Reagan May Have Died, Cannot Recall At This Time

A guy I know from college writes a conservative blog; it's funny to see him blasting liberals for taking political potshots at Reagan, when not a day before, he was using the occasion to advance his own political agenda, before the guy's body was even cold.

quote:

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The evil that men do lives after them;
The good is oft interred with their bones;
- Marc Antony, Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, III-ii

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It seems like the reverse is true today - if you're a dead guy, lord forbid anybody point out that you were a man and not a god, and that you may have made mistakes or made decisions that not everybody agreed with.Check out Jay Reding.com if you want to see examples, Dan. It's exactly what you're talking about, pretty much.

I'm kind of curious to know if I'm the only one here who had actually kind of forgotten he was still alive...

We understand, we just don't agree.Pretend that I called Reagan a toffee-nosed buffoon. Since none of his friends or familiy are here to read it, and certainly Reagan isn't, whose pocket does it pick? Whose leg does it break?If it's not your purpose to defend the custom, then why are you doing it? Why did you even bring it up if not to condemn us for not following it?

Maybe they don't believe in hypocracy in the South? Because that's what many of us "Yankees" think it is when you say one thing and believe another.Maybe they don't believe in being honest in the South? Because a bunch of us "Yankees" think it's dishonest to feign respect or reverence for a man we don't feel those things for.I know you folks in the South have a reputation for being plain-spoken, and I can appreciate that. But up here we try to maintain a reputation of being true-spoken, you know?

Feigned respect for a man I don't believe deserves it? Yeah, I'd call that hypocrisy.I don't care if I was called a Yankee, or a fire-breathing asshole, or a motherfucker. What I guess I mind is the insinuation that folks like me are somehow less possessed of class or civility because we don't see the self-evidency of a fairly arbitrary cultural tradition.You see it as restraint? I see it as an attempt to gloss over the truth. I don't think funerals are a time for polite fictions, I think they're a time for the truth to come to light, both positive and negative. To do less, I think, is an injustice to the humanity of the deceased. Who are we actually burying, here? A godhead, a characture, a cartoon; or the actual man named Ronald Reagan?

No, but if you self-censor or otherwise obfuscate your real views, you're putting forth pleasant fictions instead of truth.You're free to consider that less important than civility, and I'm free to disagree. But if your point wasn't to condemn our position, then what is your point? Why didn't you just let it go in the first place?

That's fine.I choose not to. I'm sorry if I interpreted your stance in the wrong way, which it looks like I did.This message has been edited by crashfrog, 06-09-2004 08:37 PM

I have a significantly higher tolerance for what people can call me than for what people can call people I respect. I'm crazy like that, I guess.