made Reagan’s words all the more prescient recently with its Constitution-rending decision in the matter of eminent domain. Forget deeds, forget titles, ruled five of those arrogant numbskulls. Like Lola, the vamp who did the devil’s bidding in “Damn Yankees,” now whatever Big Brother wants, Big Brother gets.

In reading Reagan’s speech, one can’t help but think that when he spoke about those on the left who would unilaterally appease the Soviet Union that he could be referring to those who would capitulate to the followers of Islam.

Nobody in his right mind ran around justifying Hitler simply because Germany felt it had been taken advantage of after its defeat in World War I. Nobody suggested we all had to read “Mein Kampf” in order to better understand Nazism. No sane person suggested that we were only fighting a war with Germany in order to gain control of her iron ore. And, except for a few nuts, nobody suggested that America was only doing battle with the Nazi barbarians because a wartime economy would finally bring our country out of the Great Depression.

But if things could be better in 2005 America, England proves they could be even worse. After Muslim butchers blew up English subways and buses, London’s leftist mayor contended that the killers had legitimate grievances and the Neville Chamberlain clones at the BBC would only go so far as to identify the cretins as bombers, not, god forbid, as terrorists.

We have a pretty good idea what Ronald Reagan, a very civil gentleman, would say about the appeasers and apologists on this side of the Atlantic, those self-deluded cowards who refuse to acknowledge that today’s Nazis murder and mutilate children when they’re not otherwise occupied singing the praises of Allah and bowing down to Mecca.

We can only imagine what Winston Churchill, a far more rambunctious orator, would say about his own craven countrymen.