Remembering Two Great Americans

Six years ago today the greatest president of the 20th century, Ronald Reagan, was laid to rest at his presidential library in Simi Valley, California. Lest we forget, Reaganomics turned the Carter recession of 1980 around and gave us six years of the greatest expansion of the US economy in history. It was Reagan's hard hand, moral high ground and military build up that forced Gorbachev to start Perestroika and Glasnost in the USSR. Let us also not forget that those programs were not designed to dismantle the Soviet Union as Time magazine so piously announced when they named Gorbachev man of the decade in 1990. Those programs were designed to try and rescue the Soviet Union from its impending economic collapse, and they did not work.

The Soviet Union came apart in 1991 and ceased to exist on Christmas Day of that year. What a fitting day that was, and a fitting gift from God to all the world that the atheist USSR disappeared from history. But it happened as Reagan predicted it would. Reagan always had a positive vision for the future of America, and if we can get the conservative movement in America and the Republican Party back to Reagan's policies, maybe "there will always be a brighter day ahead." I miss Ronald Reagan and all that he stood for in America.

The other one I miss passed off the scene thirty-one years ago today. Known as "Duke," he became the number one conservative in Hollywood at a time when communists were trying to take over the industry. He stood for the American value of liberty and was very loudly outspoken about his beliefs. He became an institution, a living legend, and a symbol of all that was great about America. Mostly through western films, John Wayne became America's quintessential hero.

Duke Wayne has received a lot of criticism, particularly by leftists, because he never served in the armed forces, and while other movie stars had enlisted he was still making movies and money in Hollywood. There is a very interesting story behind all that and I recommend a book to you called, "John Wayne; the Man Behind the Myth," by Michael Munn.

Munn is a British author who has no agenda in American politics, but had several personal interviews with John Wayne and many other Hollywood figures who knew him well. The truth of John Wayne's military service is this. He applied for the Naval Academy out of high school but didn't get an appointment. He then went to USC on a football scholarship but a shoulder injury ended his football career and disqualified him from the draft. He was also deferred from the draft because he was 34 years old and had four children. Still, the criticism goes, other movie stars enlisted and served even though they had large families. The fact of that is, most of them wound up serving in rear echelon service areas and not on the front lines. Only Jimmy Stewart and Clark Gable of already established movie stars at the time actually went into combat. John Wayne did try to enlist, but he was an up and coming star at Republic studios and he had a long term contract from which the studio would not allow him to get out.

Everything seemed to be against him trying to serve so he became the number one cheer leader for the American effort in the war through his movies. He went on a USO tour in 1943 to the South Pacific. I have a book called, The Bushmasters, about a special forces unit that went behind Japanese lines. They were surprised one day to see the Duke visiting them. The author claims John Wayne begged their commander to let him go with them on a mission, but he was denied.

John Wayne became such a huge rallying figure for America, that both Joseph Stalin in 1950, and later Mao Tse-Tung put contracts out on his life. In a very interesting real life story, John Wayne helped FBI agents capture his intended assassins from the USSR. On another occasion, Yakima Canutt, the greatest of all movie stunt men, put his stable of stunt men on the prowl looking for more agents and caught two of them at Durango, Mexico, where John Wayne was making a movie. It was Nikita Krushchev who finally called off the contract after he met John Wayne and the Duke told him what he thought of communism.

The stories are verified by interviews with Yakima Canutt, Peter Cushing, and other notable movie stars including Orson Welles, who was as far left a liberal as anybody and no friend of John Wayne. But there were many in Hollywood who knew the stories. John Wayne kept it all a secret so that his family wouldn't be worried!

Don't let anybody fool you. John Wayne deserves to have his face on Mt. Rushmore along with Ronald Reagan. I hope they are both resting in peace.