I had always meant to thank you for putting “Witness” on your sidebar as a recommended book. It was one I had been meaning to read and your recommendation ended up being the push that got me to download it on my Kindle.

The book stunned me in its beauty, clarity and clear vision of a man at odds with the spirit of the times but with the courage to face down the most powerful forces of the day to stand up for truth. It was a religious tract for the times and showed how the pursuit of righteousness will be beset with trials. How sad though that it was our culture that pursued him and what does that say about us.

It has not become any better over the last 50 years.

Granted he’s making the rounds to promote his book, but when he so freely cites Friedman, Sowell, and Steele, you know he’s done his homework. He’s a genuine convert.

It’s almost like he enjoys sharing his new found knowledge, kinda like he’s proselytizing to the unconverted.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/29/magazine/david-mamet-talks-about-his-shift-to-the-right.html?_r=1&partner=rss&emc=rss

Unlike many so-called Hollywood conservatives, Mamet is serious and unequivocal. The interviewer seemed to be trying to trip him up and flummox him, and he didn’t take the bait. Good for him.

Ramone was true-blue red, and I always remembered a speech he gave before he died, I think before the rock and roll hall of fame, where he closed by saying,

“God bless George W. Bush.”

Now that’s hardcore.

Reagan began to turn conservative while he was working as president of the Screen Actors Guild. It was a time when Communists were hard at work to gain control of the unions. He recognized that they were not looking to solve the problems of the workers, but to gain power and control. When the democrats seemed soft on Communism, which they were and still are, he began to look for other answers. He always said that he never left the democrat party, it left him. That may have assuaged his feelings about his change, but it seems to me he intellectually could not accept being soft on Communism or growing government to control society.

I have just read the book “RONALD REAGAN, THE NOTES.” Not much in there about his conversion, but the book consists of notes that he had on index cards, which he used when he made his speeches.

Here’s one note that I think describes his feelings about American Communists:
“A nation can survive it’s fools and even the ambitious but it cannot survive treason from within. For the traitor appears no traitor; he speaks in an accent familiar to his victims and wears their face and their garments….he rots the soul of the nation. He works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of the city; he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to be feared.” Cicero

Or this concerning his philosophy of government:
“Doing for people what they can and ought to do for themselves is a dangerous experiment. In the last analysis the welfare of the workers depends on their own initiative. Whatever is done under the guise of philanthropy for social morality which in anyway lessens initiative is the greatest crime that can be committed against the toilers. Let social busy bodies and professional morals experts in their pads reflect upon the perils they rashly invite under the pretense of social welfare.” Samuel Gompers

Or this by Gompers:
“The comapny that doesn’t make a profit is the enemy of the working man.”

The book is filled with the wit and wisdom he distillled and used in his speeches as a representative of GE and then as a politician.