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Originally posted by Niki2:
Okay, all joking aside. I am sooo sick of neocons and right-wing nutbags holding up Reagan. It's old, and it was fallacious in the first place.

So okay, here are some facts, as they're facts, I know you close-minded righties won't read them, or if you do you won't be able to grasp them and will no doubt deny them with the usual talking points. But for the thinking, reality-based among us

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Originally posted by BigDamnNobody:

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Originally posted by Niki2:
Okay, all joking aside. I am sooo sick of neocons and right-wing nutbags holding up Reagan. It's old, and it was fallacious in the first place.

So okay, here are some facts, as they're facts, I know you close-minded righties won't read them, or if you do you won't be able to grasp them and will no doubt deny them with the usual talking points. But for the thinking, reality-based among us

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Originally posted by Niki2:
Cat

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Ronald Reagan

At the end of his two terms in office, Ronald Reagan viewed with satisfaction the achievements of his innovative program known as the Reagan Revolution, which aimed to reinvigorate the American people and reduce their reliance upon Government. He felt he had fulfilled his campaign pledge of 1980 to restore "the great, confident roar of American progress and growth and optimism."

On February 6, 1911, Ronald Wilson Reagan was born to Nelle and John Reagan in Tampico, Illinois. He attended high school in nearby Dixon and then worked his way through Eureka College. There, he studied economics and sociology, played on the football team, and acted in school plays. Upon graduation, he became a radio sports announcer. A screen test in 1937 won him a contract in Hollywood. During the next two decades he appeared in 53 films.

From his first marriage to actress Jane Wyman, he had two children, Maureen and Michael. Maureen passed away in 2001. In 1952 he married Nancy Davis, who was also an actress, and they had two children, Patricia Ann and Ronald Prescott.

As president of the Screen Actors Guild, Reagan became embroiled in disputes over the issue of Communism in the film industry; his political views shifted from liberal to conservative. He toured the country as a television host, becoming a spokesman for conservatism. In 1966 he was elected Governor of California by a margin of a million votes; he was re-elected in 1970.

Ronald Reagan won the Republican Presidential nomination in 1980 and chose as his running mate former Texas Congressman and United Nations Ambassador George Bush. Voters troubled by inflation and by the year-long confinement of Americans in Iran swept the Republican ticket into office. Reagan won 489 electoral votes to 49 for President Jimmy Carter.

On January 20, 1981, Reagan took office. Only 69 days later he was shot by a would-be assassin, but quickly recovered and returned to duty. His grace and wit during the dangerous incident caused his popularity to soar.

Dealing skillfully with Congress, Reagan obtained legislation to stimulate economic growth, curb inflation, increase employment, and strengthen national defense. He embarked upon a course of cutting taxes and Government expenditures, refusing to deviate from it when the strengthening of defense forces led to a large deficit.

A renewal of national self-confidence by 1984 helped Reagan and Bush win a second term with an unprecedented number of electoral votes. Their victory turned away Democratic challengers Walter F. Mondale and Geraldine Ferraro.

In 1986 Reagan obtained an overhaul of the income tax code, which eliminated many deductions and exempted millions of people with low incomes. At the end of his administration, the Nation was enjoying its longest recorded period of peacetime prosperity without recession or depression.

In foreign policy, Reagan sought to achieve "peace through strength." During his two terms he increased defense spending 35 percent, but sought to improve relations with the Soviet Union. In dramatic meetings with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, he negotiated a treaty that would eliminate intermediate-range nuclear missiles. Reagan declared war against international terrorism, sending American bombers against Libya after evidence came out that Libya was involved in an attack on American soldiers in a West Berlin nightclub.

By ordering naval escorts in the Persian Gulf, he maintained the free flow of oil during the Iran-Iraq war. In keeping with the Reagan Doctrine, he gave support to anti-Communist insurgencies in Central America, Asia, and Africa.

Overall, the Reagan years saw a restoration of prosperity, and the goal of peace through strength seemed to be within grasp.

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Ronald Reagan was elected in 1980 with a mandate not just to contain communism, which was the U.S. policy since 1947, but to roll it back.

Between 1975 and President Reagan's election, Angola, Afghanistan, Laos, Cambodia, Ethiopia, Mozambique, Nicaragua, Somalia and South Vietnam - to name a few - had come under Soviet domination. A Soviet naval base was established on the island of Socotra, capable of intercepting vital shipping in the Persian Gulf and the Red Sea. Many believed that after the Vietnam defeat, the United States would lose the Cold War.

Mr. Reagan turned everything around. Working with Mr. Reagan's clear and compelling overview, his team designed a complex strategy of defeating the Soviets. As the renowned Chinese strategist Sun Tsu taught, he won the Cold War (which can be compared to World War III) without firing a shot - a great strategic feat.

Mr. Reagan succeeded in convincing the Soviets that competing in the Strategic Defense Initiative, a ballistic missile defense program that opponents nicknamed "Star Wars," would bankrupt them. By convincing the Kremlin that it would lose the arms race, he effectively triggered Soviet capitulation.

The Reagan Doctrine postulated that engaging and bleeding the Soviets and their allies in Third World arenas where people resisted their domination would not only contain, but roll back communist expansion. The Reagan administration did so despite resistance from Democrats in Congress, which defunded aid to the Contras.

The Reagan Doctrine also made U.S. allies out of the many "captive nations" that made up the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, which were sent clear signals that independence was attainable.

As a young audience researcher for Radio Liberty in 1988, I remember the Kyrghyz who told my interviewers that they were watching what was happening in Estonia: If the little Baltic republic were successful in gaining freedom, they, too, would fight for independence. Thus, Mr. Reagan created a chain reaction of liberation, which ultimately blew up the Soviet empire.

There was an economic dimension to Mr. Reagan's strategy, as well, which he demonstrated when he convinced the Saudis to flood the market with cheap oil in order to deny hard currency to the Kremlin. Yes, those were the days - a mere $10 a barrel - as the Saudis were frightened by the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, and the Soviet air force was only a striking distance from their oil fields in the Persian Gulf.

Another economic move in the grand chess game Mr. Reagan played against the "evil empire" was intercepting the flow of technology and credits necessary for building a Soviet cash cow - the gas pipeline from Siberia to Western Europe.

Finally, there was Mr. Reagan's war of ideas. This crucial aspect of the fight involved telling the Soviets and their satellites the truth - the truth about the gulag, Stalin's prison labor camp system in which millions of people died for their political and religious convictions - or for no crime at all. These gulags were replicated by KGB clones everywhere - from Albania to Yugoslavia.

The war of ideas extended to the promotion of great freedom fighters such as Nobel Prize winners Andrey Sakharov, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Joseph Brodsky (whom Mr. Reagan made a U.S. poet laureate in 1987) and Czeslaw Milosz.

There was also support for the Polish independent trade union Solidarity and for Charter 77 in Prague headed by a playwright, Vaclav Havel, the first president of an independent Czech Republic more than a decade later.

There was, above all, the great mastery of symbol and slogan: paraphrasing Karl Marx, an "evil empire" that belongs on the ash heap of history and "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall."

So, those who claimed that Mr. Reagan was a simpleton, a "primitive anti-communist" were dead wrong. Just as Franklin D. Roosevelt and Winston Churchill defeated Nazism, Mr. Reagan and Britain's Margaret Thatcher defeated communism.

The legacy of Ronald Reagan is alive today. It is alive in the liberated countries liberated from the evil empire, which only recently became U.S. allies by joining NATO. It is alive in retaining Russia a friendly neutral power over the Gorbachev, Yeltsin and Putin administrations. And it is in the main lesson of his Cold War victory: You must fight your adversary with the word, as well as with the sword. You must win the war of ideas, as well as the battle of bullets.

Today, what would Mr. Reagan do? He would appeal for the liberation of women in the Muslim world, he would call for the freedom of Sudanese Christians from slavery and genocide, he would demand that the brainwashing of Palestinian and Iraqi youth to become suicide bombers be stopped. He would also launch a strategic energy initiative to liberate the United States from its worst chemical dependency - Middle Eastern oil.

Ronald Reagan promoted freedom, upholding the American example of the shining city on the hill. We cannot do less.

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Abstract: "The fall of the [Soviet] empire," former Czech president Vaclav Havel wrote, "is an event on the same scale of historical importance as the fall of the Roman Empire." It is true that Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev repudiated the Brezhnev Doctrine--that the Soviet Union will use force if necessary to ensure that a socialist state remains socialist--and in so doing undercut the Communist leaders and regimes of Eastern and Central Europe in the critical year of 1989. But why did Gorbachev abandon the Brezhnev Doctrine? One Western leader above all others forced the Soviets to give up the Brezhnev Doctrine and abandon the arms race, brought down the Berlin Wall, and ended the Cold War at the bargaining table and not on the battlefield: President Ronald Reagan.
Soviet Communism, the dark tyranny that controlled nearly 40 nations and was responsible for the deaths of an estimated 100 million victims during the 20th century, suddenly collapsed 20 years ago without a shot being fired.
In just two years--from 1989 to 1901--the Berlin Wall fell, the Soviet Union disintegrated, and Marxism- Leninism was dumped unceremoniously on the ash heap of history. There was dancing in the street and champagne toasts on top of the Brandenburg Gate. And then most of the world got on with living without asking:
Why did Communism collapse so quickly?
Why did a totalitarian system that appeared to be so militarily and economically strong disappear almost overnight?
What role did Western strategy and leadership play in the fall--or was it all due, as the Communists might put it, to a correlation of objective forces?
A decade ago, I edited a collection of essays by some of the world's leading authorities on Communism who suggested that a wide range of forces-- political, economic, strategic, and religious--along with the leadership of principled statesmen and brave dissidents brought about the collapse of Soviet Communism.
In my essay, I suggested that when Communist leaders in Eastern and Central Europe admitted they no longer believed in Communism, they dissolved the glue of ideology that had maintained their façade of power and authority.
I pointed out that the Communists failed, literally, to deliver the goods to the people. They promised bread but produced food shortages and rationing-- except for Party members and the nomenklatura. They promised the people land but delivered them into collectives. They promised peace but sent young men off to die in foreign wars in distant lands.
In this information age, I wrote, the Communists could not stop the mass media from sustaining and spreading the desire for freedom among the captive peoples. Far from being an impregnable fortress, Eastern and Central Europe was a Potemkin village easily penetrated by electronic messages of democracy and capitalism from the West.
Dr. Zbigniew Brzezinski, the former national security adviser to President Carter, argued that Marxism-Leninism was an alien doctrine imposed by an imperial power culturally repugnant to the dominated peoples of Eastern and Central Europe. Disaffection was strongest in the cluster of states with the deepest cultural ties with Western Europe--East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Poland, and Hungary.
Harvard Professor of History Richard Pipes said there were incidental causes of the Soviet Union's dissolution like the invasion of Afghanistan, the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, and the vacillating personality of Mikhail Gorbachev. And there were more profound levels of causation like economic stagnation, the aspiration of national identities, and intellectual dissent. But the decisive catalyst, Pipes said, was the very nature of Communism, which was at one and the same time utopian and coercive.
The political philosopher Michael Novak discussed the long-term effect of atheism--a sine qua non of Communism--on the morale of people and their economic performance. Communism, he said, set out to destroy the "human capital" on which a free economy and a polity are based and in so doing sowed the seeds of its own destruction.
Soviet economics, economist Andrzej Brzeski wrote, was fatally flawed from the beginning. Replacing private property rights with state ownership gave rise to a huge class of functionaries committed only to preserving their domains and pleasing their political bosses.
Only the sustained use of force, credible terror, and a sense of isolation, Brzeski wrote, could keep the Communist system from collapsing.
One Leader Above All Others
"The fall of the [Soviet] empire," former Czech president Vaclav Havel wrote, "is an event on the same scale of historical importance as the fall of the Roman Empire." And yet what do many historians say about the collapse of Soviet Communism?
That it was inevitable. That it happened in spite of and not because of President Truman's historic policy of containment and President Reagan's prudential policy of peace through strength. And the most misleading and untrue of all the conclusions: That the real hero of the Cold War was Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev.
It is true that Gorbachev publicly repudiated the Brezhnev Doctrine--that the Soviet Union will use force if necessary to ensure that a socialist state remains socialist--and in so doing undercut the Communist leaders and regimes of Eastern and Central Europe in the critical year of 1989. But why did Gorbachev abandon the Brezhnev Doctrine?
We must understand: He was not a liberal democrat but a modern Leninist who was trying to use glasnost and perestroika to preserve a one-party state with himself as the unelected head. Gorbachev discarded the Brezhnev Doctrine and adopted the Sinatra Doctrine--let the satellite states of Eastern and Central Europe practice Communism their way--for two reasons:
The Soviet Union no longer possessed in 1989 the military might that it had in 1956 when it brutally suppressed the Hungarian Revolution or in 1968 when it snuffed out the Prague Spring.
The Soviet Union desperately needed the trade and technology of the West to avoid economic collapse that it knew it would not obtain if it enforced the Brezhnev Doctrine.
There is one Western leader above all others who forced the Soviets to give up the Brezhnev Doctrine and abandon the arms race, who brought down the Berlin Wall, and who ended the Cold War at the bargaining table and not on the battlefield. The one leader responsible more than any other for leading the West to victory in the Cold War is President Ronald Reagan.
"We Win and They Lose"
In 1980, after 35 years of containment, the Cold War seemed to be going poorly for the West. From martial law in Poland and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan to the Marxist Sandinistas in Nicaragua and Communist rule in Mozambique and Angola, Marxism-Leninism was on the march.
The Atlantic alliance was seriously strained, some said broken. The Soviets had deployed SS-20s armed with nuclear warheads and aimed at major European cities. Western European governments wavered in their resolve to counter the Soviets, even on their own soil.
America and the West clearly needed a new strategy. And one was forthcoming, but not from an Ivy League university professor or a Washington think tank analyst or the editor of The New York Times but from a one-time film actor and governor.
In January 1977, four years before he was sworn in as the 40th President of the United States, Ronald Reagan told a visitor that he had been thinking about the Cold War and he had a solution: "We win and they lose."
For 40 years, the United States and the West had been following a policy of containment, détente, accommodation. Ronald Reagan decided it was time to stop playing for a tie and seek victory in the Cold War.
From his first week in office, President Reagan went on the offensive against the Soviet Union. In his first presidential news conference, Reagan denounced the Soviet leadership as still dedicated to "world revolution and a one-world Socialist-Communist state."
The establishment was appalled at what it called saber-rattling and uninformed analysis. Harvard intellectuals like Arthur Schlesinger Jr. and John Kenneth Galbraith insisted that the Soviet Union was economically strong and militarily powerful-- the only responsible policy was a continuation of détente leading at some future time to convergence between Communism and democracy.
Reagan did not agree. Based on intelligence reports and his own analysis, the President concluded that Communism was cracking and ready to crumble. He took personal control of the new victory strategy, chairing 57 meetings of the National Security Council in his first year in the White House.
The President was determined to reassure those who had lived behind the Iron Curtain for nearly 40 years that they had not been forgotten and that a new day of freedom would soon dawn for them. He never tired, for example, of praising the Hungarian people for their courageous stand for freedom and against tyranny in 1956. In October 1981, on the 25th anniversary of the Hungarian Revolution, he said that the Freedom Fighters' example had given "new strength" to America's commitment to freedom and justice for all people. In his address to the British Parliament in 1982, Reagan described how "man's instinctive desire for freedom and self-determination" surfaces again and again as shown in Hungary in 1956.
He first went public with his Cold War analysis in May 1982 when he declared in a speech at his alma mater that the Soviet empire was "faltering because rigid centralized control has destroyed incentives for innovation, efficiency, and individual achievement."
A month later, he told the British Parliament at Westminster that the Soviet Union was gripped by a "great revolutionary crisis" and that a "global campaign for freedom" would ultimately prevail. In memorable language, he predicted that "the march of freedom and democracy...will leave Marxism- Leninism on the ash heap of history as it has left other tyrannies which stifle the freedom and muzzle the self-expression of the people."
Reagan directed his national security team to come up with the necessary tactics to implement his victory strategy. The result was a series of top-secret national security decision directives (NSDDs).
NSDD-32 declared that the United States would seek to "neutralize" Soviet control over Eastern and Central Europe and authorized the use of covert action and other means to support anti-Soviet groups in the region, especially in Poland.
NSDD-66 stated that it would be U.S. policy to disrupt the Soviet economy by attacking a "strategic triad" of critical resources--financial credits, high technology, and natural gas. The directive was tantamount to a "secret declaration of economic war on the Soviet Union."
NSDD-75 stated that the U.S. would no longer coexist with the Soviet system but would seek to change it fundamentally. America intended to roll back Soviet influence at every opportunity.
"Mr. Gorbachev, Tear Down This Wall!"
A subset of the Reagan strategy was U.S. support of pro-freedom forces in Afghanistan, Nicaragua, Angola, and Cambodia. A key decision was to supply Stinger ground-to-air missiles to the mujahideen in Afghanistan, who used them to shoot down the Soviet helicopters that had kept them on the defensive for years.
The year 1983 was a critical one for President Reagan and the course of the Cold War. In March, he told a group of evangelical ministers that the Soviets "are the focus of evil in this modern world" and the masters of "an evil empire."
The same month, the President announced that development and deployment of a comprehensive anti-ballistic missile system would be his top defense priority. The Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) was called "Star Wars" by liberal detractors, but Soviet leader Yuri Andropov took SDI very seriously, calling it a "strike weapon" and a preparation for a U.S. nuclear attack.
Moscow's intense opposition to SDI showed that Soviet scientists regarded the initiative not as a pipe dream but as a technological feat they could not match. A decade later, the general who headed the department of strategic analysis in the Soviet Ministry of Defense revealed what he had told the Politburo in 1983: "Not only could we not defeat SDI, SDI defeated all our possible countermeasures."
In October 1983, Reagan dispatched 2,000 American troops, along with military units from six Caribbean states, to the island of Grenada to oust a Marxist regime that had seized power. It was the first time in nearly 40 years of the Cold War that America had acted to restore democracy to a Communist country. The Brezhnev Doctrine was successfully challenged, anticipating Gorbachev's abandonment of it six years later.
When Gorbachev became chairman of the Soviet Politburo in March 1985, he took command of a disintegrating empire. President Reagan understood this fundamental fact and, negotiating from strength, forced Gorbachev over the course of four summit meetings to concede that the Soviet Union could not win an arms race but had to sue for peace.
In addition to the summits, two events stand out in the second half of the Reagan presidency.
In June 1987, Reagan stood before the Brandenburg Gate and challenged the Soviet leader: "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!" No Western leader had ever before dared to issue such a direct challenge.
In the spring of 1988, President Reagan traveled to Moscow and beneath a gigantic white bust of Lenin at Moscow State University delivered an eloquent address on the blessings of democracy, individual freedom, and free enterprise. He quoted the beloved Russian poet Pushkin: "It's time, my friend, it's time." It was clear the President meant it was time for a free Russia.
The following year, the Berlin Wall came tumbling down and Communism collapsed in Eastern and Central Europe. A pivotal event of "The Year of Miracles" came in September when Hungary opened its borders with Austria for more than 13,000 East Germans--the first breaching of the once-impregnable Berlin Wall.
President Reagan forced the Soviet Union to abandon its goal of world socialization by challenging the Soviet regime's legitimacy, by regaining superiority in the arms race, and by using human rights as a weapon as powerful as any in the U.S. or Soviet arsenal.
"We...Owe Him Our Liberty"
The crucial role of leadership in any war, including a cold one, is demonstrated by the example of Ronald Reagan.
The Soviet dissident Natan Sharansky was in an eight-by-ten foot cell in a Siberian prison in early 1983 when his Soviet jailers permitted him to read the latest issue of Pravda, the official Communist Party newspaper.
Splashed across the front page, Sharansky recalled, was a condemnation of Reagan for calling the Soviet Union an "evil empire." Tapping on the walls and talking through toilets, political prisoners spread the word of Reagan's "provocation." The dissidents were ecstatic. Finally, Sharansky wrote, the leader of the free world had spoken the truth--a truth that burned inside the heart of each and every one of us.
Lech Walesa, the founder of the Solidarity movement that brought down Communism in Poland and prepared the way for the end of Communism throughout Eastern and Central Europe, put his feelings about Reagan simply: "We in Poland...owe him our liberty."
So too do the many millions who lived behind the Iron Curtain and were caught up in one of the longest conflicts in history--the Cold War--which, because of leaders like Ronald Reagan, ended in victory for the forces of freedom.

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How Great was Ronald Reagan? Our 40th President's Place in History HOW GREAT WAS RONALD REAGAN? Our 40th President's Place in History A Symposium How will President Reagan be most remembered? How, if at all, has he changed American politics and government? Has he been one of America's great presidents? Has he been a conservative president? To what other presidencies might the Reagan administration be compared? These questions were put to seven leading political historians and presidential biographers. STEPHEN E. AMBROSE A funny thing happened to Ronald Reagan on the way to his place in history. At the three-quarter point, he made a sharp left turn, then another, and ended his journey going in the opposite direction from his start. Initially, he was headed towards the title of the toughest Cold War president of all. His rhetoric was bellicose in the extreme, as "evil empire" replaced detente. When martial law descended on Poland, Reagan tried to organize an economic blockade of the Soviet Union. On the military front, he launched the greatest arms race in history, topped by the single most expensive weapons system ever undertaken. But history will remember Reagan as the first Cold War president to preside over eight years of unbroken peace, the first to reach an arms reduction accord with the Soviets, and the American president who helped make it possible for Mikhail Gorbachev to begin the process of restructuring Soviet society. Historians will also stress the gap between Reagan's domestic goals and his accomplishments. Most obvious is the deficit; what he promised to eliminate he has allowed to swell beyond comprehension. On the social agenda, abortion remains legal, prayer in the schools illegal. Reagan's failure in the war against drugs and related crime activities is so great that drugs were the number one issue in the 1988 presidential campaign. Nevertheless, Reagan will be remembered as the president who reversed the decades-old flow of power to Washington. By dismantling some federal programs, and reducing others, he forced the states and the cities to assume more responsibility for running their own shows. If he failed to break the Democratic hold on Congress, he did force the Democratic Party to move to the right. When Reagan entered politics 22 years ago virtually every Democrat outside Dixie identified himself, proudly, as a liberal; today, in large part because of Reagan, almost every Democrat in the nation tries to call himself a conservative. Bid for Greatness: Tax Reform These are important changes, but not of such a magnitude to earn Reagan a title of "great." The great presidents are the ones who bring permanent changes in society. Teddy Roosevelt and conservation and trust-busting, as one example, or Woodrow Wilson and the Federal Reserve System, Franklin Roosevelt and Social Security, Harry Truman and the integration of the armed forces, Dwight Eisenhower and the interstate highway system, Lyndon Johnson and Medicare and civil rights. Reagan's bid for greatness is tax reform, and on this one it is just too early to tell. If the doom sayers are right and we are dragged into a depression by the deficit and the trade imbalance, Reagan's tax policy will be reversed and forgotten. If the optimists are right and the economy continues to grow, the new tax rates will become permanent and Reagan will be blessed for his wisdom and courage. Like Ike and JFK Comparing Reagan to other presidents produces mixed results. He has been very like Jack Kennedy in a number of ways: cutting taxes to stimulate the economy, accepting large deficits in order to step up the pace of the arms race, indulging in Cold War rhetoric. He has been like Dwight Eisenhower in a number of ways: talking tough while maintaining the peace, using the CIA's covert capabilities rather than the Armed Forces' overt firepower to support his policies in the Third World, using a show of force rather than force itself in the Middle East while attempting to maintain an even-handed policy toward the antagonists. Reagan has also been very like Eisenhower in his tremendous personal popularity, as well as in his inability to use that popularity to promote the Republican Party. Therein lies the biggest difference between Reagan and Nixon. Many people admired Nixon, almost no one ever liked him. Almost everyone likes Reagan, although not so many admire him. Every scandal in the Nixon administration came home to stick to the president; the Reagan administration's scandals have been more numerous, and in the case of Iran/Contra, more serious, but none of them have stuck to the president. Whether that was just plain dumb luck or brilliant politics Reagan's biographers will argue for a long time to come.
STEPHEN E. AMBROSE is a biographer of Presidents Eisenhower and Nixon.M. E. BRADFORDOne political era most differs from another in the language used by those in power. We know that a watershed is coming when that language starts to change. We are now hearing a new idiom in the speech of public figures, one in sharp contrast to the language that originally defined the Reagan Revolution. That speech was a universe of discourse, a network of rhetorical questions, assumptions, normative terms, and modifiers that has given the last 10 years an identifiable momentum. Even though the sitting vice president was chosen to be president in November, this now-familiar political idiom will not long survive the changing of the guard. About the promise of individual liberty and responsibility, we will hear less and less; about the benevolence of government, more. The thought of such subtraction makes us self-conscious about what we will lose. Thus, these remarks are openly valedictory of the rhetoric of the Reagan presidency, the eloquence by which we were so securely environed.And very soon this will be the attitude of most conservatives, however frequently we have lost patience with President Reagan while he has been in office.For all things change when the expectations generated by political discourse shift. In recent months, conservatives have argued that tax reform and tax cuts have made it difficult for politicians coming after Reagan to Postulate the necessity for creative spending; to insist that government, if properly concerned for the unfortunate, should throw money at social problems. For a time I shared that opinion. Now I doubt its validity. Leftism is a virus in the bloodstream of our body politic, present in authoritative appeals to tolerance and peace, fairness, charity, and a natural right to the property of others. It will not go away. It has a ground in envy and resentment, which are the fashionable modern responses to eminence and distinction of every kind.The Left in DisguiseYet the political success of Ronald Reagan has forced the contemporary Left to disguise the intransigent emotional core of its world view behind talk of heart-rending circumstances and imminent disasters, which by reason of their severity cancel every consideration of means or ends. Assuredly, the task that President Reagan set for himself has not been completed. The practical consequences of his triumphs have been adumbrated by continuing Democratic power on Capitol Hill, by a press overwhelmingly on the left, and by the timidity of too many of his servants. We must remember that he was allowed to govern for only one term. The rest has been a holding action, undercut by concern for respectability and by a preoccupation with the 'Judgment of history." Nevertheless, because of Reagan, no serious national politician now wishes to be identified simply as a "liberal." Facing President Reagan, leftists prefer to be described as "competent" and "compassionate." Beyond such partial characterizations, they deal only in personalities, in the dark arts of vilification, or in the outrageous allegation that Democratic omnibus continuing appropriations prove Republican fiscal irresponsibility.
Reagan reaffirmed with eloquence the continuing validity and vitality of the American Dream. In this more than in any policies or decisions lie his legacy and enduring claim to greatness.-George H. NashThis president has taught those who share his politics how to conduct a national campaign-how to give limited government, strong national defense, and a check on inflation mass appeal. He has shown us how to do this with a high heart and good humor, making conservatism an optimistic creed. Moreover, he has put to rest forever the old axiom that no candidate for the presidency can run as a conservative and be elected. Finally, with the counsel of Attorney General Edwin Meese, he has compounded these achievements by choosing judges who will defend the Constitution as it has not been defended in over 50 years. These appointments are this president's greatest accomplishment.I leave aside the effort of the Reagan administration in Central America, its role in Afghanistan and the Persian Gulf. They involve business that is far from complete. Along with much of the Reagan agenda, their disposition must wait upon his legitimate successors: those who will go forward with implacable determination regardless of the enmity that confronts them. Ronald Reagan will be remembered for the initiatives he set in motion with his anti-statist rhetoric, and for changing through such language the current of our politics almost as dramatically as that current was changed in 1932. The most popular of our modern presidents, he has in his virtues and personal style symbolized our national character, not necessarily as it is, but as we wish it to be.
M. E. BRADFORD is professor of English at the University of Dallas. He has written A Better Guide than Reason: Studies in the American Revolution; A Worthy Company: Brief Lives of the Framers of the United States Constitution; and other books and essays on American history and southern conservatism.ALONZO L. HAMBYAfter Ronald Reagan has endured the usual biographical cycle of bunk, debunk, and rebunk he likely will be remembered as an outstanding national cheerleader. If such an assertion sounds disparaging, it should not. In the Media Age, rhetorical leadership has become one of the presidency's most important functions. In part through hard policies but even more through his skills as a communicator, Reagan has successfully lifted the morale of a nation that in 1980 was wallowing in pessimism and uncertainty. Long accustomed to the spotlight and the microphone and understanding the way in which the media magnifies one's personality, Reagan has turned what was a liability for most of his predecessors into an asset of major proportions.Scholars and others with a large view of the world will remember him also as a participant in a transnational movement against the excesses of the regulatory/welfare state, whether overtly socialist (as in much of the world) or marginally social-democratic (as in the United States). It seems doubtful, however, that they will consider him the outstanding political leader and conceptualizer of the return to free market capitalism. That honor will be reserved for Margaret Thatcher, a political captain of notably greater will and tenacity.It is in the realm of the substantive rather than the symbolic that future generations will raise the greater number of questions about Reagan. Their ultimate judgment probably will be that like most American presidents he wore his ideology lightly and was more notable for his flexibility than for his dogmatism.Was he conservative? Sure, but not a "hard" conservative. Clearly, he has done little about the social agenda of the Cultural Right other than make an occasional speech stating an opposition to abortion and/or affirming traditional Christian values.Reagan has largely had his way on economics but with policies that do not fit well into traditional definitions of economic conservatism. Many observers, not all of them liberal, argue that in the long run we will pay for a prosperity set in motion by massive budget and international trade deficits. Reagan's defenders may confound (or simply infuriate) them by invoking Lord Keynes' dictum that in the long run we are all dead. It remains to be seen whether the American economy is capable of generating the output to cover our internal and international debts with little or no pain.It is notable, moreover, that even in the realm of economics Reagan has taken the easy path rather than the hard one. For all his rhetoric in favor of a balanced budget, he has consistently refused to fight for one. Instead, he has rather easily acquiesced in one of the worst tendencies of democracy, its cupidity. Despite the incessant rhetorical handwringing about the plight of the poor, the vast bulk of federal "social programs" involve some sort of subsidy to the middling groups in American society. It is, no doubt, a realization of this situation and along with it a basic political survival instinct that has caused the administration to back away from programmatic hit lists.Pandering to Popular AppetiteReaganran up against a popular appetite for federal benefits without parallel in our history. He and the people around him were able to deal with it only by pandering to it. The Ronald Reagan who announced that the elderly will receive an increase in Social Security benefits whether or not inflation runs high enough to trigger it is hardly the leader of a counterrevolution. One wonders what historians will make of all the talk of a conservative era in a decade when federal social spending actually increased.
Reagan has left the nation stronger, more prosperous, and more confident than he found it. Yet it will be difficult to argue that he has achieved greatness.-Alonzo L. HambyIt is even harder to determine how they may classify a man whose foreign policy has meandered all over the ideological spectrum and has run in qualitative terms from the steadfast defense of the American nuclear presence in Europe and the liberation of Grenada to the muddled Reykjavik summit and the shabby arms-for-hostages dealings in Iran. That said, it is a pretty sure thing that most historians will approve of the recent moves toward detente with the Soviet Union, in part because most historians are liberal but also because if present indicators hold up, Reagan will have done the right thing. (One wishes, however, that he could have found a better way to go about it than tinkering with the nuclear balance.)Has he been a great president? Let us begin with the acknowledgment that at the very least in the short run, Reagan has left the nation stronger, more prosperous, and more confident than he found it. Unless sometime in the next several years we fall victim to a catastrophe that can be convincingly traced to his policies, it will be hard to rate him a subpar chief executive. Yet it will be difficult even for those in sympathy with him to argue that he has achieved greatness.Disconnected Administrative StyleItis clear now that his administrative style has been not simply "detached" but virtually disconnected. It is well for presidents to avoid obsession with detail and to keep their eyes on the larger goals, but Reagan exemplified the opposite extreme to a fault. He too often appeared indifferent not simply to detail but to the personnel who managed his presidency, not just ill informed but positively removed from the world of policy execution.He does not seem to have made much change in the large patterns of American politics. If he has temporarily changed the momentum of American foreign and domestic policy, he has not posed a frontal challenge to the assumptions of the Great Society, nor has he established a new majority. Public opinion surveys that record a widespread pessimism about the future may show that even his achievement as a morale booster has been superficial. He has sustained himself politically by taking the easy way out on the tough issues. Ideologues may call this cowardice; political professionals will characterize it as prudence. In either case, it may have been the price of self-preservation in assuming the leadership of a people who want to avoid difficult choices. What it is not is an indicator of greatness.
Reagan will be remembered as the president who reversed the decades-old flow of power to Washington.-Stephen E. AmbroseAs for comparisons: Reagan has been an uplifter and rhetorician comparable to the two Roosevelts and Wilson; a conservative exponent of capitalism in the tradition of Coolidge and Eisenhower; a cold warrior and advocate of U.S. international leadership akin to Truman, Kennedy, and Nixon. These analogies demonstrate the skill and strength of a political leader able to draw on diverse themes and weave them together into a formidable personal coalition. Whether he has left something more durable remains for all of us, especially George Bush, to see.
ALONZO L. HAMBY is professor of history at Ohio University. His most recent book is Liberalism and Its Challengers: FDR to Reagan. He is now at work on a biography of Harry S. Truman.FORREST MCDONALDForecasting history's judgment of a presidency is a tricky business. In addition to lacking the perspective that time alone can provide, we are impaired by two features that inhere in the office. The first of these is that the presidency is dual in character: the president is head of government, which is an administrative and managerial function, and he is also head of state, which is a ceremonial, ritualistic, and symbolic function. Our tendency is to judge the president, while he is in office, largely in terms of the latter, and therefore personality weighs heavily. Scarcely a generation need pass, however, before personality is forgotten and other criteria come to bear. Accordingly, such presidents as Lincoln, Wilson, and Truman, whose personalities were far from charismatic and who were regarded as failures by most of their contemporaries, can come to be regarded as great; and the likes of William McKinley and John F. Kennedy, immensely popular when in office (and for a brief time after their martyrdom), can subsequently come to be viewed as ciphers.The second feature arises from the lame-duck syndrome. During his first term, the president and the members of his party in Congress, looking forward to the support they can provide one another when seeking reelection, tend to cooperate effectively. After the president is reelected, the bond of reciprocal dependency is dissolved; and besides, the president, who is almost invariably returned to office by a greatly increased majority, tends to regard dealing with Congress as beneath his dignity. The president thus moves toward overseas adventuring, where his hands are relatively free, and congressmen of both parties are progressively estranged from him. At some point during his second term he becomes fair game for the most vicious attacks from politicians and press alike, and scandals (real and bogus) become commonplace. This is not something that began with the presidency of Ronald Reagan, or even with those of Richard Nixon and Lyndon Johnson. It is the fate suffered by George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, Theodore Roosevelt, and almost every other two-term president. But as time passes, the attacks are forgotten and the achievements (or failures) in foreign policy tend to determine the president's niche in history.Prophet or Silly Ass?Bearing these considerations in mind, one can rise above the provincialism of the present in appraising a presidency, but there is yet another difficulty. Whether history will regard Ronald Reagan favorably or otherwise will depend in large measure upon the course of history yet to come. This is not always the case. Presidencies that are devoid of significant achievement, such as those of Franklin Pierce and Jimmy Carter, are unlikely to be reevaluated later, and the same is true of calamitous presidencies such as those of James Buchanan and Warren G. Harding. But with active presidents, Reagan among them, the verdict of history is likely to be many years in the coming.It seems entirely probable that the judgment on Reagan will turn mainly upon two pivots, his domestic economic policies and his negotiations regarding nuclear disarmament. Conservatives have been greatly disappointed in his economic policies, believing that deregulation and the cutting of income taxes have not gone nearly far enough and fearing that the budget deficits portend disaster. But if the economic systems of the world continue to move toward depoliticization and the primacy of the market, if prosperity continues to attend that trend, if the budget is brought under control without a new round of worldwide inflation, and if the time bomb that is Social Security does not explode, Reagan will be regarded as the man who led America out of the abyss of socialist stagnation. These are admittedly large ifs.The returns on that aspect of his presidency will be in fairly soon-within a generation or so. Those having to do with nuclear disarmament might take longer, especially if Mikhail Gorbachev manages to stay in power. If the various reactionary elements in the Soviet Communist Party can oust Gorbachev, as they would love to do, Reagan will look a silly ass for having changed his mind about the evil empire. If Gorbachev by some miracle manages to pull off his perestroika, Reagan will be made to seem a prophet and a great force for world peace.
FORREST MCDONALD, Professor of history at the University of Alabama, is the author of Novus Ordo Seclorum. He was the Jefferson Lecturer for 1987. He and his wife Ellen Shapiro McDonald have written a forthcoming book, Requiem: Variations on 18th Century Themes. GEORGE H. NASHIt is not difficult to identify the principal initiatives for which Ronald Reagan will be remembered. After a decade of national defeatism and doubt, he strode into office in 1981-confident of America's ideals and promise, and of the ability of his countrymen to conquer their malaise. He instituted startling tax-rate reductions and other measures that have produced (his supporters argue) the longest peacetime economic expansion in the history of the United States. In foreign policy he initiated a massive rearmament program to contain Soviet imperialism and expounded America's democratic faith without shame. In doing so he broke, without fully dispelling, the debilitating grip of the "post-Vietnam syndrome" and the mentality of "blame America first." In the realm of social issues, he set out deliberately to curb the "imperial judiciary" and reorient a left-leaning Supreme Court.Not all of his accomplishments were so programmatic.Perhaps equally significant is the fact that during the Reagan years principled, articulate conservatives gained unprecedented access to executive power and to the nation's policy-making elite. The Reagan Revolution of 1981 was not a conventional shift in legislative priorities and personnel; it was an intellectual challenge that undermined the sanctity of the status quo. It did not overthrow that status quo; Reagan never had the votes-or perhaps the intent-to do so. But his administration for at least a time altered the terms of public debate and tarnished the intellectual pretensions of social democracy. In these subtle but influential ways Reagan altered American politics more than he did public policy.Contingent LegacyContemplating this substantial legacy, I am nonetheless struck by how tentative and contingent it remains. Is the economic boom of the 1980s, for example, a healthy phenomenon for which Reaganomics may take credit, or is it (as critics maintain) a false prosperity built upon the quicksands of debt? Events during the next few years will tell-and will thereby color our judgment of the Reagan record. Similarly, was the revival of American military strength and morale in the early '80s a lasting achievement or only a fleeting spasm in a dreary saga of declension? Here, as well, the post-Reagan era will inform us. So, too, for the Supreme Court; all that Reagan has done to reshape it could quickly be undone in the next presidential term. And despite the entry of conservatives into the Washington mainstream, the Reagan Revolution is not yet institutionalized. To a considerable degree, then, Reagan's place in history will depend upon the deeds of his successor.
To those who grumble that he has not reconstituted the political economy of Herbert Spencer, one can only say welcome to politics and welcome to America.-James NuechterleinIf all this creates uncertainty about our 40th president's eventual niche in the history books, another factor is likely to embroil him in extended controversy. For Ronald Reagan, like Woodrow Wilson and Abraham Lincoln before him, has been guided in office by a compelling moral vision. Because he has been a principled (and not merely managerial) chief executive, Reagan has profoundly antagonized those who espouse competing social visions-notably the New Deal, Great Society, and New Left. He has threatened their intellectual hegemony and sense of superiority, much as FDR threatened those Republicans of his day who considered themselves America's natural aristocracy. As custodians of a regime under powerful ideological assault, Reagan's adversaries have a vested interest in disparaging his presidency. For this reason alone, his standing at the bar of history will long engender passion. Such is the fate of those who delegitimate (but do not overturn) the status quo.Eisenhower's Augustan AgeHow,then, will Ronald Reagan go down in history? As a conservative Roosevelt who redirected America's course for half a century? As a second Coolidge of liberal caricature who fiddled while the economy burned? As a benign, Ike-like grandfather who ruled for an insignificant interlude during America's inexorable march toward socialism? As a rejected prophet like Wilson whose vision triumphed only after his death?My own hunch is that an Eisenhower analogy may be the closest one-although not the analogy dear to yesterday's liberals. A generation ago, when Eisenhower left office, he was widely disdained by "the best and the brightest" as an aging golfer whose presidency had brought little but stagnation. It was time, his youthful successor asserted, to "get America moving again." The sequel was the hubris and tragedies of the '60s. Only now, a generation later, have historians begun to perceive Eisenhower as an effective, "hidden-hand" executive who governed during what in retrospect appears an Augustan age.
One can't help wondering how much more he could have achieved had he been a more forceful, involved chief executive.-Karl O'LesskerWill historians someday gaze similarly on our own decade and its dominant public figure? No one can say. But I do venture to predict that our 40th president will be adjudged a singular statesman, and for a reason few of his critics understand. As the finest political orator of our era, Ronald Reagan reaffirmed with eloquence the continuing validity and vitality of the American Dream. In this more than in any policies or decisions lie his legacy and enduring claim to greatness.
GEORGE H. NASH, author of The Conservative Intellectual Movement Since 1945, is currently working on the third volume of his biography of Herbert Hoover.JAMES NUECHTERLEINIthas been Ronald Reagan's extraordinary political gift to be at once a unifier and a constructive polarizer. Polls have registered his ability to make a substantial majority of Americans feel better about both themselves and their country. At the same time, he is no Eisenhower, bringing people together behind a genial moderation. Genial, yes; moderate, not really at all. During the 1930s, conservatives hissed Franklin Roosevelt at the newsreels while liberals looked on him with something akin to worship. Fifty years later, Reagan has reversed those patterns of appraisal.Those who question Reagan's conservatism or wonder whether he has made a genuine difference lack a sense of historical perspective. He has accomplished nothing less than a fundamental change in the terms of debate of American politics. The Democrats, it is true, presently show signs of revival-no political mood lasts foreverbut they have achieved recovery only by carefully distancing themselves from the liberalism that is their presumed reason for being. They have been reduced to responding to the president's agenda rather than setting their own.Startling AccomplishmentsConsider Reagan's accomplishments. He has restored the American economy (a president's single most important domestic responsibility) even as he has frustrated the Left's ambition to transform the welfare state into the redistributive state. More generally, he has revitalized faith in private enterprise, the work ethic, political freedom, and the dignity and responsibility of the individual; he has, in short, reestablished a consensus on the basic principles of democratic capitalism that define the American experiment. On all the major social issues-abortion, quotas, gay rights, feminism, crime and punishment, the family, moral and religious values-the Reagan administration has been conservative and correct, even if reasonable people might quarrel over details of policy and political strategy.In foreign affairs, the record is mixed, but it should not be forgotten that Reagan has kept the peace, rebuilt America's defenses, and exhibited, at least on occasion, a vigorous understanding of the national interest (no imaginable Democratic administration would have undertaken the Grenada operation). He has labeled the USSR for what it has been, an evil empire, at the same time that he has understood the need to establish sober terms of coexistence with it. His essential skepticism toward the Soviets has not blinded him to the possibility that in Mikhail Gorbachev we may be dealing with a genuine departure in Soviet leadership. There have been great blunders (Iran/Contra most notable among them) but many of the administration's perceived failures have had more to do with the intractabilities of international affairs (and the fecklessness of Congress on foreign policy) than with errors in vision or execution.Triumph of PersonalityReagan'sleadership was, above all, a triumph of personality. His eloquence, charm, courage (recall his behavior after the assassination attempt), and remarkable sense of self revived Americans' pride in the presidential office and, by extension, in the nation itself. No president in memory has displayed so healthy an ego, and Reagan's most adamant political opponents concede his fundamental personal decency.There was, it must be said, a considerable falling off since 1986. The loss of the Senate and the Iran/Contra fiasco have weakened the president and led to frustrations in both foreign and domestic policy. The administration has failed in Nicaragua (though that was by no means entirely its own doing) and faltered in Panama. The greatest domestic disappointment came in the defeat of the Bork nomination, where the administration stumbled tactically and failed to communicate adequately the essential principle at issue. (Americans must somehow be made to understand the necessity of judicial restraint to the preservation of our constitutional order.)Still, except for those on the irreconcilable Right who dream of an American equivalent of the Bourbon restoration (dismantlement of the welfare state and reversion of Cold War attitudes to those prevailing circa 1953), Reagan's has been a record that conservatives can look to with no small feeling of approval and satisfaction. To those who grumble that he has not been everywhere successful and has not reconstituted the political economy of Herbert Spencer, one can only say welcome to politics and welcome to America. A great president? Probably not: there has been too much inattentiveness, too little intellectual grasp, some inadequacy of vision. (Reagan's celebrations of individualism too often leave the impression that it is not individualism-in-community to which conservatives should aspire but individualism as an end in itself.) But if not a great president, surely the most significant one since FDR. And perhaps the best-loved of all-which is not, ideologues to the contrary notwithstanding, a thing to be despised.
JAMES NUECHTERLEIN is Professor of American studies and political thought at Valparaiso University in Indiana, where he is also editor of The Cresset, the university's journal of ideas and opinion.KARL O'LESSKERThe achievement for which President Reagan will be most warmly remembered occurred the first year of his administration. It was the putting into place of fiscal policies, collectively known as "Reaganomics," that have produced the longest peacetime period of sustained economic strength in this century. The cornerstone of this policy was the Economic Recovery Tax Act of 1981, which Reagan championed during his 1980 campaign and fought like a tiger to get through Congress the following year. To whatever extent the credit for any successful major policy can be attributed to one man, the credit for ERTA belongs to Ronald Reagan.Far more important than its present impact on the economy, Reaganomics may well have caused a fundamental shift in the political community's approach to fiscal policy. During the past eight years (and, one suspects, for some years to come) there has been little if any disposition among congressional Democrats to advocate, still less vote for, big new spending or taxation programs.Apart from partisan bleats about the poor, elderly, homeless, minorities, handicapped (as if these categories of unfortunates were created by Reaganomics), the one dark shadow that falls across the economic record of this administration is the federal deficit. Among economists there is hardly any consensus as to what the long-term consequences will be of the soaring national debt. My own inexpert view is that all those foreigners who are said to be financing our deficit are doing so not out of the goodness of their hearts but because they see this economy-deficit and all-as a splendid opportunity for productive investment. And that worldwide belief among hard-headed investors is more likely to be accurate than the doomsday prophecies of our own pundits.Unfortunately, I find little else in the record of this administration that posterity is likely to applaud. What started out as a strong-willed, unillusioned policy toward the Soviet Union became in President Reagan's second term a rush toward "give-peace-a-chance" accommodationism.In a related area, this administration has been given too much credit and far too much blame for the defense buildup. Allowing Mr. Reagan full marks for the large increases in his first two defense budgets, we need to bear in mind that the buildup actually began under President Carter and his excellent Secretary of Defense Harold Brown in the final year of the Carter administration and in the budget he left behind for his successor. The Reagan budgets accelerated the Carter increases but by no means charted a new direction.The one program of transcendent importance that might stand as a monument to the Reagan presidency is the Strategic Defense Initiative-if it survives Congress. If it does not, however, some portion of blame will have to be assessed against Mr. Reagan himself because of his insistence on portraying the program as an impenetrable space shield using madly exotic weaponry to protect our cities rather than as a quickly deployable defense of our retaliatory forces. This ill-judged emphasis gave rise to the ugly and dishonest anti-Star Wars campaign, which may well prove to be the undoing of SDI.All told, in my judgment as a conservative Democrat, President Reagan will be remembered more for the opportunities that slipped from his grasp than for achievements that reshaped the American political landscape. I don't at all mean to discount the enormous difficulties Reagan confronted in the form of a largely hostile Congress and virulent news media. A great deal of what he did accomplish against these odds is attributable to his own extraordinary personality, eloquence, and moral commitment. But one can't help wondering how much more he could have achieved had he been a more forceful, involved chief executive. Reagan has indeed been as conservative a president as we could realistically hope to have but not a great one. Greatness requires more than heartfelt good intentions and an occasional success.

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Originally posted by Niki2:


Operative Nikita Nicovna Talibani,
signing off

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Godless heathen Ruskie bich you will BURN IN HELL for your love of antiAmerican values & love of the Flag and what she stands for like AURAptors love of country and hate of denigrating Bush and the way of AMERICA!!!!

Sorry, just had a RightStuff flashback there...


The laughing Chrisisall

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Originally posted by AURaptor:
Funny.

You posted images w/ out permission in attempting to besmirch the the greatest President in the past 150 years.

Bravo.

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Originally posted by mincingbeast:and as president didn't do much besides get elected at the right time to watch the soviets decline.

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Originally posted by mincingbeast:

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Originally posted by AURaptor:
Funny.

You posted images w/ out permission in attempting to besmirch the the greatest President in the past 150 years.

Bravo.

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Raptard, I am an ardent admirer of your vulgarity, spite and willingness to dispute, but Reagan was not the greatest president of the past 150 years. HE WAS TEH GREATEST PRESIDENT OF ALL TIME!!!1 WE MUST PUT HIS FACE ON ALL MONIES! And the moon, too. His presidential dominance is all the more remarkable, because he was a horrible governor, and as president didn't do much besides get elected at the right time to watch the soviets decline.

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Excerpted from Jack Clark's "Blast the Right" podcast:


The "Southern Strategy" and Reagan's Rampant Racism


In the 1960's, as the civil rights struggle heated up, the Republican party developed what came to be known as the "Southern Strategy."

The Southern Strategy was designed to get the support of Southern whites who were upset that Democrats had led the effort to protect the civil and voting rights of African Americans.

Race would be used as a wedge issue, and racial polarization would produce white votes for the Republicans.

Richard Nixon was the first to employ the southern strategy in a presidential campaign.

The existence of the Southern strategy is something you should never let a right-winger deny. You can quote some prominent right-wingers themselves.

The late Lee Atwater was the grandpappy of all the Republican dirty campaign, dirty tricks, vicious-politics-of-personal-destruction campaign strategists. Karl Rove was a disciple of Lee Atwater.

As a member of the Reagan administration in 1981, Atwater gave an anonymous interview to political scientist Alexander P. Lamis. Part of this interview was printed in Lamis' bookThe Two-Party South, then reprinted in Southern Politics in the 1990s with Atwater's name revealed. Atwater talked about the GOP's Southern Strategy and Ronald Reagan's version of it:

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Atwater: As to the whole Southern strategy that Harry Dent and others put together in 1968, opposition to the Voting Rights Act would have been a central part of keeping the South.

You start out in 1954 by saying, "Nigger, nigger, nigger." By 1968 you can't say "nigger"—that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like 'forced busing', 'states' rights' and all that stuff. You're getting so abstract now [that] you're talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you're talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is, blacks get hurt worse than whites. And subconsciously maybe that is part of it. I'm not saying that. But I'm saying that if it is getting that abstract, and that coded, that we are doing away with the racial problem one way or the other. You follow me—because obviously sitting around saying, "We want to cut this," is much more abstract than even the busing thing, and a hell of a lot more abstract than "Nigger, nigger."

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This brings us to Ronald Reagan's racism. How many times have you been speaking to a right-winger, and they will bring up how wonderful Ronald Reagan was? He did this and he accomplished that. He had these principles and those principles. Why, you would think that the right-winger has an altar to Ronald Reagan set up in his or her own house.

Sean Hannity proudly declares on virtually every show, that he's a Reagan conservative.

Let's address the questions: Was Reagan a racist? Did he follow the Southern Strategy?

Most definitely and most definitely again.

Here are Reagan's Five Pillars of Racism, showing him beyond doubt to be a racist:

Number one:

Right wing icon Ronald Reagan opposed the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Huh? Who except the Ku Klux Klan or its fellow travelers would oppose such a measure? What kind of a human being would say it's okay for a restaurant to refuse to serve someone because of their race? To deny a person the right to check into a hotel, because they were African-American? To refuse to hire someone, because they are of a race different than your own?

Ronald Reagan, apparently.

Remember, I don't know what was in Reagan's heart. But I can and will tell you what actions he took, and what the effects were. And if Ronald Reagan's opposition to the 1964 Civil Rights Act had become the majority position in Congress, well then, restaurants, hotels and employers would have been able to continue their discriminatory policies.

Maybe, a right-winger will argue, there was something in the wording of that particular piece of legislation, the 1964 Civil Rights Act, that Reagan didn't like. He really wasn't opposed to civil rights for all.

Sorry, not so.

Because the very next year, Reagan opposed the other major piece of civil rights legislation of that era, the 1965 Voting Rights Act.

It prohibited the use of literacy tests, poll taxes and the like to deny an American citizen the right to vote because of their race. This had been standard practice throughout the South.

Again, I ask you, what kind of a person would oppose such a law? What kind of a person would want African-Americans to continue to be disenfranchised?

Apparently again, Ronald Reagan. There's his second pillar of racism.

You know, I can already hear right-wingers offering another lame excuse: maybe Reagan was wrong back then, but by the time he became president, he had stopped advocating racist positions.

Again, you can easily prove the right-winger, wrong.

Your third pillar of Ronald Reagan's racism skips forward in time to 1980, when he began his presidential campaign.

Reagan chose to give a campaign speech -- some say it was the kickoff speech to his campaign -- outside of the town of Philadelphia, Mississippi.

At that time the ONLY thing Philadelphia, Mississippi was known for, was the brutal murder outside that town in 1964 of three civil rights workers, James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner. They had gone there to help African-Americans register to vote.

Did Reagan express sorrow for their deaths when he spoke outside of Philadelphia, Mississippi? After all, the FBI's investigation was still open. The case had drawn international attention. What better way for Reagan to erase the stain on himself for having opposed both the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act?

No, Reagan was not there to mend his ways, to ask for forgiveness, to do the right thing. He was there to further the GOP's Southern Strategy.

He didn't mention the murders of Chaney, Goodman and Schwerner at all. That alone speaks volumes. And it gets worse.

Reagan also didn't apologize for his opposition to the Civil and Voting Rights Acts. But that's still not the worst of it.

Worst of all, Reagan told the nearly all-white crowd, that "I believe in states' rights." Remember what GOP strategy guru Lee Atwater said about that term?

"By 1968, you can’t say ‘nigger.’ That hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like…states’ rights…"



Reagan was giving a "Dixie Dog Whistle" to all the racists in the South. At the very place where civil rights workers were murdered. And where that white community was still protecting the murderers.

Reagan's horrifically racist behavior did not go unnoticed at the time.

Andrew Young had been a stalwart of the civil rights movement, a colleague and friend of Dr. Martin Luther King. He would later become a Congressman, Mayor of Atlanta, and Ambassador to the United Nations.

At the time, he was a campaign aide to Reagan's opponent, President Jimmy Carter.

Let me read you Andrew Young's impassioned words from 1980:

"[W]hen you go to Philadelphia, Mississippi, where James Chaney, Andy Goodman, and Michael Schwerner were killed — murdered — by the sheriff and the deputy sheriff and a government posse protecting states' rights, and you go down there and start talking about states' rights, that looks like a code word to me that it’s going to be all right to kill niggers when he’s President."



Hey, Mr. or Ms. Right-Winger, are you still so proud of your hero, Ronald Reagan?

So much for Reagan changing his ways.

And there's more. Reagan kept it up.

Here's the fourth pillar of Ronald Reagan's racism:

In the early 1980's, the campaign to make Martin Luther King's birthday a national holiday was coming to a head. You can imagine, I'm sure, what type of person was supporting such an effort, and what type of person was in opposition. And yes, there he was, the Gipper, in all his Southern Strategy glory, opposing making Martin Luther King's birthday a national holiday.

Once a racist, always a racist, at least with some, it seems.

Ok, for the fifth pillar of Ronald Reagan's racism, we go international. In the 1980's, the entire world community was uniting in opposition to the South African government's racist apartheid policy. An international boycott of South Africa was launched to pressure the South African government to allow its black citizens to vote, and otherwise to dismantle apartheid.

Guess who was not on board? Yup, Ronald Reagan opposed the international boycott of South Africa. Instead, Reagan insisted that quiet diplomacy would work. He called his policy "constructive engagement." Bull. You know what it was.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu was one of the main leaders of the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa. After he won the Nobel Peace Prize, Archbishop Tutu addressed the U.S. Congress and had some choice words for Ronald Reagan. According to a contemporaneous news account, Tutu said apartheid

"...is evil, is immoral, is un-Christian...
In my view, the Reagan Administration's support and collaboration with it is equally immoral, evil and totally un-Christian.
You are either for or against apartheid, and not by rhetoric. You are either in favor of evil, or you are in favor of good. You are either on the side of the oppressed or on the side of the oppressor. You can't be neutral."



Bishop Tutu then concluded with this broadside, telling the lawmakers that Reagan's policy of "constructive engagement"

"... has encouraged the white racist regime into escalated intransigence and oppression."



Immoral, evil and totally un-Christian. Ronald Reagan's policies.

Encouraged the white racist regime into escalated intransigence and oppression. Ronald Reagan's policies.

And it's all of a piece, isn't it, with Reagan's opposition to the Civil Rights Act, his opposition to the Voting Rights Act, Reagan's lauding of "states' rights" where civil rights workers were murdered, and his opposition to honoring another Nobel Prize-winning man of African descent, Dr. Martin Luther King.

Any one of these alone and I would say, this person is a racist. There's no other explanation besides prejudice combined with the intent and power to injure -- denying rights or recognition, or stirring up others to be prejudiced and to take action to injure.

But all five taken together?

My goodness, could it be any more plain?

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Originally posted by AURaptor:
Ahh yes, the standard " RACISM " cry, when ever the Left is out of any legitimate responses.....

Lames of the lame list.

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Originally posted by Niki2:
Ahhhh, I get it. No wonder you didn’t post any cites! I just saw your material came from www.whitehouse.gov/about/presidents/ronaldreagan .No wonder it’s a puff piece! I could tear it to shreds, but it’s not worth the time. It was put out by the WHITE HOUSE, you silly idjit, it doesn’t represent facts, or figures, or anything concrete, it’s an accolade by the White House which could be matched by it’s “accolade” to ANY PRESIDENT WHO EVER SERVED! You can’t do better than THAT?? Does the rest come from the Reagan Library or something?

Not reality. Puff piece full of propaganda, misstatements and lies. Not worth the time to tear it apart, and without cites, no way to tell where the rest came from, so I’m guessing it’s just as pitiful a source. Oh, no, wait, I can find it...type any of the text in from the quote and...ah, hah, voila! THE HERITAGE FOUNDATION...”The Heritage Foundation is a conservative American think tank based in Washington, D.C.” (Wikipedia) Oh, my, ALL the others are from the Heritage Foundation, and the second one is “A lecture on American poltical thought”. You betcha!

If you can’t find any at least relatively impartial cite with facts and figures that can be backed up; I'll take even slightly slanted, I admit the NY Times isn’t perfect. I could find others, easily, economists, historians, anything you want. But give me something with SOME kind of investigative journalists, SOME sort of actual RESEARCH, and maybe we can debate. This is trash put out by Reaganophiles and the WHITE HOUSE, for gawd’s sake! It’s not worth the time to tear it apart, which could easily be done, it would just take some cutting and pasting. I’m just not willing to waste my time further on this trash.

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Originally posted by Kwicko:


Hey, weren't you crying "racism" about Bill Maher? Guess you didn't have any legitimate criticisms of him, eh? ;)

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Originally posted by AURaptor:
Ahh yes, the standard " RACISM " cry, when ever the Left is out of any legitimate responses.....

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Originally posted by Niki2:
Yeah, DT, they pissed me off. One thing I can't stand is listening to the glorification of Reagan and ignoring of the TRUTHS about the man! But I quit now.

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Originally posted by dreamtrove:
Whajt is the soviet debt story? Someone just posted something about debt manipulation re the collapse of the soviet union.. I hsdnt heard this before, what's the deal?

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Originally posted by BigDamnNobody:

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Originally posted by Niki2:
Okay, all joking aside. I am sooo sick of neocons and right-wing nutbags holding up Reagan. It's old, and it was fallacious in the first place.

So okay, here are some facts, as they're facts, I know you close-minded righties won't read them, or if you do you won't be able to grasp them and will no doubt deny them with the usual talking points. But for the thinking, reality-based among us

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