 or to history. Ladies and gentlemen, the President of the United States. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you, Charlton Heston. And thank you, my good friend and supporter, Jack Kemp, William Rusher, Jeffrey Hart, Richard Brookhizer, Joe Sobren, George Will, and to you, Priscilla, Pat, and Bill. You probably wonder why you had to turn in another direction. I have suspected that they thought I probably wasn't up to the long walk. But at least for the several people at my own table, they saw that I took the steps, two at a time. Well, ladies and gentlemen, I mean it literally when I say it's a delight to be here tonight. The editors, associates, and friends of National Review are celebrated not just for skillful argument and sound polemics, but for the wit, warmth, even merriment of their gathering. And for an appreciation of that three-letter word, so often heard around the offices at 35th Street, and so descriptive of this evening at the Plaza, fun. I will admit that like most of his friends, I wonder if Bill Buckley's well-known regard for this word doesn't get a little out of hand. Couple of years ago, I made a congratulatory phone call to an anniversary party for Bill Buckley's television show. Now as you know, firing line attracts many important guests, and some of whom, however, are also somewhat controversial. And no sooner had I picked up the phone and said hello, then Bill's voice came ringing through. Mr. President, I'm standing here with Gordon Liddy on my right, and Richard Hunt on my left, Howard Hunt on my left, and we await your orders, sir. And once when Bill was asked what job he wanted in the administration of his friend the President, he replied in his typically retiring and deferential way, ventriloquist. But when you think about it, fun really is important to the meaning of national review and the conservative movement it fostered. A word, as Bill Buckley might put it, that is transcendentally freighted, resonant with metaphysical meaning and overtone. By which he would mean, I got used to interpreting Geneva, so with your permission, Bill, I'll interpret. It is a word not very popular in our century, especially when those who preach the supremacy of the state who think they can remake man and society in the image of a brave new world. For these serious people, Earthly Paradise is always just around the corner, and evenings like this are bourgeois distractions. Laughter itself is suspect and even fun is an act of subversion. It is purportedly why Lenin refused to listen to music. It's also why Oscar Wilde said, as George Will reminded you at your last anniversary, the trouble with socialism is it takes too many evenings. But it is also why all of us are here tonight to celebrate 30 years of witty, civilized pages from our beloved National Review and the damage, the terminal damage those pages have done to modern statism and its unrelenting grimness. Since its beginning in 1955, National Review has argued that politics and state power, like all human endeavors, have their limitations. And that acknowledging those limitations is the beginning of political, even earthly wisdom. It is really an acknowledgement that God means for us, at least sometimes, to take life as it comes. To woo, to laugh, to move, to make room as you have tonight and throughout the 30-year lifespan of National Review for fun. If any of you doubt the impact of National Review's verve and attractiveness, take a look around you this evening. A man standing before you now was a Democrat when he picked up his first issue in a plain brown wrapper. And even now, as an occupant of public housing, awaits as anxiously as ever his bi-weekly addition without the wrapper. Over here is the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, who resides, besides running a successful presidential campaign in 1980, is the same New York lawyer who drew up the incorporation papers for National Review. Or ask any of the young leaders in the media, academia, or government here tonight, to name the principal intellectual influence in their formative years. On this point, I can assure you, National Review is to the offices of the West Wing of the White House what People Magazine is to your dentist waiting room. So in standing up then for what Russell Kirk might call the metaphysics of fun, I think history will show that National Review also launched a spirited and decisive defense of freedom. National Review taught several generations of conservatives that it is this recognition of a higher order that enables the individual to stand against the massed power of the modern state and say, no, there is more left to life than your budgets and bureaus, your camps and constraints. All of this was against the trend of the times and drew its share of disapproving stares. Just when political commentary had become as ponderous as political philosophy, along comes this spirited, captivating little journal pledging in the now familiar words of its first publisher statement, quote, it stands a thwart history, yelling, stop, end quote. I could speak at length this evening on the individual contributions that made it possible for this magazine to enunciate the tie between fun and freedom. As most of you know, I've had the honor of awarding the Medal of Freedom to two of your editors and a number of your contributors. But let me do simply and briefly now what I came here to do tonight, and that is, as President of the United States, to salute the editors, associates and friends of national review and on behalf of America, the free world, and especially the not so free world, to thank each one of you for your extraordinary work, your sacrifice, your daring and devotion. You didn't just part the Red Sea, you rolled it back, dried it up, and left exposed for all the world to see the naked desert that is statism. And you did it without an environmental impact statement. And as if that weren't enough, you gave to the world something different, something in its weariness that it desperately needed, the sound of laughter, and the sight of the rich green uplands of freedom. But if tonight we celebrate national review as a force for change of hurricane force, we also note tonight that the eye of the hurricane is retiring. Priscilla Buckley is known for her adventurous spirit, nowhere has that spirit been better evidenced than in her willingness to be at the center for almost 30 years of the whirlwind at 150 East 35th Street. She has come through all this with a reputation unchallenged for journalistic skill and professionalism as you've heard tonight, as well as the sweetest disposition on the eastern seaboard. However much Priscilla Buckley has visited or written of far away places, no one has done more for America. Tonight, Priscilla, all of us honor you and thank you. And now, ladies and gentlemen, recently a message from Bill Buckley was sent through the White House staff about my remarks here. And I quote, Bill says this is the 30th and you should say something important like announcing a new Marshall Plan. Well, we shall see about a Marshall Plan, but for the moment perhaps a few concluding remarks on the future of this journal and the conservative movement that it fostered are in order. I think most of you are aware that there is now in the nation's capital a consensus on the need for reducing marginal tax rates. Even the Ways and Means Committee proposal, though it isn't the bill we asked for, agrees that such high rates are an obstacle to economic growth and initiative. On another front, not only has the House of Representatives agreed to humanitarian assistance to the Nicaraguan freedom fighters, it has lifted largely on its own accord the ban against helping anti-communist insurgencies in Africa. And I think you'll agree that it's a long way to travel from dear common danti to spontaneous repeal of the Clark Amendment. Believe me, there were fewer articles of faith in the liberal credo more fervently held than first, a belief in government as the great redistributor of income through punitive tax rates, and second, an adherence to post-Vietnam isolationism and the adolescent notion that anyone brandishing a rifle wearing green fatigues and calling himself a socialist revolutionary was worthy of American sympathy or support. Now the question I want to ask you is this, if at national reviews last anniversary dinner, someone had told you that in a little over four years, tax rates could be cut from 70 percent to nearly half of that, and that we would be not only helping a growing anti-communist insurgency in Central America, but lifting the prohibition against such assistance in Angola, and that in both cases these changes would be affected by a house of representatives supposedly dominated by liberal Democrats. Wouldn't you have tagged him or her as a hopeless optimist? And yet it's all happening and will continue to happen. And for this reason, we have reached that point military historians single out as critical to the outcome of any battle. The point at which one side begins to display a decisive will to win, a kind of psychological dominance over the consciousness of the other. The point at which the adversary is more preoccupied with countering our next tactical move than with changing a strategic picture that does not even realize is shifting dangerously against him. How many northern generals preoccupied in General McClellan's words with what, Bobby Lee will do next, came to naught because they failed to do what common sense of their own strategic plan dictated. As Yogi Berra said once, 90 percent of this game is half-mental, and today the adversaries of conservatives seem sometimes more concerned with our agenda than we are ourselves. It's the kind of slide that once it begins is almost impossible to halt. Already, some young members of the other party have had to face charges that they are me-too-democrats. What a refreshing ring that has to those of us who remember how a similar expression was used in the 50s. And I wonder if the day is not too far off when some democratic presidential candidate sweeps the primaries by declaring, we are all conservatives now. And then proudly boasts of his subscription to National Review Without the Rapper. Ladies and gentlemen, the strategic situation internationally is also changing and decisively so. While democracies are growing in economic strength, the totalitarian world is in decay and disarray. We see that Marx was right. The economic order is making demands on the political order. But he was wrong about where it would happen. China is only the most remarkable and most recent example. Add to this the growth in democratic institutions all around the world, in Asia. The realization that personal freedom means economic growth has made a number of small nations models of economic progress. Even Europe, the birthplace of socialism, now is catching up with the Laffer curve. And it's especially in Europe that we see one of the most important changes I believe this journal has helped to spark. Statism has lost the intellectuals. So there's after all a Marshall plan to announce here this evening. But not one confined to Europe were limited to monetary aid. A Marshall plan of mind and heart and spirit. A Marshall plan of ideas. Ideas that National Review first promoted. The worth of the individual. The value of personal freedom. The efficacy of the free market. The wisdom of representative constitutional government. And the rule of law under God. We know the permanent things this journal stands for. If given only the slightest bit of breathing space must and will triumph. It is this spark of life, this journal, and the conservative movement have provided. When he left communism for the western side, one editor of the magazine said he understood his defection to mean he was joining the losers. Well I can think of no better way to pay tribute to his memory. And frankly nothing he would have liked better than to say we can affirm here tonight that Whitaker Chambers was wrong. The civilization will triumph that freedom is the winning side. One final note. I think eventually the pundits and analysts are going to catch on to the enormous force and deep roots of the conservative movement. Some of them have even finally realized that I'm actually one and that I mean it. And when that happens they're going to realize something about not only this journal but about its founder and editor. That Bill Buckley is perhaps the most influential journalist and intellectual in our. How about that? And he can't even find a seat at his own banquet. Well while I'm quite certain that this is what history will say I also know that you and I would add something. Because you and I remember a time of the forest primeval. A time when nightmare and danger reigned. Only the nights of darkness prevailed when conservatives seemed without a champion in the crucial battle of style and content. And then suddenly riding up through the lists came our clipboard bearing gala head. Ready to take on any challengers in the critical battle of point and counterpoint with grace and humor and passion to raise a standard to which patriots and lovers of freedom would repair. Like myself many of you have known and been grateful for Bill's friendship. And like everything else he does he is made of that too an art form. So Bill one last word to you. We thank you for your friendship. You are of course a great man. And so we thank you also for national review for setting loose so much good in the world. And Bill thanks too for all the fun. God bless you. Thank you.