Louis Roney: Odds to an end

Obama The Almighty: His will is to change not only the Constitution, but now, the Bible — Amendments and marriage sacraments will be better for having known Obama’s heavy hand… (What next?!)

Dick Morris sees Obama as sitting on the fence on almost all vital issues. “Leaderlessness brought Jimmy Carter down,” says Morris, “and it will finally bring Obama down.” — but when?

Friends from the other side

An English acquaintance of many years born to considerable affluence has political opinions that are consistently Left wing. My intellectual pursuits, my Naval duties, my musical career and my score of professorial years have taken me as far and wide as his plentiful lucre has taken him. He is not the only rich “Lefty” I have known. Lots of silver-spooned lads were at college when I arrived with my small suitcase, and enough of these guys became friends during our college days. Many have remained close friends through the years. Recently my long-time European pal wrote me chidingly “re: my Conservative bent.” It occurs to me that, by background, my English pal should be the “Conservative,” and I, the “Liberal.” Winston Churchill consigned “Liberalism” to youth, and “Conservatism” to maturity. Ironically, I was always Conservative from the get-go and scorned the idea of being jealous of what other people had, no matter the particulars. I have always managed to find the means myself to do what I yearned to do — what I have vainly sought is more wisdom and patience. At 91 there is still time for me to shoot for more accomplishments — and to make more mistakes… more money is not of consequence.

At present it seems my English acquaintance chooses as “friends” only people of his own political ilk. It occurs to me how lonely my life would be if I confined my friendships solely to Conservative Floridians, former football players, Harvardians, opera singers and all my other such strange species. My Englishman prefers to live in the U.S. rather than his homeland, which fact by inference, leads me to believe that he in some decisive ways prefers the American qualities that are my birthright to those of his own country. My “politics” as he calls them, are simply my determination to conserve what our great American past has bequeathed us, and I therefore call myself a “Conservative” without reference to political party. I am concomitantly confounded when he chooses to live here when he could live in England or anywhere else where he might find himself more at home with his political blokes… “There’ll always be an England” — as long as there are U.S. armed forces!

Instilling a sense of reality

The last year of World War II, I, a lieutenant in the U.S. Navy, sat opposite John D. Rockefeller Jr. at a luncheon in Williamsburg, Va., the town he had just restored. Mr. Rockefeller said, “My father gave me nothing when I was a kid except for my birthday and Christmas. If I wanted anything, I was assigned a job, either large or small, to complete in order to ‘earn’ whatever it was I wanted. My friends at school, even at Brown University, always found it strange that I, the son of the richest man in the world, was not given everything he desired. What my father did give me, of course, was character and a sense of reality — things of lasting worth.”

About Roney:

Harvard’42—Distinguished Prof, Em.—UCF

2004 Fla. Alliance for the Arts award

(Assisted by beautiful wife Joy Roney)