Jeff
Wednesday, November 5, 2008
The Cause Goes On
I’m done being down in the mouth. I’m done sulking. I’m done walking around downtown Philadelphia in a fog, like a grade school kid who just watched someone else kiss my girlfriend. I’m done with it.
After Ronald Reagan lost a heated primary battle in 1976 to Gerald Ford, he humbly told a group of California delegates that the cause indeed does go on. “It’s just one battle in a long war and it will go on as long as we all live,” Reagan said. He then quoted Sir Andrew Barton, who in his St. Barton’s Ode make have taken a thing or two from Leonidas:
I will lay me down and bleed a while.
Though I am wounded, I am not slain.
I shall rise and fight again.
The next day, Reagan spoke to his campaign staff. “Sure, there’s a disappointment in what happened, but the cause goes on,” he said. “Don’t get cynical. Look at yourselves and what you were willing to do, and recognize that there are millions and millions of Americans out there that want what you want, that want it to be as we do, who want it to be that Shining City on a Hill.”… Continue Reading
