I am currently reading Speaking My Mind by Ronald Reagan. It is a collection of his speeches from throughout his career, including Hollywood. I have just read a passage that I must share with you, from a speech he made in 1967 in support of presidential candidate Barry Goldwater.

You will see how in nearly 40 years, not a damn thing has changed on the left or the right.

There is no argument over the choice between peace and war, but there is only one guaranteed way you can have peace...and you can have it in the next second... surrender!

Admittedly there is a risk in any course we follow other than this, but every lesson in history tells us that the greater risk lies in appeasement, and this is the specter our well-meaning liberal friends refuse to face...that their policy of accommodation is appeasement, and it gives no choice between peace or war, only between fight or surrender. If we continue to accommodate, continue to back and retreat, eventually we have to face the final demand - the ultimatum. And what then? When Nikita Khrushchev has told his people he knows what our answer will be? He has told them that we are retreating under the pressure of the cold war, and someday when the time comes to deliver the ultimatum, our surrender will be voluntary because by that time we will have been weakend from within spiritually, morally, and economically. He believes this because from our side he has heard voices pleading for "peace at any price" or "better Red than dead," or as one commentator put it, he "would rather live on his knees than die on his feet." And therein lies the road to war, because those voices don't speak for the rest of us. You and I know and do not believe that life is so dear and peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery. If nothing in life is worth dying for, when did this begin - just in the face of this enemy? - or should Moses have told the children of Israel to live in slavery under the pharaohs? Should Christ have refused the cross? Should the patriots at Concord Bridge have thrown down their guns and refused to fire the shot heard round the world? The martyrs of history were not fools, and our honored dead who gave their lives to stop the advance of the Nazis didn't die in vain! Where, then, is the road to peace?

Reagan was even cool in the 60's, and the 60's aren't that much different from today. The 60's were a time of peace-loving, flag-burning, whining socialists, just like today. But better times are coming - we just have to wait. The more things change, the more they stay the same. Everything happens in cycles, and the pendulum will swing back for us, knocking down the Democrats, the Michael Moore's, the politically correct welfare statists. Having Bush reelcted to a second term was a sign that things will improve. We just need to wait out the scary stuff, and hope that Giuliani is on the ballot for 2008.