Ronald Reagan - A Time for Choosing

Posted on June 27, 2008
Filed Under Elephants (R), America |

I’m not a fan of neo-cons, but not necessarily yesterday’s, not this one. Oh no, not this one. This was a different kind of neo-con. Actually, I’m not even sure if you can call him a neo-con. He was a neo-con far from perfect, one with mistakes on his record worthy of strong criticism, and yet he was a perfectionist, a perfectionist at least in his oratory displays. He is the neo-con who was even praised by the Donkey Obama. He is the neo-con who destroyed communism, torn its iron curtain, and as a result brought freedom to many millions of people in Eastern Europe, a magnificent achievement deserving of much praise. He’s the man today’s Elephants can only dream of being like but can never truly match. Hate him or love him, he is Ronald Reagan, and this is the excellent speech that launched his political career.

P.S.: I know some people will fume over this post (and rightly so) probably for a number of reasons already mentioned here (I only agree with parts of the piece). Like I said, the man did make some messed up mistakes (including initiating the damaging marriage between his party and Christian evangelicals). Still though, I have never really understood why so many liberals hate Reagan so much. Is it because he represents what they’re staunchly against i.e. smaller government, lower taxes and a strong emphasis on military power?

P.P.S: Even though the speech is more than 40 years old, it still sounds fresh and “speakable” in today’s American political context.

P.P.P.S: Okay, so it’s no secret that I like dude (while I recognize his mistakes). He’s done more good than bad.

Comments

8 Responses to “Ronald Reagan - A Time for Choosing”

  1. Andrew Brehm on June 27th, 2008 8:29 am

    I agree. I like Ronald Reagan too.

    I grew up at the front lines of the cold war, as you know.

    (And some of your other regulars grew up on the bad side.)

  2. PeacefulVanguard on June 27th, 2008 6:56 pm

    Reagan was a mixed bag. Domestically, his policies were disasterous. He refused to utter the word, AIDS and give it the funding it needed when it was in full bloom; he drastically cut funding for mental hospitals, which resulted in the release of thousands of mentally ill people onto the streets to become homeless, thus creating a surge in urban crime; he considered ketchup to be a vegetable for school lunches … and the list goes on.

  3. Drima on June 27th, 2008 8:15 pm

    Damn, that sounds shitty. Now maybe THAT’S what I’m missing, more info on his domestic policies.

  4. D P on June 28th, 2008 2:39 am

    Reagan is a controversial figure. He is generally loved by conservatives and loathed by liberals. His foreign policy was marked at a high point by his strong personal relationship with Mikhail Gorbachev and at a low point with Iran-Contra Arms Affair. Domestically, his two greatest legacies depend on the person to which you are talking. Conservatives will say that he was responsible for an economic recovery due to better fiscal policy and a reduction in the size of government services. Liberals will note that he failed to respond to the AIDS crisis in any meaningful way in his presidency, and that his War on Drugs has created a near police state.

    Here is another interesting fact: he was a Democrat until 1962! Most analysts actually consider him to have been only moderately conservative and not particularly polarizing. This is one of the reasons that he won landslide victories. The liberals who voted for him in 1980 and 1984 are now called Reagan Democrats. I would say that in the current Presidential election that the selection of a moderate conservative like McCain is another attempt to court these Reagan Democrats.

  5. Drima on June 28th, 2008 8:35 am

    “Here is another interesting fact: he was a Democrat until 1962! Most analysts actually consider him to have been only moderately conservative and not particularly polarizing.”

    Yeah, I know that. And that’s why I think he shouldn’t be described as a neo-con. He’s labeled as such, but I don’t think he qualifies for the term even if back then it was technically correct to call people like him as such since neo-con originally refers to the Democrats who got tired of social excesses and then switched to the Republican side. Now the term has taken a new meaning, thanks to lovely people like Paul Wolfowitz, Dick Cheney and Rumsfailed.

    Regarding Reagan’s economic policies, I think what many liberals tend to overlook is that the USA was facing a constant threat from a formidable enemy. America was in war, a cold war, but nonetheless still a war and a very dangerous one. What Reagan did was basically outspend the Soviet Union until it could no longer keep up in the arms race.

    Whether that screwed up the economy and America’s “balance sheet”, I don’t know yet. But he still defeated communism without starting an outright WW3. That’s a major achievement that has affected the lives of many millions of people throughout the world, especially in eastern Europe.

    Unfortunately, his dumb policy of backing and encouraging Muslim radicalism, backfired years later. Like the CIA says, it was “blowback.”

  6. Lynn on June 28th, 2008 3:26 pm

    Did the USA get blamed for all the deaths that occured in all the civil wars that started after the collapse of the Soviet Union? That’s a serious question, I can’t recall. It seems we get blamed for everything that happens now so I’m curious whether we did then.

  7. D P on June 28th, 2008 6:39 pm

    @Lynn:

    I wouldn’t say there were a lot of civil wars. There was certainly chaos, but for the most part the former Eastern European Soviet Republics view the US positively and many have been admitted or are trying to be admitted to NATO. As far as the southern former Soviet Republics, I can’t say. Many of them have become autocracies and it is fairly difficult to understand public opinion there. Nonetheless, there are US military bases in states like Uzbekistan, and Kazakhstan has actively courted the US to take a more active role in the region.

    The only really polarized former Soviet Republics that I can think of are Belarus and the Ukraine (but the Ukraine is trying to join NATO and currently has a pro-West government).

    As far as Soviet Union puppet states are concerned, most of them have a fairly positive view of the US. Countries like Poland, the Czech Republic, Croatia, and Albania are actively supporting the US missile shield and several have joined NATO. The major outlier is Serbia, mostly because of previous NATO bombings and the US support for the independence of Kosovo.

  8. Appalled on July 2nd, 2008 10:26 am

    I can’t believe no one’s mentioned the death squads he funded yet. It’s amazing how irrelevant people killed in the Third World seem to be to presidents’ images.

    http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Global_Secrets_Lies/HxGuatemala_DeathSquads.html
    http://www.medialens.org/alerts/04/040615_Reagan_Visions_2.HTM
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contras#Human_rights_controversies
    http://shr.aaas.org/guatemala/ceh/report/english/graphics/charts/page86.gif
    http://shr.aaas.org/guatemala/ceh/report/english/toc.html

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