Foundation of USA

THE DREAM Of A GOOD MAN
by Dr. Robert D. Crane

For those who missed the Reagan Revolution, which his own party refused to implement, check out the Gipper's quotes below made over a period of decades. This is not hagiograpy but historical fact. The agenda is still there in the platform of the American Revolutionary Party, which is designed to provide focus for whichever major party has the vision to adopt it as the key to real and lasting change in America and the world.

The sixth quote below gives a specific policy recommendation on expanding capital ownership throughout the world under the popular rubrics, "Close the Wealth Gap!" and "Own or Be Owned!," but this is part of a broader strategic framework. In this speech of February 22, 1983, which was President Reagan's first major foreign policy pronouncement, he set the real parameters of our Task Force on Economic Justice four years later and for the American Revolutionary Party of the twenty-first century in the following words, quoted more fully in the 83-page position paper, "The Grand Strategy of Justice," R. D. Crane, IISS, April 2000:

"Our responsibility is to work for constructive change, not simply to preserve the status quo. ... History is not a darkening path twisting inevitably toward tyranny. ... It is the growing determination of men and women of all races and conditions to gain control of their own destinies. ... The central focus of politics [is] the minds, hearts, sympathies, fears, hopes, and aspirations not of governments, but of people - the global electorate. ... The American dream lives - not only in the hearts and minds of our own countrymen, but in the hearts and minds of millions of the world's people in both free and oppressed societies who look to us for leadership. As long as that dream lives, as long as we continue to defend it, America has a future - and all mankind has reason to hope."

For Ronald Reagan, this was never mere verbiage and the American people could sense this. In September, 1981, when President Reagan asked me to be his ambassador to the United Arab Emirates, which was my pick of all the possible posts, I took the opportunity to suggest that global political strategy can succeed in defending America's enlightened interests only if it is based on spiritual understanding and a dialogue of peaceful engagement among the spiritual leaders of the world religions. He was silent for an interminably long time. Then he spoke: "You know, I have thought that for a long time, but you are the first person I have ever heard say it."

Later, when he asked me to follow up with a series of trialogue conferences in St. Catherine's Monastery at the foot of Mount Sinai, I added my recommendation that real guidance will never come from the formal religious leaders, who are burdened with political and bureaucratic obligations. The future of the world will depend on the inspired commitment of the Jewish, Christian, and Muslim spiritual leaders to build an Abraham Federation as the only means to bring peace in the Holy Land. This initiative was cut short by Sharon's invasion of Lebanon and the ensuing massacre of Palestinian refugees at Sabra and Shatila The missing spiritual dimension of globalization was never revived again, but it is now needed more than ever.

Few people know that after the assassination attempt on his life a few months after we had this interchange, President Reagan had a profound spiritual experience, and he told his closest associates, perhaps much to the dismay of some, that his only purpose for the rest of his life was to be an instrument of God to bring goodness and peace to the world.

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