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PASTOR GENERAL'S REPORT, APRIL 1, 1983
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critics naturally highly dispute this analysis since they are part-and-par
cel elements of the great secularizing movement which has turned America
away from whatever attachment to "Judeo-Christian" moral values the nation
once held to be of value. As Buchanan said: "He was talking about them."
The news media assume an "adversary" position of which they are quite
proud. But the March 4, 1983 issue of NATIONAL REVIEW elaborated on this
"adversary role":
In essence, the media assume their "adversary" posture toward
down-home values, capitalism and anti-Communism. Toward other
things they are not nearly skeptical enough.
Louis H. Gann of the Hoover Institution in Palo Alto, California puts it
even more simply:
The real enemy of all-knowing East and West Coast
liberals is "Middle America." Those living in "Middle America" he wrote,
in a copy of a speech he gave me recently when I interviewed him, are:
the ranks of American businessmen and blue-collar workers who, as
we all know•.•live "meaningless" lives, perform "meaningless"
labor, and live in "meaningless" and "regimented" conditions in a
permanent state of "false consciousness."
As expected, the moderate liberal journal-of-opinion, THE NEW REPUBLIC, in
its April 4, 1983 edition, took great exception to what its editors called
Mr. Reagan's "sermon." Their lead editorial, entitled "Reverend Reagan,"
shows the great gulf that separates the President from his critics.
According to Ronald Reagan, history is reaching a climax. He
portrayed his country as embattled, set upon QY. enemies from
without and within, fighting for nothing less than its reason for
being. The enemy without is Communism, which the President des
cribed as "the focus of evil in the modern world"; ••• The enemy
within is "modern-day secularism." With his implication that the
two are working toward a single end, which is the weakening of
America, Mr. Reagan insulted multitudes.
The West, the President warned, is in "spiritual crisis," which
is grave and more grandiose than Jimmy Carter's "malaise." .••The
slander of secularism.•.is bad enough. But there is more. The
speech, in fact, is an orgy of cheap shots. Item: those who are
in favor of the right to abortion must take responsibility for
"infanticide and mercy killing," because they are all the result
of the same "decline in respect for human life." Item: those who
oppose the "squeal rule" [that parents should be told by public
health officials that their daughters have requested contracep
tive devices] necessarily believe that "something so sacred {as
sex) can be looked upon as a purely physical thing with no poten
tial for emotional and psychological harm."
Mr. Reagan's thesis was precisely that policy decisions must have
religious reasons. [But] •••by what authority does this man claim
to administer the Judea-Christian tradition? We elect a Presi
dent, not a priest.
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