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And you think Britain’s got talent? Two young American conservatives rap conservative values. It has to be seen to be believed…and it’s actually rather good…
Can the British movement produce a response? Come on ToryBear…
“Yo, this one’s for all the young conservatives…”
(Lest we forget MC Karl Rove’s foray into rap…)
London is to have its memorial to freedom after Westminster council granted full planning permission for a statue of Ronald Reagan outside the US Embassy in Grosvenor Square. The monument will, appropriately, feature a section of the Berlin Wall.
At a meeting of the council the planning request met with unanimous approval, and the council waived its ’minimum 10 years after death rule’ to grant permission.
Steve Summers, chairman of Westminster City Council’s planning applications sub committee, said: “Regardless of politics, nobody can dispute that President Reagan was a true ally of this country.
“During his presidency the term ’special relationship’ reflected not just the close working partnership of our respective governments, but helped reinforce Britain’s unquestionable cultural and historic ties with the United States.
“Subsequent presidencies have continued that unique bond between our countries so it is only right and proper we exempt President Reagan, as a former head of state, from the usual rules on statues.“
The memorial to Reagan will also feature a section of the Berlin wall, reflecting his decisive leadership which brought the Cold War to a bloodless end and dismantled Communism in Europe.
Mr Summers added: “Those who witnessed the fall of the Berlin wall in 1989 described the feeling in the air that night as electric, as if some great force had been let loose and it is fitting we should pay tribute to Reagan’s contribution to bringing down this barrier between east and west, and subsequently changing the world.
“The site which houses the US embassy is a fitting place to acknowledge this great man.“
We understand that the Council’s decision is a victory for the Conservative Way Forward group who have been pushing for the erection of the memorial for several years. The application was formally made on behalf of ’The President Reagan Memorial Fund“, by Mrs Jennie Elias, a CWF Executive member.
American Chas Fagan, who also crafted a statue of Reagan for the US Capitol, will sculpt the 10ft high bronze statue, which will stand on a circular 6ft Portland stone plinth; perhaps a fitting synthesis of British and American.
Architects drawings and mock-ups of the statue can be viewed at Westminster Council’s website.
TYC’s Verdict: We look forward to the unveiling ceremony, and to London having a rallying point for freedom-lovers.
Following on from our previous post on the privilege of visiting President Reagan’s home in California, the Young America’s Foundation, which owns and preserves his ranch, highlights this video clip:
You wouldn’t catch the likes of Al Gore living anywhere as modest as this…
Westminster Council is set to vote next week on whether to allow a 9ft bronze statue of Ronald Reagan to be erected, tonight’s London Lite is reporting. One hurdle is that in granting permission the council would have to ignore its own rule on not permitting memorials to public figures until 10 years after their death, which derailed a previous attempt in 2008. Reagan died in 2004.
If successful, the statue would be placed outside the US Embassy in Grosvenor Square, and would move in five year time with the Embassy, which is to relocate to Battersea.
Poland has already erected a statue in thanks to Reagan, and another is due to be unveiled at the US Capitol this summer.
TYC’s View: A permenant monument to the Gipper in London is long overdue. Reagan’s supreme leadership, in partnership with Thatcher, secured liberty and freedom for countless millions, including Britons. It might also make the US Embassy a focus for conservative activists, not just liberal protestors with efigies and flags to burn. Who do we lobby in support of erecting this statue?
For those activists lucky enough to be heading to America this summer with the Young Britons’ Foundation, here’s a taster. Last summer TYC was lucky enough to be in California with YBF to mark the 25th Anniversary of Reagan’s epic tax cuts (would that Gordon wasn’t historically illiterate as well as economically). Here’s a flavour of Reagan’s idyllic ranch in the Californian hills, via the Young America’s Foundation.
by Byron York
Originally appeared in the Washington Examiner
Santa Barbara, California — You drive up a steep, rough and winding road to reach Ronald Reagan’s ranch in the Santa Ynez mountains. For eight years, from 1981 to 1989, this place north of Santa Barbara was the Western White House; Reagan spent nearly a year of his time in office here. Now, what he called Rancho del Cielo is pretty much deserted.
But the ranch, tended by a lone caretaker, is still much like it was when Reagan was alive. It’s not open to the public; these days, the old adobe house and 688 surrounding acres are owned and carefully maintained by the conservative Young America’s Foundation. The group doesn’t have the staff or resources to conduct public tours, but they were kind enough to take me on a visit one afternoon last week.
The first thing that strikes you as you approach the house is how modest it is. The main part of the building was constructed in 1871. Even after Reagan added a couple of rooms when he bought it in 1975, the whole house only measured about 1,500 square feet.
The floors are covered in a brick-pattern linoleum. (”He laid it himself,” my guide tells me.) The furniture is plain and comfortable; there are a couple of chairs upholstered in an orange-and-brown patchwork pattern that could have come out of any middle-class American den of the 1970s. There is western art on the walls.
The bedroom is small and plain, with what looks like an old Ethan Allen chest and two bedside tables that had to be turned sideways because the room wasn’t wide enough to fit them. Reagan’s nearby bathroom has a modular shower and a toilet squeezed in a tiny nook.
Any budget hotel down the road has more comfortable accommodations. Reagan, who with his wife was pilloried for having a plutocrat’s taste, in fact enjoyed a level of simplicity beyond what most vacationing Americans would accept.
The house is nestled on the edge of a mountainside meadow. It’s idyllic, but if you drive about five minutes away, you’ll find another spot on the property, at the top of a hill, where the president could have built a new home, perhaps an impressive monument to himself, with fabulous views of the Pacific to the west and the valley to the east. Instead, Reagan preferred the little house by the meadow.
Walking around the ranch, you can’t help thinking about the current Republican party and its relationship to Reagan. One feeling the ranch produces — nearly forces on you — is the realization that the 1980s were a long time ago. When Reagan took office, the top income tax rate was 70 percent. The Cold War was in one of its most dangerous phases.
By the end of his administration, Reagan had reduced that confiscatory 70 percent tax rate to 28 percent. And he won the Cold War. Most presidents don’t leave much for us to remember them by. Reagan has two great legacies.
But what does it mean for us today? Certainly low taxes and a strong national defense remain bedrock principles for conservative Republicans. And when Democrats argue, as Sen. Charles Schumer did recently, that the Reaganite “traditional values kind of arguments and strong foreign policy, all that is over” — well, someday he might discover otherwise.
But what specific policy proposal would Reagan embrace today to deal with skyrocketing health-care costs? The credit crunch? Immigration? No one can really say.
Perhaps it would be more instructive to look at the man himself. Over a lifetime of thought and study — he was 69 when he became president — Reagan developed a set of core principles that guided whatever he did. To those core principles — liberty, free enterprise, American exceptionalism — he added his own personal qualities. He was a serious reader, a self-improver, decidedly non-cynical, temperamentally non-Washington, and deeply patriotic. A gift for communicating made those qualities instantly recognizable to the American public.
As you walk around the old ranch, and see the private spaces where he spent so much time, you realize perhaps more than ever before that it was Reagan’s character that made his triumphs possible. For Republicans, coherent positions on today’s policy debates will emerge in time. The tougher question is where they will find a man like Ronald Reagan again.
A student friend was reminiscing recently about watching Alvin and the Chipmunks as a child, and when I thought back, I realised the only episode of that show I could recall was the one where they tear down the Berlin Wall:
And there was me thinking it was Reagan…Still, it may go some way to explaining how I ended of the political persuasion I did. We need more pro-freedom cartoons; somehow I doubt the Telebubbies ever inspired anyone to do anything, except perhaps less hard drugs…
(Is that a very young ToryBear at 0.20?)
98 years ago today Ronald Reagan, easily arguably the greatest president of the United States of the 20th Century, was born. As the video below shows, his wisdom – the transcendent values of conservatism – are as needed today as they have ever been. Perhaps now, more than ever.
Twenty-eight years ago, against a background of a worsening economic climate and a totalitarian threat abroad, the first Reagan-Bush administration took office. They slashed taxes, rebuilt the economy and defeated the enemies of liberty. Let’s hope for a repeat of history.
On November 9th, 1989 the lid was nailed down on Communism. Not so long before Ronald Reagan had called upon the Communists to tear down the Berlin Wall; in the days to come the people of Germany would rise up and do just that. The rusted Iron Curtain was rolled back and the pestilent ideology of Communism extinguished from Europe.
The Young America’s Foundation take November 9th as the starting point for Freedom Week. In their own words,
“One goal of Freedom Week is celebrate this victory over communism by educating students on this historical event. Another important aspect is to remind young people about the horrors committed by socialist/communist governments and question why many leftist students and professors at your school still advocate these ideas.”
YAF promote Freedom Week on campuses right across America; it’s a fixture in their conservative calendar. Whilst the defeat of Communism was American-led, and a global victory, it was a deeply European affair. So it seems almost perverse that Americans should celebrate a distinctively European act of freedom more than we do! Why isn’t November 9th a national holiday – Freedom Day or some such thing – forever marking our commitment to liberty and enlightenment values?
Veterans’ Day also falls within Freedom Week. In Britain we have the Festival of Remembrance, which whilst commemorated on a national scale, seems hardly to impact upon our campuses. Some young conservatives do involve themselves in honouring the sacrifices made by our forefathers to secure today’s freedoms – my own branch spent 138 hours fund raising for the Poppy Appeal.
And so it seems that whilst we have all the components for Freedom Week here in Britain – Communism was defeated on this continent by the determination of the Reagan-Thatcher leadership, and we have also mark the service of our armed forces in this period; and yet we still fail to host a British equivalent to Freedom Week.
Students4Freedom have this year pilotted their first Freedom 2008, which is certainly a step in the right direction, and we’ll be sharing some exclusive highlights of Freedom 2008 which you soon.
Next year will be the 20th anniversary of the Fall of the Berlin Wall – let’s hope the young British conservative movement spends the intervening twelve months planning a truly fitting way to commemorate it.
It still makes you shiver.
After the heady previous two weeks we were quite sadden to leave Washington, and our new-found friends. Many YBFers returned to the UK at this point, with just a hardcore dozen staying on for the final week.
After regrouping in LAX, Donal had the unenviable task of driving a hundred miles across California to Santa Barbara at one in the morning – compounded by the fact our body clocks thought it was more like four.
The itinerary was much gentler, leaving plenty of time for messing about on the beach, and falling off Segways.
We began by visiting the Reagan Presidential Library. Situated atop of a hill with great views across arid California the library houses a museum dedicated to Reagan’s political life and legacy, including his Air Force One, Marine One, and a slab of the Berlin Wall. America has more pieces of the Wall than any other country, apparently.
Back in town we caught up with the Young America’s Foundation at their headquarters. Given the tour of their incredible facilities – first class lecture halls, conference rooms, cinema, museum, library and roof terrace with sea views – we played the game of ‘guess how many million dollars this cost’. It was truly astounding to see how much money has gone into the young American conservative movement. There is nothing amateurish about it. We came aware both inspired, and deeply jealous.
Our last stop was deeply privileged. We had arrived just in time for YAF’s celebration of Reagan’s signing of the largest tax cut in American history. To mark this they held a banquet for donors at the Reagan Ranch, tucked away deep in the Californian hills. The ranch isn’t open to the public, so we were honoured to be allowed to tour it.
This is probably the closest thing there is to a conservative Lourdes. Where as the presidential library was a grand affair of glass hangers, cinemas and multi-million-dollar displays, the ranch is a humble – a simple adobe home with associated out buildings and small paddock – Reagan loved to ride -, all nestling in a hollow next to a lake, replete with weeping willows. If library was his political mausoleum, this is his spiritual one.
The Young Britons’ Foundation Summer Conference Programme 2008 was co-ordinated by Donal Blaney, to whom we are all deeply indebted. Both Tarasyn and I would implore our fellow activists to begin saving now for the 2009 Programme. If you’re serious about taking the young conservative movement in Britain forward then you cannot afford not to be involved with YBF. In future posts we’ll be covering other events in YBF’s calendar, such as their training days around the country, and the YBF5 Conference at Wellington College. Those interested in signing up for any or all of these events should enquire at http://www.ybf.org.uk, and through Facebook.
