Ronald Reagan did not play by the playbook described on the front page of Sunday’s Washington Post. The liberal voice of the nation’s capital headlined this thought:

Tricky pivot for Romney to the center.

Senior reporter Karen Tumulty led off the story with this:

“The playbook for Republican presidential contenders goes at least as far back as Richard Nixon: Run hard to the right in the primaries; steer back to the center for the general election.”

In other words, be as cynical as Nixon and take our advice: Sucker the voters of your own party into backing you. Then, once you’ve gulled enough of them to gain a first-ballot nomination at the convention, tack to the left to attract the broad middle of the electorate. 

Reporter Tumulty did not list Ronald Reagan in her widely-read story because he did no such thing and, gee, he only won two back-to-back landslides, carried only 44, then 49 states, and won only a total of 1,014 Electoral Votes. Of course, reporter Tumulty’s friendly advice on tricky pivoting is given to candidates she would never back in any event.

Why didn’t Reagan pivot? Why wasn’t he tricky? I remember a staff meeting at the U.S. Department of Education early in his second term. Five different proposals were on the table for discussion. “Well, we know we can’t do numbers 3 and 5,” said Patricia Hines, one of my favorite colleagues. “Why not?” I asked innocently. “Because,” she patiently explained to this slower student in the class, “the platform on which Ronald Reagan was twice elected specifically condemned those policies. President Reagan may not be able to achieve all he endorsed in that platform, but he would never, never go against his platform.”

I soon learned the high ideals and the deep commitments of the Reagan movement from Mrs. Hines and many other Reaganauts.  We never called ourselves “Reaganites.” (Leave “iting” for the Trostkyites and the Castroites).

President Reagan had a strong sense that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed. And it was not only dishonorable to “pivot,” or to engage in tricky maneuvers to gain that consent of the governed under false pretenses. Worse, it was corrosive of free government to do so.

Take Richard Nixon. Please. He came into office a staunch anti-Communist. He had waged political battles all his life against liberals and Democrats he accused of being “soft on Communism.” Then, in office, he abandoned Taiwan and flew to Red China. He toasted Communist Party Chairman Mao Zedong, wishing the bloody dictator a long life. Mao had shortened the lives of some 60 million Chinese.

Could there be a better example of bottomless cynicism? And how did that tricky pivot work out for Mr. Nixon? Did any of the liberals who applauded his unprincipled flight to Beijing vote for him or defend him against impeachment?

Or, take George H.W. Bush. As Reagan’s vice president, he had to convince some skeptical conservatives he had truly learned his lessons, and overcome his moderate background. “Read my lips, no new taxes,” Bush told cheering conservatives at his party’s 1988 convention. Elected not by tricky pivoting or tacking to the center, but by emphasizing his differences with the ultra-liberal Michael Dukakis, the senior Bush raised taxes and split the Reagan coalition. Columnist George Will said Bush had “turned a silk purse into a sow’s ear.” That coalition of social, defense, and economic conservatives has not been reassembled to this day.

Writer Andrew Busch notes that Ronald Reagan quoted the Founding Fathers more than any of his four predecessors (Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter) combined. I would point out that Reagan also cited the Founders more than any of his four successors combined (George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama).

Quoting George Will again, “Ronald Reagan spoke to the future in the accents of the past.” He was well-grounded. He didn’t need fancy footwork or clever “positioning.” He knew who he was and what he stood for. And so did we.

Faith in God, faith in the America as “A Shining City on a Hill,” a deep and abiding love for the American people, and a determination not to give in to threats or blandishments.  These were the sources of his strength. He called for a Banner of Bold Colors, not one of “pale pastels.”

“Let us raise a standard to which the wise and honest can repair,” said George Washington at the close of the Constitutional Convention. That, too was a Banner of Bold Colors.

It’s not surprising that so many candidates today want to emulate Reagan’s success. Then they should reject tricky pivoting and tacking toward the Washington Post. Instead, let them rally to Reagan’s Banner of Bold Colors.

Family Research Council Senior Fellow Bob Morrison served in the Reagan Administration and is the author of “Reagan’s Victory: How He Built His Winning Coalition.” This book will soon be available in pdf and audio formats on this website.

Under the Wikipedia entry “What would Reagan do?” one can find the following summary:

The phrase on occasion has been used by iconoclastic conservatives to claim the mantle of Reagan as they criticize mainline conservatives, by some liberal commentators as a way of chastising Republicans whom also they believe fall short of Reagan’s ideals and also by non-partisan public policy organizations that seek to emulate aspects of Reagan’s leadership.

But one Reagan historian doesn’t find that surprising at all. Professor and author Paul Kengor notes that Reagan won the presidency in 1980 by defeating an incumbent in a landslide, winning 44 of 50 states, and then got reelected in 1984 by sweeping 49 of 50 states. Few presidents enjoyed such decisive success at the ballot box and, more broadly, in changingAmerica and the world for the better.

Tomorrow, Dr. Paul Kengor will address the question, “What did Ronald Reagan believe?” Or, even more specific: What would Reagan do if he were president right now?

Dr. Kengor will lay out the underlying thinking that formed the basis of Ronald Reagan’s political philosophy and the policies (foreign and domestic) that he pursued. Dr. Kengor will share what he calls his “Reagan Seven;” that is, seven beliefs that undergirded Reagan’s actions as president and as a public figure. These core principles get us closer to the crux of what Ronald Reagan’s conservatism was about, and what his GOP emulators today might take to heart.

To RSVP for tomorrow’s event, click here: What is a Reagan Conservative?

William Allen White

Republican William Allen White, editor of Kansas’ Emporia Gazette, was often exasperated with President Franklin Roosevelt, but he recognized his great qualities of leadership. Recently, one of the callers to a popular conservative talk show was especially angry at Newt Gingrich: “Why, he said FDR was the greatest president of the twentieth century!”

A highly acclaimed recent book, The Forgotten Man, by Amity Shlaes, argues that Roosevelt’s famous New Deal did not improve the stricken economy in the 1930s, and may even have slowed the recovery. It’s a commonplace among conservatives to argue—against the New Deal’s vast public works projects—that it was really the military buildup leading into the Second World War that got us out of the Great Depression. But that leads us inevitably to look at FDR’s wartime leadership. Columnist Pat Buchanan agrees with libertarian Ron Paul that we should never have entered the war against Hitler in 1941. Both of those gentlemen seem to have forgotten that it was Nazi Germany that declared war on the U.S.

As a conservative, I would not defend many of FDR’s New Deal policies, although we should note that his Labor Secretary, Frances Perkins, the first woman of Cabinet rank, fought tirelessly to protect women from the hazards of coal mining, tunnel construction, and lumbering. Why? Because such jobs were hazardous to mothers. FDR’s backing of union demands was always linked to “a living wage” for the working man. It was assumed he was working to support a wife and children.

Who does not admire the courage of a man who overcame polio? FDR’s story of personal triumph over adversity inspired a nation whose economy was crippled. Times are bad now, to be sure, but we don’t have to post armed guards on U.S. Mail Trucks. We are not seeing a hundred banks fail a day. And thank God we do not have 25% unemployment.

In the days before the 22^nd Amendment, Franklin D. Roosevelt was elected president four times. Reagan thought the 22^nd Amendment was a mistake. So do I.

Ronald Reagan used to enjoy telling historians and visiting Democrats that he had voted for Roosevelt every chance he got. When Sam Donaldson bellowed a question in his foghorn voice, asking Reagan if any of the economic mess he inherited was his fault, President Reagan smiled sheepishly and answered: “Yes, for a long time, I was a Democrat.” The puckish aside, the irrepressible humor covered Reagan’s savvy political strategy: He never criticized FDR.

Reagan was hostile to Big Government. FDR was Big Government. Reagan refused to forget the 100 million people trapped behind the Iron Curtain. Many conservatives blamed FDR for the abandonment of Eastern Europe to the Soviets. (It’s an odd criticism coming from folks whose home team wanted to abandon Western Europe to the Nazis.)

Reagan campaigned against wasteful government spending, red tape, and higher taxes. The New Deal was awash in all of that. And yet, Reagan never attacked the man who embodied liberalism in his era.

Why not? I suspect it was because Reagan knew that not only he, but millions of his own supporters, had backed Roosevelt with enthusiasm. If your grandparents were Evangelicals or Catholics in the 1930s and 40s, the odds were they voted for FDR.  If your family was Jewish or black, they almost certainly would have been Roosevelt loyalists.

Reagan wanted to keep the loyalty of these voters. His coalition contained major elements of the old Roosevelt coalition. Reagan even swiped some of FDR’s best lines:  “This generation has a rendezvous with destiny.” Many of those young Republicans who thrilled to those words were unaware Franklin Roosevelt had spoken them first.

If the greatest evil on the world stage in the first half of the twentieth century was Hitler and Nazism, Franklin D. Roosevelt was the leading opponent of that demonic regime. From the day that Hitler became Chancellor of Germany—on Roosevelt’s 51^st birthday in 1933—until their death twelve years later, the world was focused on a titanic struggle between freedom and tyranny. The outcome of that struggle was by no means assured.

Ronald Reagan gave his heart to FDR’s fight against Nazism. Reagan volunteered for the military at the outbreak of the war. When poor eyesight kept him out of combat, Reagan made training films for the Army and raised millions in war bond drives.

It was doubtless that uncompromising stance against Hitler tyranny that made Reagan such an outspoken foe of Communist tyranny, the focus of evil in the second half of the last century.

Both men shared more than an aversion to tyranny. They shared a strong Christian faith.

When FDR’s son Elliott boarded HMS Prince of Wales in Placentia Bay, Newfoundland in August, 1941, he informed Prime Minister Winston Churchill “my father is a very religious man.” Indeed, that Christmas, just days after the attack on Pearl Harbor brought the U.S. into the war, Churchill took up residence at the White House for three weeks.

FDR was worn out by Churchill’s late night sessions, fueled by tobacco smoke and whisky. But on Christmas morning, FDR insisted on prompt attendance at Foundry Methodist Church. “I like to sing hymns with the ‘Methodies,’” the President said, “and besides, it will do Winston good.” It did.

FDR’s D-Day Prayer was broadcast from the White House on June 6, 1944. (Atheizers, hold your ears!) His Inaugural Day activities for his unprecedented fourth swearing-in in 1945 began with services at St. John’s Episcopal Church, across the street from the White House.

Conservative hero Winston Churchill appreciated FDR’s leadership qualities. He would certainly find it strange to see us denigrating the man he called the “Champion of Freedom.” At the outset of the Second World War, Churchill said: “If we open up a quarrel between yesterday and today, we may lose tomorrow.” Good advice.

I was researching an American history book several years ago when the subject of the Titanic came up in the text. Although some 1,500 lives were lost, she was not the greatest maritime disaster in history. So, what was the greatest? In those pre-Google days, I had to go hunting.

I learned that the greatest maritime disaster was the sinking of the Wilhelm Gustloff on January 11, 1945. That German vessel was evacuating terrified refugees from East Prussia. The Soviet Red Army was overrunning this Nazi territory, raping and murdering.

A Soviet submarine torpedoed the German ship and she went down with loss of 9,000 lives, mostly civilians, mostly women and children. The original name for the ship was to have been Adolf Hitler. Hitler, however, fearing the symbolism of any vessel bearing his name being sunk, had forbidden any such naming. So the vessel was named for the Nazi leader of Switzerland.

Ask any journalist what was the greatest maritime disaster and he or she would doubtless say Titanic. That’s understandable. Most Americans think the same thing. There will probably never be a movie made about the Gustloff sinking. Nine thousand lives lost in the midst of a horrific war are not as compelling a story as rich and famous people going down to their deaths on a clear night, with the sea like glass, near the end of a century of peace.

With compelling stories of the Costa Concordia shipwreck and gripping images of the great liner split open on the rocks, it’s not surprising that the news media focuses on a villain. It surely seems the captain of that stricken vessel is a villain. I’d like to see more attention paid to the courageous divers who are searching the treacherous interior of the sunken ship. And I’d like to see an interview with the Italian Coast Guardsman who ordered that ship captain to leave the safety of his lifeboat and get back on board his sinking ship to aid his passengers.

The day after Titanic went down in 1912, President Taft ordered the U.S. Coast Guard to take part in what became the International Ice Patrol. It continued for seventy years. In 1982, this boring but dangerous task was given over to satellite surveillance. When I spied a ball cap bearing the legend International Ice Patrol on its peak, I wasn’t sure what it was. Then, it dawned on me: I had taken part in that iceberg patrol as a young enlisted man on board the Coast Guard Cutter Unimak.

Happily, dramatic stories of ships colliding with icebergs and sinking have been few since the Ice Patrol began. The Ice Patrol and later satellite surveillance have largely eliminated this seaborne terror. Eliminated as well has been most media attention.  The amazing thing is not that a single great ship struck an iceberg and went down.  The true miracle is that it hasn’t happened again.

I’m compelled to think of shipwrecks as I survey the current political stage. The news media are the last people who can give us a clear picture of reality. They are the last ones we should allow to “vet” candidates for the highest office in the land. Reporters set the parameters. They frame the questions. Like “Uncle Walter” Cronkite, they tell us “that’s the way it is.”

Well, it ain’t. For example, Cuba is just 90 miles from our shores. The Islamist terror group Hezbollah is said have training camps there. Has there been a single question about Cuba in the dozens of presidential debates this year? Has there been a single question about Cuba in the fifty years of presidential debates?

Or, consider Quemoy and Matsu. These tiny fishing islands are a few miles away from the mainland of Communist China. They were the subject of fierce debate between Jack Kennedy and Richard Nixon in 1960. Nixon alleged that Kennedy was “soft of communism” because he was unwilling to commit U.S. troops to defend Quemoy and Matsu. Nixon pounded Kennedy on the campaign trail for weeks after they debated Quemoy and Matsu on television. Kennedy won that election, very narrowly.

Nixon was elected eight years later. And four years after that, Nixon essentially abandoned not only Quemoy and Matsu, but Taiwan itself. Nixon’s famous “overture” to Red China was hailed as a master stroke of diplomacy.

Nothing on Cuba. First Quemoy and Matsu loom large, then they disappear down the memory hole. That’s how unreal, how farcical, how unpresidential these debates are.

Sean Hannity says he looks to see “blood all over the stage” in these debates. And he thinks this is a good thing. I can tell Sean that blood on the floor or on deck is very slippery, very dangerous.

If we doubt the danger of these debates, we have only to consult the unfavorable ratings of some of the leading candidates. For the media, these debates are an ocean of good ink.  When conservatives fight, the media will gladly hold their coats. But for many of us, these debates look increasingly like a shipwreck.

Congress was eager then, as now, to get out of town. Christmas was fast approaching.

But this was important business. George Washington would appear before the civil authorities that had given him his power and voluntarily lay it down before the representatives of a free people. Eight long years of war had brought them to this point.

Few Americans dreamed of such a long war when Massachusetts Minutemen stood up to their red-coated British masters and fought for their liberty. That was in 1775.

Poets would later memorialize that day in stirring lines. School children in America used to memorize Ralph Waldo Emerson’s “Concord Hymn.” 

“By the rude bridge that arch’d the flood/Their flag to April’s breeze unfurl’d/Here once the embattled farmers stood/And fired the shot heard ‘round the world. 

Washington had assumed command of the grandly named Continental Army in that year.

Chosen unanimously by the Continental Congress, this wealthy Virginia landholder was called His Excellency throughout the war. And, though he bombarded Congress with pleading, sometimes petulant letters, he never once hesitated to obey its orders or showed contempt for its endless dithering. Washington wrote of his men leaving bloody footprints in the snow, starving, and ill-clothed. He wanted Congress to meet its responsibilities to his brave men.

At Newburgh, New York, earlier in that year of 1783, His Excellency strode onto the stage in front of a hastily called grievance meeting of army officers. This was a point of maximum peril. Many a revolution had dissolved into mutiny and sedition at such a point. Grumbling against Congress had reached a high pitch. Uninvited, Washington nonetheless appeared, unarmed, before this embittered gathering. How easy it would have been for some young revolutionary to assassinate Washington on the spot and seize power at the head of an armed force. Knowing all this, Washington dramatically took his eyeglasses from his pocket to read a Congressman’s letter to them. The letter would provide answers to their demands. Most of them had never seen the general wearing glasses before. Long a student of the theater, Washington paused, dramatically, then said quietly above the hush: “You will pardon me, gentlemen, for I have grown not only gray but nearly blind in the service of my country.”

Hardened veterans of many battles wept openly. The incipient mutiny collapsed and America was spared a bloody civil war—right at the start.

Now, Washington was to appear before that very Congress. His appearance was no casual thing. He did not tell Congress he would address them. He asked to be permitted to speak. A committee that included Thomas Jefferson carefully prepared Congress’ response. Members would be seated, wearing their hats. The General would stand before “The United States in Congress Assembled.” In doing this, Mr. Jefferson thought it important to reverse the practices of the British House of Commons. Washington was no king. There would be no more kings in America.

Maryland’s Old State House was packed with congressmen, guests, young Army officers,

and ladies and gentlemen of Annapolis. Washington had not flinched when he faced British cannon at Princeton, but now his hands shook as he read his prepared text.

Happy in the confirmation of our Independence and Sovereignty…I resign with satisfaction the Appointment I accepted with diffidence. A diffidence in my abilities to accomplish so arduous a task, which however was superseded by a confidence in the rectitude of our Cause, the support of the Supreme Power of the Union, and the patronage of Heaven.

Again, he emphasized, his gratitude for “the interposition of Providence.” When you have been shot at, had bullets pierce your hat and coat, had horses shot out from underneath, you have an appreciation of God’s Providence that perhaps exceeds that of ordinary men. In the presence of such a Power, it’s not surprising that Washington’s hands shook.

Everyone on the floor of Congress, it is recorded, wept. So, too, did all the visitors, including fine ladies, in the gallery. The President of Congress, Thomas Mifflin, delivered the response, drafted for him by Jefferson.

And then the General was off. He was in a hurry to get home to Mount Vernon for Christmas. It would be his first Christmas with his family in eight years. We can think this Christmas of all our brave soldiers, sailors, airmen, Marines, and Coast Guardsmen who are standing duty defending us. They march along the General’s Highway, too.

When King George III, Washington’s enemy, heard that he planned to resign his commission to Congress, the king exclaimed: “If he does that, he will be the greatest man on earth.” He did and he was.

His latest article is titled, “The Bible in the Political Rhetoric of the American Founding,”¹ and is published as the lead article in the current edition of the American Political Science Association’s Politics and Religion Journal. Dr. Dreisbach reviews in thorough detail in what ways and how often America’s Founding Fathers used the Bible in their political discourse. Putting it simply, they used it constantly. As he writes in his article, “The Bible and biblical precepts penetrated the core beliefs of many founders and the ubiquitous manifestations of those beliefs in public and private utterances.” In another section of the paper, he observes that the Bible “was also a source of normative standards and transcendent rules to order and judge public life.”

Of course, as Dr. Dreisbach also notes, sometimes the Founders quoted Scripture simply because the broad cultural familiarity with the King James Version. “The nature of political rhetoric,” as he notes, means that sometimes they used biblical phrasing “for literary, rhetorical, or political purposes.”

Yet with that said, there can be no doubt that the teachings of the Word of God had a profound effect on the beliefs and actions of those who created our Republic. “Both influential and ordinary citizens drew on biblical language, ideas, and themes in thinking and talking about the political challenges that confronted them,” Dr. Dreisbach concludes.

Biblical illiteracy is widespread in our time. Still, an acquaintance with the Bible is essential to understanding the foundations of our country and culture. Even more, biblical principles are eternal. They were critical at the nation’s beginning, and remain so today.

To listen to Dr. Dreisbach’s FRC lecture on the Christian roots of America’s founding, click here.

1 “The Bible in the Political Rhetoric of the American Founding,” Politics and Religion Journal, December 2011.

There’s only one thing missing: Nowhere in Panetta’s paean to the vets does he mention why this date, which President Roosevelt called “a date which will live in infamy,” should be remembered. He never mentions that the attack was staged by air and naval forces of Imperial Japan.

Now, if you are a modern Secretary of Defense, you must remember always that America has had a close and cooperative alliance with democratic Japan for more than half a century. You doubtless recall as well that we have U.S. armed forces stationed in various bases in Japan today. You will also want to keep in mind the fact that Japan looks to us for military assistance in the event that North Korea attacks South Korea, or China attacks Taiwan. And we rely on Japan for vital intelligence about movements in Asia.

All of that is well and good. It would have been quite fitting to denounce only the infamy of Japan’s militarists of 1941. For more than twenty years prior to that “dastardly attack,” the forces of democracy in Japan were under assault at home. Leaders of Japan’s parliamentary government were systematically targeted for assassination by young fanatics in the military. Those militants were given encouragement and shelter by these same senior militarists.

No good purpose is served by failing to point these things out. When Saigon fell to the Communists in 1975, the hapless President Ford said “this is no day for recriminations.”

Ronald Reagan, soon to mount a powerful challenge to Ford, reportedly said: “What better day?”

So it is today. What better day to recall that on this date in 1941, air and naval forces of the Empire of Japan staged a bloody attack on a nation with whom they were at peace? Failure to point these things out today leads us to underestimate the miracle of our genuine friendship of today.

Former President George H.W. Bush spoke to the U.S. Naval Academy Midshipmen several years ago. He said the most underreported story of the second half of the Twentieth Century was the renewal of close friendship between the American and Japanese peoples. Bush told the Mids they could not imagine the hatred that existed toward all Japanese in the Second World War. As the youngest naval aviator in history, Bush described his plane being shot down by the Japanese over Chichi Jima.

As the waves pushed his inflatable boat inexorably toward that Pacific island, Bush described how he frantically paddled to get away. He knew that captured American fliers were tortured, killed and eaten there. Crying and puking, he said, he thanked God when he saw the submarine USS Finback surface to rescue him.

President Bush’s remembrance was of vital importance to those Midshipmen. Within the Brigade of Midshipmen that listened attentively to him that night were several cadets from the Japanese naval academy. Also in attendance were several exchange officers from today’s Japanese Navy.

My own family cherishes the friendships we have with foreign exchange officers at the Naval Academy, including those from Japan and Germany. Those nations were our bitterest foes in World War II. We have reached out to our foreign friends, as well as to those Midshipmen who come from newly independent navies of the former Soviet Union.

Peace and reconciliation are sweet rewards of American victories. They are the fruit of peace through strength. Nothing is served, however, by memorial messages that don’t memorialize. Amnesia is never a good policy. Mr. Secretary: There is a who in this whodunit!

I was born in Brooklyn, too, and less than ten miles from the Old Navy Yard where the great Union warship, USS Monitor, had been built. It was the Monitor that defeated the Confederate ram Merrimack in a monumental clash off Hampton Roads, Virginia, March 9, 1862. As Pop taught me, the day before that fateful encounter, the ironclad Merrimack had devastated Union warships blockading the South. The rebels had re-named their seized Union warship the CSS Virginia.

This monster sank the Congress, and the Cumberland the previous day and was bearing down on the vulnerable wooden Minnesota. The day prior to the battle of the Monitor and the Merrimack was the worst single day for the U.S. Navy in its history, prior to Pearl Harbor. If the South succeeded in breaking the Union blockade, then recognition of the independence of the Confederate States of America might rapidly follow and a breakup of the Union would be inevitable. That’s how important it was when that little “cheese box on a raft” steamed forth to meet the Merrimack.

Most writers record the results of that one-day battle as a draw, noting that the Monitor and the Merrimack both withdrew after hours of face-to-face combat. In reality, however, it was a Union triumph. The South’s super weapon had been checked. The blockade would continue, Europe would not intervene, and the Union would survive.

Strong as I was for the Union, I remembered Lincoln’s words. He would not play the Pharisee. We should, he said, struggle to be “on God’s side.”

I thought of all this a lot as I headed South to visit with my beloved family. I could hardly pass a town in Virginia on I-95—Fredericksburg, Spotsylvania Courthouse, Petersburg, Richmond—without having a flood of rich associations from my country’s and my family’s history. A great-uncle was taken prisoner by Union forces at Spotsylvania in 1864.

Then, it struck me: My grandchildren, a grandson who turns three this week, and my twin granddaughters born last week, have all been born in Dixie, in the Old Dominion. And I was visiting them “early on a frosty mornin’.” That line from the old tune, Dixie, warmed my heart.

We are told that you can’t play Dixie. Why not? When news came to Washington that Gen. Lee had surrendered at Appomattox, President Lincoln spoke to a jubilant crowd from the White House. He leaned out from a balcony window and asked the military band—a United States Army band—to play “Dixie.” He noted that he had always liked that tune. And now that the war was over, or nearly so, the Attorney General had advised the President that “Dixie” was once again the property of the American people. And those rebel flags surrendered to Gen. Grant were also federal property.

Lincoln’s son Tad delighted the crowd by excitedly waving a captured rebel flag as his father was speaking.

During my long drives South, I listened to The Personal Memoirs of U.S. Grant. This literary masterpiece was written as the former president lay dying of throat cancer in 1885. The intelligence, candor and goodwill of this great man shines through every line.

Grant was an uncompromising Union man. He offered this message to a West Point classmate, a close friend who had attended Grant’s wedding, but who in 1862 commanded the Confederate Fort Donelson: “No terms except unconditional surrender.”

Instantly, Grant became a Union hero. U.S. Grant—Unconditional Surrender Grant.

Yet, it was this Gen. Grant who met Gen. Robert E. Lee at Appomattox and sought to protect the Southern chieftain’s dignity. No word of reproach, no hint of humiliation of his defeated rival was allowed. When Union batteries began a 101-gun salute to celebrate the rebels’ surrender, Grant ordered it stopped. Cease fire. It was also Grant who, upon learning the rebels were starving, quickly ordered 25,000 rations sent to his former foes.

Too many today fail to recognize Grant’s gallantry, his almost unbelievable sense of chivalry. No other nation on earth would so treat a defeated rebel chieftain. He was following Abraham Lincoln’s guidance to “let `em up easy.”

Grant’s sense of duty and honor did not end at Appomattox. When President Andrew Johnson, the martyred Lincoln’s unworthy successor, tried to prosecute Lee for treason, Grant hurried to the White House. He would resign, he told the avenger Johnson, and so would Sherman, if this dishonorable business went any further, Grant said. The willful Johnson backed down.

Of course, we still have vengeful people today. Some journalists persist in calling Lee a traitor, and saying he is unworthy of any honors. Lee never asked for honors. But he surely gave them. One of his professors at Washington College (now Washington & Lee University) denounced Grant’s nomination for president. The Confederate veteran harangued Lee, the school’s president, about Grant’s drunkenness, Lee fixed him with a cold stare: “If you ever say anything like that about Gen. Grant again, one or the other of us will end his association with this college.”

The Civil War was a wrenching experience for our country. We can all give thanks that our nation produced such men as Abraham Lincoln, Frederick Douglass, U.S. Grant, Robert E. Lee and William Tecumseh Sherman to guide us through “that fiery trial.” And I am grateful to God for my much-loved Southern friends and family.

We certainly didn’t have photographs of Winston’s minutes after his birth–seven months after his parents’ marriage–on this day in 1874. But we know he was born not in his parent’s fashionable London flat. Instead, after his mother’s riding mishap that day, he came into the world early. He was born at Blenheim Palace, the ducal estate of his famous Marlborough ancestors. They were not nearly so famous then as they would become. Winston would write four great volumes on the great Duke of Marlborough, who had defeated the armies of Louis XIV and who was a central figure in England’s “Glorious Revolution” of 1688-89. Many American Founders looked to that revolution as their model for our own.

Winston was intensely proud of his noble English forbears. But he was just as proud of his American antecedents. His mother, Jennie Jerome, was a beauty from New York, whose tycoon father owned the New York Times. Jennie’s ancestor was said to be Pocahontas. That American princess married an Englishman and captivated the royal court of her own day with her beauty and wit.

Winston’s father, Lord Randolph Churchill, was a reforming politician, a Tory democrat, who was on track to become Prime Minister before he rashly challenged his party leader, Prime Minister Salisbury. Like Icarus who flew too close to the sun, Lord Randolph fell from the post of Lord Chancellor of the Exchequer–second highest in the House of Commons, never to rise again.

All his life, Winston would be dogged by his father’s spectacular flame-out. He was haunted by his father’s ghost, too. When, during World War I, Winston was cast out of the government, people shook their heads and said: Like father, like son. Unsteady. Winston was given the blame for the disastrous Dardanelles campaign. Tens of thousands of British, Australian, and New Zealand troops died in a vain attempt to knock the Ottoman Turks out of the war. The movie “Gallipoli” shows the horror of that ill-starred campaign. But Winston’s plan was never put into being. He was the scapegoat of others who resented his genius and his willingness to take a risk so that the long, bloody stalemate of trench warfare could be ended. Winston even then had a gift for the gripping phrase. Britain’s Tommies, he said, could be better employed in a flanking movement around the German front than to “chew barbed wire in Flanders.”

Throughout the 1930s, his “wilderness years,” Winston went unheeded. He was a voice crying in the wilderness, warning of the “Nozzie” peril. Instead, Prime Minister Chamberlain came back from Munich, promising “peace in our time.” His piece of paper, with Hitler’s signature upon it, lasted less than six months.

President Obama famously pitched the bust of Winston Churchill into the snow days after his arrival in the White House. That’s perhaps another reason I admire Winston so. Once hailed as “a sort of God,” by Newsweek’s Evan Thomas, no one today can tell you what Obama said at Normandy, just two years ago. I can tell you what Winston did there 67 years ago. He demanded to go over with the first of the landing craft. General Eisenhower–the five-star Supreme Commander–could not order Prime Minister Churchill to stay behind. But King George VI could. And he told Winston that if he insisted on exposing his life to such danger, then he, the King and Emperor, would go ashore with him. Only then did Winston relent. He got his chance, though.

Just weeks later, he made it to Hitler’s impregnable Siegfried Line. That line bristled with guns and land mines. Winston approached it with his famous Havana cigar between his teeth. He flashed his inimitable “V” for Victory sign. Then, winking at staff and reporters, he urinated on Hitler’s line.

President Obama prefers the piddling  protesters of Occupy Wall Street. Say, Mr. President, I’d be happy to trade a CD of Winston’s speeches for a copy of that iPod you gave the Queen that contained all of your speeches.

President Kennedy thought better of Winston. He made him an honorary American citizen. He praised him with memorable words. “He marshaled the English language and sent it into battle.”

Indeed, he did. He faced down the menace of Hitler and he rallied the Western democracies to stand firm against an Iron Curtain.

I must have read dozens of books about the well-documented life of Winston Churchill. Only one ever said he was a Christian. Inspector Tommy Thompson of Scotland Yard in “Assignment Churchill” was emphatic. Winston always identified with the least of his brethren. He always thirsted for righteousness. No one else offered such a testimony. But Tommy Thompson spent nineteen years as Winston’s bodyguard, ready to lay down his life for his friend at any moment.

Perhaps he knew something we did not.

Well, awkward fits. President Lincoln went up to Gettysburg by train the afternoon before the cemetery’s dedication. He tried to get some sleep that night, but revelers kept him up with their drinking and singing. The party atmosphere that prevailed in Gettysburg at that time was worse than awkward; it was ghastly. Lincoln seems not to have noted it.

Nor did he mind being asked merely to deliver “some appropriate remarks.” The President of the United States, the commander-in-chief of the greatest armies and navy this country had ever assembled, the Great Emancipator himself, was given only a secondary role in the ceremony. It reminds us of the story of Lincoln greeting an old friend from Illinois. The visitor expressed surprise that the nation’s leader should be blacking his own boots. “Whose boots should I black,” Lincoln asked humorously.

I have been to Gettysburg dozens of times. I never tire of seeing that battlefield and walking through that National Cemetery, that hallowed ground. I took scores of students there on field studies. I made a point always of having them join hands atop the monument to the 20^th Maine Regiment, the unit commanded by Col. Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain.

Chamberlain’s men were running out of ammunition on Little Round Top as the 15^th Alabama Regiment charged that critical point. If the rebels succeeded, they would be able to mount cannon on that high point and rake the entire Union left. Chamberlain ordered his men, mostly Maine fisherman and lumberjacks, to fix bayonets and counter charge their foes. The Alabamians had never tasted defeat until that moment.

The 20^th Maine monument is not like many of the others at Gettysburg. Rich, powerful Northern states like New York and Pennsylvania, erected grand memorial palaces in the post-war years to tell the world what their sons had done.

Southerners, stricken by defeat and poverty, nonetheless, dug deep into their pockets to erect the most moving tributes to the sons of the Lost Cause who died at Gettysburg. My great great Uncle Jonas Lipps survived that battle, and a dozen others, only to die in a Union prison camp at age 24.

The 20^th Maine monument is most moving in its simplicity. It is made of cheap stone. Those Mainers were just fishermen and loggers, after all. Still, it touches something deep in our hearts. It was for just such men—and their descendants–that President Lincoln carried on this great people’s struggle. He said it was not just a war for the present, but for a vast future.

I take inspiration from Lincoln’s words on that great dedicatory occasion. He finished his brief 272-word address saying this nation—under God—would have a new birth of freedom, “and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth.”

We are engaged today in a great cultural clash, more protracted and more wrenching in many ways than even that civil war. For many in our national leadership, including President Obama, the fate of millions yet unborn is merely matter of constitutionally protected choice. Their lives, their yearning to breathe free, is a matter of no special concern to this administration. In fact, under Mr. Obama’s health care law, the destruction of the millions of unborn children will proceed with government financial support.

In Lincoln’s time, the federal government was pledged to return runaway slaves to their owners. Only with Emancipation did that policy officially end. He said it most eloquently: “Nothing stamped in the divine image was sent into the world to be trod upon.” I have had the privilege this fall of seeing ultra-sound images of my grandchildren, twins stamped in that divine image. Their right to be is not above our pay grade.

I appeal to President Obama: Don’t wait until 2013; go to Gettysburg now. Mr. President, you should seriously study Abraham Lincoln’s words and his principles. Lincoln always said he would not “play the Pharisee.” He would not impute to himself all righteousness. He had vast sympathy for others’ points of view. But he knew and he said that if slavery was not wrong, nothing is wrong. We know that if abortion is not wrong, nothing is wrong.

To protect life at its most vulnerable has always been right. In doing so, we must try to win over our opponents. To achieve this, we should remember Lincoln’s modest stand. He did not claim that the Lord was on his side: “I am not at all concerned about that, for I know that the Lord is always on the side of the right. But it is my constant anxiety and prayer that I and this nation should be on the Lord’s side.”