AL-HUDA
Foundation, NJ U. S. A
the Message Continues ... 4/82
Newsletter for June 2008
Article 1 - Article 2 - Article 3 - Article 4 - Article 5 - Article 6 - Article 7 - Article 8 - Article 9 - Article 10 - Article 11 - Article 12
THE DREAM
Of A GOOD MAN
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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