Reagan Had Only One Warning in His 1989 Farewell Address

[Leroy N. Soetoro]

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/01/ronald-reagan-farewell-address-
learn-history-love-america/

He worried that Americans were losing a sense of ‘informed patriotism.’
Ronald Reagan was characteristically upbeat and optimistic when he
addressed the American people for the final time as president 30 years ago
this past Friday. His farewell address to the nation is best known for his
vivid description of just what he’d had in mind all those times when he
invoked America as “a shining city on a hill”:

In my mind, it was a tall proud city built on rocks stronger than oceans,
wind-swept, God-blessed, and teeming with people of all kinds living in
harmony and peace; a city with free ports that hummed with commerce and
creativity, and if there had to be city walls, the walls had doors, and
the doors were open to anyone with the will and the heart to get here.
That’s how I saw it, and see it still.

But for all of his optimism, Reagan did leave his audience with one clear
warning for the future. He said the country needed “an informed
patriotism.” He greatly feared that we were not doing enough to foster it.

“Are we doing a good-enough job teaching our children what America is and
what she represents in the long history of the world?” Reagan bluntly
asked.

When he was young, the nation’s youth “were taught, very directly, what it
means to be an American,” he noted. “And we absorbed, almost in the air, a
love of country and an appreciation of its institutions.” Young people
learned those lessons from family, in classrooms, and through popular
culture.

The Gipper worried that we were not handing down to future generations a
responsible love of country. “Parents aren’t sure that an unambivalent
appreciation of America is the right thing to teach modern children,” he
said. “Well-grounded patriotism is no longer in style” for those media
figures who direct the course of popular culture.

“We’ve got to teach history based not on what’s in fashion but what’s
important,” he urged parents and teachers. “If we forget what we did, we
won’t know who we are. I’m warning of an eradication of the American
memory that could result, ultimately, in an erosion of the American
spirit.”

We’ve had three decades to observe just how prophetic and accurate
Reagan’s warning was. Study after study has shown the shocking ignorance
of both young people and adults about American ideals, history, and
institutions. In 2017, a poll by the Annenberg Public Policy Center showed
that only one-quarter of respondents could name all three branches of
government. More than one-third couldn’t name any First Amendment rights.

But ignorance isn’t the only threat to the understanding that Americans
have of their country. In 2017, the National Association of Scholars
released a report entitled “Making Citizens: How American Universities
Teach Civics.” As The College Fix reported, Making Citizens suggests that
“left-leaning professors have transformed the teaching of traditional
civics with an emphasis on activism, creating a pipeline of students eager
to serve the goals of secular-progressive causes.” The report’s authors
note that instead of teaching “students the foundations of law, liberty,
and self-government,” colleges teach them “how to organize protests,
occupy buildings, and stage demonstrations.”

Perhaps it’s too much to expect that public schools today can go back to
formally teaching students about representative government, the separation
of powers, and landmark Supreme Court cases, but at least we should insist
that they sponsor and encourage debates in which advocates of traditional
civics from outside groups can help foster a sense of civic engagement.

19
Reagan himself was far too practical to believe that the job of
reintroducing the study of self-government could be left to the schools.

“All great change in America begins at the dinner table,” he said in his
farewell address. “So, tomorrow night in the kitchen I hope the talking
begins. And children, if your parents haven’t been teaching you what it
means to be an American, let ’em know and nail ’em on it. That would be a
very American thing to do.”

It is also absolutely necessary if we are to have any success in our
effort to “make America great again.” “Freedom is never more than one
generation away from extinction,” Reagan reminded us. “We didn’t pass it
to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and
handed on for them to do the same.”



--
Donald J. Trump, 304 electoral votes to 227, defeated compulsive liar in
denial Hillary Rodham Clinton on December 19th, 2016. The clown car
parade of the democrat party ran out of gas and got run over by a Trump
truck.

Congratulations President Trump. Thank you for cleaning up the disaster
of the Obama presidency.

Under Barack Obama's leadership, the United States of America became the
The World According To Garp.

ObamaCare is a total 100% failure and no lie that can be put forth by its
supporters can dispute that.

Obama jobs, the result of ObamaCare. 12-15 working hours a week at minimum
wage, no benefits and the primary revenue stream for ObamaCare. It can't
be funded with money people don't have, yet liberals lie about how great
it is.

Obama increased total debt from $10 trillion to $20 trillion in the eight
years he was in office, and sold out heterosexuals for Hollywood queer
liberal democrat donors.

--- news://freenews.netfront.net/ - complaints: ne...@netfront.net ---