Citizen-Times, 9/2016

It’s no big deal for people to pull a verse or two from the Bible to justify some belief. It’s common practice to take this useful part and ignore the whole.

But I wasn’t prepared to see how Republicans pick and pluck from the sacred words of Ronald Reagan. I smiled as I read President Reagan’s farewell speech of January 11, 1989.

Toward the end of the speech, he describes “the shining city on a hill” – the small piece that Republicans tweeze out as a catchphrase. Read down and be ready to smile:

“I’ve spoken of the shining city all my political life, but I don’t know if I ever quite communicated what I saw when I said it. But in my mind it was a tall, proud city built on rocks stronger than oceans, windswept, God-blessed, and teeming with people of all kinds living in harmony and peace; a city with free ports that hummed with commerce and creativity. And if there had to be city walls, the walls had doors and the doors were open to anyone with the will and the heart to get here. That’s how I saw it, and see it still.”