'You all knew that some things are worth dying for.'

The 40th anniversary of Ronald Reagan at Pointe du Hoc.

Wednesday is the 20th anniversary of the death of Ronald Reagan, and Thursday is the 80th anniversary of D-Day.  On 6 June 1984, Reagan spoke in Normandy at Pointe du Hoc on the top of cliffs, thirty-five metres high, that 200 US Army Rangers climbed to take out of action German guns firing on allied soldiers landing on the beaches of D-Day. 

The world has changed a lot in forty years.  In Reagan's 13-minute speech he mentioned God six times, prayer five times, and twice quoted the Bible and God's promise to Joshua: 'I will not fail thee nor forsake thee.'  He said those who fought 'felt in their hearts, though they couldn't know in fact, that in Georgia they were filling the churches at 4 a.m., in Kansas, they were kneeling on their porches and praying, and in Philadelphia, they were ringing the Liberty Bell.'

Something else helped the men of D-Day: their rockhard belief that Providence would have a great hand in the events that would unfold here; that God was an ally in this great cause.  And so, the night before the invasion, when Colonel Wolverton asked his parachute troops to kneel with him in prayer he told them: Do not bow your heads, but look up so you can see God and ask His blessing in what we're about to do.

Reagan didn't need to tell those listening what happened to Colonel Robert Wolverton, 29 years of age because they all would have known.  He was killed in Normandy a few hours later.

I'm not sure any politician today could say, or would say, what Reagan said to veterans of Normandy that day:

You all knew that some things are worth dying for.  One's country is worth dying for, and democracy is worth dying for, because it's the most deeply honourable form of government ever devised by man.  All of you loved liberty.  All of you were willing to fight tyranny, and you knew the people of your countries were behind you.

I hesitate to change the tenor of today's email and go from talking about D-Day to mentioning what the ABC's chief political correspondent recently said about Australia, but as I've been watching and re-watching Reagan's speech over the last few days, I keep coming back to: 'One's country is worthy dying for'.  That is the exact opposite of what, in 2024, young Australians are encouraged to think about their country.  When Laura Tingle claimed Australia 'is a racist country', she was merely repeating the accepted wisdom of the country's elite.  It's surprising that anyone should be surprised by what she said.  The idea that Australia isn't just racist, it's illegitimate (which is the implication of the claim in the Uluru Statement - sovereignty 'has never been ceded or extinguished') is embedded in the country's public culture.  University academics now tell us that to dare show allegiance or loyalty to such a place is to suffer from 'aggressive nationalism'.

In 2018, Harper Nielsen, a nine-year-old schoolgirl in Brisbane, refused to stand for the national anthem because, according to her, 'It says Advance Australia Fair and when it was originally written it meant advance Australia for white skin people [sic].'  Nielsen made news around the world.  She was Australia's own Greta Thunberg.  Her father, Mark Nielsen, told The New York Times, 'Anyone who knows Harper knows she's not a kid who can be brainwashed.'  Both of Nielsen's parents were university academics.  When Pauline Hanson commented on the incident - 'It's about who we are as a nation, it's part of us… Here we have a kid who's been brainwashed and I'll tell you what, I'd give her a kick up the backside.' Gwenda Tavan, an associate professor at La Trobe University, didn't take Hanson's comment metaphorically.  Tavan wrote Hanson had 'advocated physical abuse as a suitable penalty for the young girl's transgression.'  More seriously, though, Tavan took the opportunity to complain about

shrill demands by politicians and sections of the media for unquestioning displays of loyalty to 'nationalist' symbols and institutions including the flag, the national anthem and contentious national days like Australia Day and ANZAC Day.

Demands for unquestioning loyalty and conformity in the name of national unity and pride can undermine much-vaunted liberal traditions of freedom of speech, thought, and association.

I don't want 'unquestioning' loyalty to Australia.  I'd settle for some loyalty to Australia, some unity and some pride in the country.  Those 'liberal traditions of freedom of speech, thought, and association' Tavan mentions are, of course, products of Western Civilisation. But under the national curriculum, practically, the only thing young Australians are taught about Western Civilisation is that the West had slavery.  Only in countries with the political traditions of the West can their national flags be burned, and can nine-year-olds refuse to stand for the national anthem.

(It's interesting to note that last month at Tavan's university, La Trobe University in Victoria, staff received an email from the Provost saying, 'If protesters enter your classes, we would ask that you refrain from intervening and allow them to share the information they wish to.  If they stay longer than five minutes, we request that you notify security.'  It remains to be seen whether the privileges university administrators have given to anti-Israel protesters are also provided to protesters who have information 'they wish to' share on other topics.  Australia's universities can't claim they haven't given in to threats of intimidation and violence.)

If you spend enough time attacking a country, its culture, and its history, eventually, there'll be consequences.  I've previously mentioned to you this poll taken by the Institute of Public Affairs in 2022, but it's very relevant to this discussion.  In response to the question, 'If Australia was in the same position as Ukraine is now, would you stay and fight, or leave the country?' of those in the survey aged 18 to 24, 40% said they'd leave the country, 28% were unsure, and 32% said they'd stay and fight.

The British PM, Rishi Sunak, announced last week that if he's re-elected, his Conservative Party government would introduce compulsory national service for 18-year-olds.  They would be required to work with community organisations one weekend a month or spend a year in the armed forces.  As the Conservatives' chances of winning the election are virtually zero, anything Sunak talks about is hypothetical.  Many have criticised the policy, including those who've called it a stunt and questioned why, after fourteen years in government, the Tories, a month before a likely electoral annihilation, have only now concluded national service is a good idea.  In an article last week in UnHerd, the British writer Mary Harrington elegantly captured the cynicism young people in the UK are entitled to feel about the policy.

The general sentiment [among young people] is outrage: the Tories locked them in their homes for two years, stunting education and proliferating psychiatric distress.  They mortgaged young people's futures to pay for a fleeting (and, in the end, largely illusory) sense of safety for their elders, leaving behind a legacy of zero growth, crippled businesses, and swingeing taxes to service stratospheric borrowing.  They hectored young people about duty, while breaking out the cake and champagne for birthday parties.

[The mainstream political parties] view the British nation-state as effectively obsolete.  It's content-free.  It has no culture, no people, nothing to offer other than tourist tat, a flaccid trading zone, and some services that may be obtained on a gym-membership basis by just turning up.

National Service both presumes a nation and also a sense of belonging and futurity, such that 'service' feels like paying it forward.  But it's being proposed by a government which recently locked young people in a cupboard for two years, then deflated the value of their degrees and increased the price, then capered about making nativist gestures while starving public services and stoking a housing crisis via mass migration.  Given this, young voters might be forgiven for thinking that they have neither a nation nor much future to speak of, and react with derision to the proposed inculcation in their breasts of 'renewed pride in our country'.

Ronald Reagan and Bill Bagley

On a more positive note, the upcoming Reagan anniversaries give me the opportunity to mention one of my favourite stories about America’s greatest president. Over the years, I've read my fair share of Reagan biographies, and while he doesn't yet have a Robert Caro, there are some good books about Reagan. Three works I've enjoyed are 'The Education of Ronald Reagan: The General Electric Years and the Untold Story of His Conversion to Conservatism' by Thomas Evans; 'The Rebellion of Ronald Reagan: A history of the end of the Cold War' by James Mann; and, 'Governor Reagan: His Rise to Power' by Lou Cannon.

Evans details Reagan's time as a spokesman for General Electric in the mid-1950s, spruiking for the company by giving lectures and speeches in factories around the country and hosting television programs.  Reagan was the great communicator.  He might have been a natural, but he honed his skills over many years.  Reagan estimated that during his time with GE, he'd been on 'his feet in front of a 'mike' for about 250,000 minutes.'  If you've spent over 4,000 hours talking to audiences, you're likely to become quite good at it.

A large part of 'The Rebellion of Ronald Reagan' is taken up documenting the battle between the president and his staff on one side, and the State Department and the American foreign policy establishment on the other side, over Reagan's 'Mr Gorbachev, tear down this wall!' speech in Berlin in June 1987.  Numerous 'experts' told Reagan that the line was inflammatory and threatened détente.  Drafts of the speech went back and forth between offices as State Department officials removed the words and Reagan's staff put them back in.  With a few days to go before he left for Europe, Reagan had to make a choice.  In a meeting in the Oval Office Reagan asked one of his staff whether he thought the line should be in or out.  'The White House aide gave no direct answer.  You're the president, he said.  You get to decide.  Reagan looked down at this desk, looked back up, and said, 'I think we'll leave it in.'

Working as a journalist, Lou Cannon wrote about Reagan for more than thirty years, first in California and then when Cannon was the White House correspondent for The Washington Post.  Cannon didn't share Reagan's worldview, but he did try to understand him, and there was much about Reagan he admired.  Cannon wrote of Reagan:

He was an ideas man, not an analyst…Reagan's theory of administration was sound.  He believed in hiring people of proven ability who tapped into the available expertise while nudging the bureaucracy in the direction he wanted to go…Reagan mastered his role as governor because he was competitive, organised, and on most issues a quick study.  He was also a good listener, when he wanted to listen, and he intuitively absorbed information.  Blessed with a low ego, Reagan was unafraid to show ignorance, an unusual quality in politicians… He understood that a governor should not waste his time in micromanagement.  'Show me an executive who works long overtime hours, and I'll show you a bad executive,' Reagan said.

The following story, told by Cannon about Reagan when he was governor, provides a lesson for everyone - not just for those who want to be president or prime minister.

…at a lobbyist's reception where Reagan had uncharacteristically imbibed a pair of vodka martinis, he was drawn into verbal sparring with Bill Bagley, the bright and volatile [Republican] assemblyman who made no secret of his opinion that the governor was a know-nothing.  Reagan had little use for Bagley, whom he regarded as a Democrat in Republican clothing.

On the ride home after the reception, he thought about what had happened and said to an aide, 'You know, all Bill really wants is attention, and we're going to give it to him.  Find some bills we can work together on and have him be the author.

Recommended Watching

The Reagan Library has this informative explanation of the speech that started it all for Reagan - his 'A Time for Choosing' speech in 1964.  You can watch it sixty years later and know that (sadly) it remains as relevant as ever.  In Australia in 2024, we can ask the same question Reagan posed: whether 'a little intellectual elite in a far-distant capitol can plan our lives for us better than we can plan them ourselves.'  The speech is here.  And here is his speech on 6 June 1984, and here is Reagan at the Brandenburg Gate in 1987.