President Reagan posing with Bette Davis at the Kennedy Center Honors for Lifetime Achievement at the John F. Kennedy Center for Performing Arts. 12/6/1987
I remember in 1981 when I heard the song “Bette Davis Eyes” sung by Kim Carnes,and I personally did not like the song, but it got played over and over. In fact, it spent 9 weeks as a #1 song on U.S.Billboard Hot 100, and was Billboard’s number one single of 1981. The song won the Grammy Awards for Song of the Year and Record of the Year. The song was also a number one hit is 31 countries. Bette Davis admitted to being a fan of the song and approached Carnes and the songwriters to thank them for making her “a part of modern times.”
That just proves that the music I do not like will probably go on to be the music that everyone else in the world loves. I have never figured out what is so special about Bette Davis eyes. You can look at the picture above and figure it out yourself.
Music video by Kim Carnes performing Bette Davis Eyes.
In a prophetic speech concerning the Soviet Union, Ronald Reagan predicted that “the march of freedom and democracy will leave Marxism-Leninism on the ash-heap of history.” I am posting in the coming days excerpts from one of Reagan best speeches ever. He addressed the members of the British Parliament on June 8, 1982.
Free Elections are loved by the people
The hard evidence of totalitarian rule has caused in mankind an uprising of the intellect and will. Whether it is the growth of the new schools of economics in America or England or the appearance of the so-called new philosophers in France, there is one unifying thread running through the intellectual work of these groups — rejection of the arbitrary power of the state, the refusal to subordinate the rights of the individual to the superstate, the realization that collectivism stifles all the best human impulses.
Since the exodus from Egypt, historians have written of those who sacrificed and struggled for freedom — the stand at Thermopylae, the revolt of Spartacus, the storming of the Bastille, the Warsaw uprising in World War II. More recently we’ve seen evidence of this same human impulse in one of the developing nations in Central America. For months and months the world news media covered the fighting in El Salvador. Day after day we were treated to stories and film slanted toward the brave freedom-fighters battling oppressive government forces in behalf of the silent, suffering people of that tortured country.
And then one day those silent, suffering people were offered a chance to vote, to choose the kind of government they wanted. Suddenly the freedom-fighters in the hills were exposed for what they really are — Cuban-backed guerrillas who want power for themselves, and their backers, not democracy for the people. They threatened death to any who voted, and destroyed hundreds of buses and trucks to keep the people from getting to the polling places. But on election day, the people of El Salvador, an unprecedented 1.4 million of them, braved ambush and gunfire, and trudged for miles to vote for freedom.
They stood for hours in the hot sun waiting for their turn to vote. Members of our Congress who went there as observers told me of a women who was wounded by rifle fire on the way to the polls, who refused to leave the line to have her wound treated until after she had voted. A grandmother, who had been told by the guerrillas she would be killed when she returned from the polls, and she told the guerrillas, “You can kill me, you can kill my family, kill my neighbors, but you can’t kill us all.” The real freedom-fighters of El Salvador turned out to be the people of that country — the young, the old, the in-between.
Strange, but in my own country there’s been little if any news coverage of that war since the election. Now, perhaps they’ll say it’s — well, because there are newer struggles now.
On distant islands in the South Atlantic young men are fighting for Britain. And, yes, voices have been raised protesting their sacrifice for lumps of rock and earth so far away. But those young men aren’t fighting for mere real estate. They fight for a cause — for the belief that armed aggression must not be allowed to succeed, and the people must participate in the decisions of government — [applause] — the decisions of government under the rule of law. If there had been firmer support for that principle some 45 years ago, perhaps our generation wouldn’t have suffered the bloodletting of World War II.
In the Middle East now the guns sound once more, this time in Lebanon, a country that for too long has had to endure the tragedy of civil war, terrorism, and foreign intervention and occupation. The fighting in Lebanon on the part of all parties must stop, and Israel should bring its forces home. But this is not enough. We must all work to stamp out the scourge of terrorism that in the Middle East makes war an ever-present threat.
But beyond the troublespots lies a deeper, more positive pattern. Around the world today, the democratic revolution is gathering new strength. In India a critical test has been passed with the peaceful change of governing political parties. In Africa, Nigeria is moving into remarkable and unmistakable ways to build and strengthen its democratic institutions. In the Caribbean and Central America, 16 of 24 countries have freely elected governments. And in the United Nations, 8 of the 10 developing nations which have joined that body in the past 5 years are democracies.
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Little known presidential facts:
- President Dwight David Eisenhower (1890-1969) was the only president to serve in both WWI and WWII.h
- Richard Milhous Nixon (1913-1994) was the first president to visit all 50 states and the first to visit China. He is the only president to resign.j
The Daily Hatch 