Letter from Ronald Reagan to his son
lettersofnote.com
lettersofnote.com
The book on the Adams-Jefferson letters has been on my reading list for a year now. Can't wait to get time to read it. http://amzn.to/MudjlA I believe there is a similar book for Reagan, but I haven't researched it. Enough stuff on the list already.
On your latter worry, it seems like there's some of that with earlier eras' figures as well. For example, some people's opinion of Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre has shifted for the worse since their correspondence was published, since much of it is more like a sordid chatroom log, full of offhanded gossip about other people and such, than like the philosophical works they intended for public consumption.
a) You can be intentional about all your public writing - and I think that we have learned by now that email always has the potential to become public.
b) You can set up a delay-sending rule in your email client so that you have a grace period between pressing send and the message actually being sent - this has saved me embarrassment on any number of occasions.
Indeed we all have a common blithe ability to write a rotten sentence. But if you look at, say, jwz's broad swatches of data, or some other such figure, you can see that the bad emails are par for the course. I'd be worried if the figures of the 21st Century couldn't write an e-mail, at any position of the scale of troll to hero.
Of the modern Presidents, he probably wrote the most words and he did learn his style from radio and Hollywood. Not bad teachers in his day.
I do wonder in a hundred years what the historians will think of the writings of the first President to grow up with social media or maybe even USENET.
The true challenges of marriage come when the other person doesn't support your ambitions in life, or you don't support theirs. When you feel that they are constantly critical of you, or you of them. When they gain 100 pounds, or when you do. When for no particularly good reason you become engulfed with jealousy. Or they do. When infatuation gives way to whatever deeper feelings lie beneath. Or maybe you discover that the deeper feelings aren't there and you need to cultivate them if the marriage is to survive.
The challenges and joys of marriage are so much deeper than this letter conveys. This letter is like the "Just say no" to drugs campaign. Everything is boiled down to meaningless simplicity.
You get what you put in.
The context implies that there is another side the coin, and that this isn't a scientific destruction of the institution of marriage. It, and I think this is implied, assumes that the other person is also putting in what they hope to get out, and that you're marrying the right person.
If I got such a letter from my father, I'd think, Pappa don't preach, throw the letter into the trash, and mark it down to yet another way in which my father didn't bother to get to know me or understand me at all.
You're entitled to your on interpretation of course, but I think its disingenuous to look at a letter with this context and say his great concern, which he took time to write a letter about during the age of telecommunication, reminding his son that cheating isn't part of marriage.
Oy.
The letter is powerful because of how it said what it wanted to say. The examples and imagery are vivid; the message consistent.
What you wrote: "The real reason that most people cheat is because they don't feel loved" is right there, wonderfully articulated, in this letter.
The hard part of being married, and the hard won wisdom contained in this letter, is the realization that most of the time people fail us because we've failed them first. It's a recursive nightmare and the only escape is to forgive and continue to commit.
Easy to boil down to a tl:dr of "don't cheat" and dismiss. Knowing is not the same as doing (day after day), though.
My point is that it's not a message worth saying, just like the message, "Just say no" is not worth saying. It's a pointlessly simple message that is not likely to affect its target audience or change any outcome. This message is, in fact, insulting to its intended audience, Reagan's son.
Maybe, just maybe, the part about the wife always knowing when something is going on, would have an effect down the road, but the bulk of the message is, "Men are dirty dogs. You're a man and consequently, you're a dirty dog. All men want to do is dip their wicks, and therefore you will want to dip your wick. When you do, you will ruin your marriage, even if you think you won't, and then you will blame your broken marriage on your loving wife, just like all dirty dogs do. If you want to be happy, refrain from being the dirty dog that you know you are."
The fact of the matter, however, is that most men are not dirty dogs. The reasons that they cheat (which are the same as the reasons that most women cheat) are largely not due to just a desire to dip their wicks. The reason are much more complex, and by the time they do cheat, their cheating is a symptom of something deeper that is wrong with the marriage, and not the root cause of the marriage going bad, as is portrayed in Reagan's letter.
You'd have to do that, eventually. The wife is just acting as the canary in the coal mine.
Or is this like listening to the Kardashian's opinion on... child rearing or something?
I do think these letters are of historical interest though, glad to see them available.
"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat."
While that's still an order of magnitude above "lightning strike" it's below, say, Hepatitis C or many hundreds of other diseases that get less press.
The cultural losses were especially incalculable. So many artists at the height of their powers. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3hGpjsgquqw
Also, I think you're a little breezy about the threat AIDS poses. It's still killing 2m people a year, down from 3m at its peak.
> Waving your arms and pushing your own absolutes on other people however can be quite so.
Which seemed to be directly in response to the OPs assertion:
> Ronald Reagan was a wise man and great president.
You can see how I would think you were referencing this in your comment as you specified that you were stating an opinion and the OP asserted this comment as fact, yet I stated:
> As far as I'm concerned he is an embarrassment
Which is obviously presented as opinion and not hard fact. I did however back up my opinion with points in a follow up comment.
edit: the downvotes don't make me any less correct in my response, if you disagree please explain.
There are plenty of other places on the internet to make controversial personality politics statements.
I use this a lot in my daily happenings.
That letter was sent in 1971, well into his marriage with Nancy Davis, which would last for another 33 years, until his death.
Interpret this however you want :)
Here is something I pulled out of Wikipedia regarding his relationship with Nancy Reagan. Might give some perspective on his letter to his son.
"During his presidency they were reported to frequently display their affection for one another; one press secretary said, "They never took each other for granted. They never stopped courting." He often called her "Mommy" she called him "Ronnie". He once wrote to her, "Whatever I treasure and enjoy ... all would be without meaning if I didn't have you." When he was in the hospital in 1981, she slept with one of his shirts to be comforted by his scent. In a letter to U.S. citizens written in 1994, Reagan wrote "I have recently been told that I am one of the millions of Americans who will be afflicted with Alzheimer's disease.... I only wish there was some way I could spare Nancy from this painful experience," and in 1998, while Reagan was stricken by Alzheimer's, Nancy told Vanity Fair, "Our relationship is very special. We were very much in love and still are. When I say my life began with Ronnie, well, it's true. It did. I can't imagine life without him."
Mike, you know better than many what an unhappy home is and what it can do to others.
Seems to me he's saying "I've made mistakes and learned from them".