Yet, we must not forget that – for all our moans and groans, our disappointments and our doomsaying – we’re a nation blessed by freedom to make fools of ourselves.
Our founding fathers, leading the barefoot battalions of the Katipunan (to which our own families proudly belonged) and the rebel army – fighting with bolos, bamboo spears and captured rifles – earned us the liberties we enjoy today.
Our besetting sin, the problem with us, is that we’re a people prone to self-denigration, swinging in a pendulum from bombast to self-loathing, gullible and easily betrayed, plagued by a crab mentality, and eager to believe the worst of each other. Yet, in case you haven’t noticed it, we endure.
We sing our national anthem in our National Language today (Tagalog really, one of our 87 major dialects) but there’s another – earlier – version in English.
To you I commend today a phrase from one of the English stanzas of our anthem. As kids, my generation used to sing of our country; "Land of the morning . . . with fervor burning, thee do our souls adore."
It’s good to remind ourselves that the fervor still burns, and that most Filipinos adore their motherland. It’s corny, I know, to express such sentiments today, and many who emigrated, perhaps partly out of some sense of guilt, are quick to publicly badmouth their former country and countrymen. Yet deep down, despite this state of denial, beats – even if wounded – a Filipino heart.
Let’s rejoice then in our freedom. Afterwards, let’s get back to work. May our hearts be uplifted, and our spirits soar. For we were born into a people whose optimism conquers all gloom, and even the most poverty-stricken, dispossessed, and harassed look forward to a better day.
In the darkest hour of the blitz on Britain, Winston Churchill challenged Hitler and his Nazis: "Do your worst, and we shall do our best!"
That’s what we must resolve to ourselves undertake without let-up. Let those who wish us ill, who threaten our society, do their worst – and we shall do our best.
The other day, a grateful America laid its 40th President, Ronald Reagan, to his final rest in a sunset ceremony in California. Earlier, it had paid tribute to him in Washington DC, the capital, with prayers in the Cathedral, and a parade which brought tears to many an eye, and a tug of pride to many hearts. There was the reversed boot in the stirrup of an empty saddles strapped on a beautiful stallion (cowboy Reagan had been a horseman all his life), men and women of the armed forces marching in measured tread to honor their departing commander-in-chief, hundreds of thousands filing past the closed casket, draped in Old Glory, to pay a mute but heartfelt farewell.
The British Broadcasting Corp.’s correspondent, with a keen analytical eye, remarked that almost all the mourners who queued up to view the catafalque were "white," indicating that Reagan had failed to reach out to the blacks, and other non-white minorities. That may be fair comment, but it’s painful, too – for one realizes no President can please, placate, or save everybody.
In what he believed, at least, Reagan had been decisive. His mistakes stemmed from action, sometimes rash or ill-advised, rather than from inaction or indecisiveness, the two mortal sins of leadership. Reagan, too, was rightly dunned – particularly here – for his longtime friendship with and support of the dictator Ferdinand E. Marcos, long after his pal Macoy’s tyranny had been perceived. In fact, I remember him making an intemperate remark in the early denouément of the February 1986 snap elections, an electoral fraud which had been remedied only by the EDSA People Power revolution: "Anyway," Reagan had said, "I heard there was cheating on both sides." On that, I told my wife: "Pack a bag, we’re heading for the hills. With that stupid remark from Reagan, they’ll be emboldened to arrest us!"
In the end, however, Reagan realized his mistake. He sent word through Senator Paul Laxalt to Marcos to cut out, and "cut clean." Then he sent a US helicopter to pluck the Marcoses out of Malacañang – to "exile" in Hawaii. Would the Marcoses, if that had not happened, have been torn to pieces by the angry mob? Probably, Macoy would have talked himself out of that one – despite being debilitated by lupus and crippled by the desertion of his generals.
When all is said and done, however, Ronald Reagan served his country well – and, it’s clear, defeated the Evil Empire, bringing an end to the Cold War. He will forever be remembered for standing in Berlin, and declaring to the Soviet leader: "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!"
It was not Reagan’s threats, but Reagan’s charm which disarmed Gorbachev. The Soviet leader, it was later revealed, appreciated Reagan’s candor. Finally getting to know each other, the chiefs of the two biggest Superpowers – locked for half a century in eyeball-to-eyeball confrontation with each other, and brandishing at each other weapons of nuclear annihilation – began telling jokes to each other. Gorbachev wanted to both save, and reform, the Soviet Union it turned out, proclaiming glasnost and perestroika. Then he made a nuke arms control deal with Reagan. (On April 26, 1986, an explosion resulting in the horrible meltdown of Reactor 4 at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in the Ukraine, severely undermined Gorbachev’s standing and morale – tarnishing his image at a crucial moment).
Reagan, though, unrelentingly pressed his advantage. Finally, the USSR caved in. Cynical observers said, in the aftermath, that the Soviet Union "committed suicide", by dismantling the Berlin Wall, withdrawing from the occupied states of Central and Eastern Europe, and finally ousting Gorbachev – paving the way for a rebound by Boris Yeltsin.
But I like to think that it was Gorbachev’s own heroic decisions that helped scuttle the Evil Empire, and gave his "friend" Ronald Reagan the cachet of having won the Cold War. The two, in friendship and mutual trust, accomplished that . . . well, miracle.
The Russians, of course, have never forgiven Gorbachev for having done all of these things, least of all its current, very popular President Vladimir Putin, who’s busily reconstructing the Soviet Union into what is used to be.
Should we beware the "Second Coming" of Soviet Power under a more cheerful, democratic disguise? There are other problems and conundrums more immediate to consider – the challenge of fanatic Islam, the oil problem in a festering Middle East, the expanding economic power of a giant China.
But I’ll have to say that the finest tribute, in my estimation, was paid by Mr. Gorbachev who went to Washington, DC to join Reagan’s funeral ceremonies. Placing his hand on the deceased President’s coffin, his former adversary and foe, spoke of how he appreciated Reagan and counted him a friend. In the beginning, he said, they had believed Reagan anti-Russian, but soon he had himself found out that Reagan was merely against the evil aspects of Communism "which we ourselves also rejected". What a generous thing of Gorbachev to say. It speaks as well of him, as it does of Reagan.
Reagan, for instance, sent US Marines to "intervene" (interfere?) in Lebanon – and for this he paid dearly during his Presidency.
At 6:22 a.m. on a Sunday, October 23, a fellow later described as "a smiling young man" drove a yellow stake-bed Mercedes truck through the parking lot of the four- storey steel and concrete headquarters (in the Beirut airport) where the men of the 1st battalion, Eighth Marine Regiment, were asleep. The truck pushed through a barbed wire and concertina wire barricade, careened past two astonished Marine guardposts, crashed through a sandbagged booth – and plunged into the building’s lobby. The suicide-driver then exploded his cargo – the equivalent of 12,000 pounds of TNT.
The building collapsed, burying 346 US servicemen, mostly Marines. The bodies of 234 dead Marines were recovered from the rubble. Another 112 Marines were pulled out alive, but grievously injured – seven of them died later.
At 2:27 a.m. (US time) Reagan was awakened by a call on his secure phone. He said afterwards it was "the saddest day of my presidency".
On the morning of June 14, 1985, TWA (Trans-World Airlines) Flight 847, having just taken off from Athens, Greece, bound for Rome was hijacked by two grenade-wielding Arabs. There were 153 passengers and crew aboard (135 of them Americans). The terrorists forced the pilots to fly the aircraft to Beirut, then Algiers, then back to Beirut.
There, they cruelly beat up, then shot to death, one of the helpless passengers, US Navy Diver Robert Dean Stethem, dumping his body on the tarmac. Then they took the plane on a terrifying odyssey. In the end, most of the passengers were "released" in one destination or another, and the odyssey ended on June 16, with 39 passengers and crew turned over to Shiite leader Nabin Berri. Seven had remained in captivity, and it took years to get them out.
In sum, Reagan’s Presidency wasn’t the serene "cakewalk" and "feel good" type of presidency it’s now pictured to be. He had many setbacks, many critics, and many enemies. But his infectious optimism, his confidence in America and his courage never wavered.
Reagan, in the final year of his two-term presidency, racked up a Gallup Poll approval rating of 63 percent – the highest garnered by any President on the eve of leaving office.
A New York Times poll gave him the even higher rating of 68 percent.
In February 2001, a Gallup poll – taken just after Reagan’s 90th birthday – ranked him as "the greatest president of all time, slightly ahead of John F. Kennedy, with Abraham Lincoln third."
Need more be said?