BELIEVE IT, AMERICA: WE'VE FINALLY LEFT THE '60S BEHIND

I had the opportunity to attend a conference two weeks ago in Washington, D.C. at which one of the speakers was former Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick. This remarkable woman, who has served America with such courage and distinction, observed that of all Ronald Reagan's accomplishments, perhaps his greatest was the restoration of confidence and pride to the American people. Although the Reagan presidency was divisive, all but his blindest and most implacable opponents would have to concede this surpassing accomplishment. Consider the succinct description of the pre-Reagan world by one of the world's most brilliant living historians:

"Yet at the very moment when capitalism ... was steadily fulfilling all the promises of even its most ambitious partisans, and was displaying the most protean capacity to adapt itself to situations and regimes all over the globe, the entire system, suddenly, for no apparent reason, staggered and lost confidence in itself." British historian and author Paul Johnson, in his monumental book, "Enemies of Society".

Paul Johnson is an enormously influential historian, a student both of antiquity and of our own times. In the above passage, he refers to the disastrous years for the West that began in the '60s and continued through the entire decade of the '70s.

From the assassination of JFK in '63 through that of his brother and Dr. King in '68, and on to Watergate. LBJ and Richard Nixon both failed presidencies, both broken men. Next, we ridiculed Jerry Ford and Jimmy Carter, and cast them both aside. More failed presidents.

From our deepening involvement in a no-win land war in Southeast Asia through the urban riots and the rampant, unchecked crime that made prisoners of decent citizens and gave urban streets back to the savages. From the nihilism of campus upheavals to the rise of the New Left, with its celebration of drug use and "free love" and their corrosive effects on our culture, made worse by an expanding welfare state and the collapse, in many sectors of society, of the nuclear family.

From the overnight quadrupling of oil prices by the OPEC cartel, a staggering blow to the world economy, to the nadir of American prestige under Jimmmy Carter, when Marine guards were ordered to submit to the storming of our embassy in Teheran understood worldwide as an act of war without firing a shot. And on, in the late '70s, to the simultaneous occurrence of two disastrous economic phenomena for which conventional economists had no explanation none at all high unemployment together with persistent high inflation, a deadly condition for which a new word entered the language: "stagflation."

It was from much of these staggering blows that Ronald Reagan brought us back. And George Bush continues that work today, building on the Reagan legacy with his brilliant display of moral courage and strategic, tactical and diplomatic skill in the war in the Persian Gulf. Too many of the catastrophic trends described above have not been righted yet. But America, indeed, is back. Back from more than a decade and a half of self-doubt and self-loathing.

If anyone who lived through the dismal litany described above doubted that the self-loathing America of the '60s and '70s was behind us, he had only to march in the Support-the-Troops in Desert Storm Parade and Rally held in Cape Girardeau yesterday. What a splendid, inspiring and unforgettable show it was. My compliments to speaker and paratrooper Lt. Col. Ian Sutherland; to all the veterans groups and their auxiliaries; to the students and the Muny band members, and to all who worked so hard to bring it about.

God bless our troops, and their families. And now that President Bush has permitted General Schwarzkopf a free hand in pursuing the ground war that has begun raging as I write these words, the words of Tammy Wynette echo in the memory:

"Stand by your man ..."