My Political Valentines

14 Feb, 2007 by John Hawkins

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Over at NRO, they have a symposium called My Political Valentine. Here’s the description:

True love — that’s what Valentine’s Day is all about. True political love, that is. (This is National Review Online, not Oprah Online, after all.) We asked a group of politics lovers who their one true is (or was). Here’s what they came up with.

I wasn’t invited to participate, but here are a few of them for RWN:

Winston Churchill: It seems like “cheatin” to throw a foreign pol in here, but Churchill really was the preeminent figure of the 20th century. Through his courage and leadership, he saved Europe from being pinned under the boot of the Nazis before the US could get into the war.

Patrick Henry: His legendary March 23, 1775 speech and its immortal final words, “Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!” helped define what it means to be an American.

Rush Limbaugh: Rush had an enormous impact on me in my college years and he was responsible for turning me from a moderate, skull-full-of-mush, with few hard and firm political convictions, into a conservative.

Ronald Reagan: Reagan was the best President of the last century and through his toughness, optimism, patriotism, charisma, and conservatism, he rebuilt America’s military, jump started the economy, transformed the Republican Party, and won the Cold War.

George Washington: The “Father of Our Country” and one, truly “indispensable man” who fought in the American Revolution. Washington led the country to victory and then set the standard for how a President should behave when he got into office. Had he been a man of lesser character our nation would have suffered greatly for it.