Posted on 01/31/2008 6:35:04 AM PST by Kaslin
The MSM/Democrats will redefine Reagan. Like in Orwell’s 1984. MSM will shove their puppet McCain down our throats and call him a conservative. They will rewrite history. The Reagan Revolution never happened.
He was walking on stage kicking balloon around as he waived to the crowd.
Some cheers of four more years, if he could have run again it would have been another landslide. McCain's invoking the legacy is disgusting because he is USING the legacy as a mere tool, he is NOT embracing the legacy.
McCain is to Reagan as Stalin was to Lenin. The GOP under McCain is going to mutate into some horrible, bloated social democratic party, and become nothing more than a minor election curiousity, much like the Green Party is today.
Liberals have become shrill, screeching voices - and they are being lead by Harpie McNasty (Hillary). The Left has become louder and meaner, and the only way to counter it, is for the Right to come back with the same sort of yelling.
The pendulum swings left, then it swings right - and eventually things must level out (perhaps becoming moderate). But in no way should the LEFT be allowed to win anything they fight for any more.
Socialism and Communism are WRONG for this country. Liberalism is nothing more than Socialism wrapped in fluffy clothing.
Liberalism should be stomped out just as Communism and Socialism should be destroyed.
Yup, Reagan made people feel good about themselves instead of the much more typical (before then and now) self-flagellating we’ve become accustomed to thanks to communist Dems.
I’ll never forget my best friend (Dem, even still basically) saying in ‘89 that she would miss him because he made her feel good about being American.
That is a terrible analogy unless you view Lenin as Russia’s benefactor. If so you need to read some Solzhenitsyn. Lenin’s comparatively brief time in power resulted in day for day Stalin-type murder and absolutism.
I was basing it off of stereotypes. I’m not a Marxist, but everyone in the academia loves to think Lenin was “betrayed” by Stalin. The point still stands, McCain will betray whatever Reagan accomplished.
Reagan was sorely hated by the left.
I guess ppl have forgotten the Reagan bashing, too.
He was also hated....not endeared by all...to be sure.
How about “McCain will be to the Reagan Revolution, what Aaron Burr was to Alexander Hamilton”?
REAGAN , FOR THOSE UNDER 40
This may sound shocking to anyone under 40, but 25 years ago, a lot of serious people were seriously wondering whether America’s best days were already past us.
Time magazine ran a cover story asking “Where have all the Heroes Gone?”
Inflation was 12%, Unemployment over 7% and both were rising simultaneously, giving birth to a new term, “stagflation”. Gasoline was just as expensive as it is today (accounting for inflation), except there wasn’t much to buy and long lines snaked around the block. Articles in respected magazines and newspapers asked whether the American Presidency was “too big a job for just one person”.
American soldiers weren’t the good guys. Just watch any war movie made in the mid-to late 70’s. If our guys weren’t bad, they were distraught, discouraged, crazy or suicidal.
Just 10 short years before becoming the world’s only Superpower, America seemed paralyzed after Vietnam while the Soviet empire expanded throughout the Third World. And it wasn’t just the Communists pushing us around. Millions of Americans watched Islamic militants sack the American embassy in Iran and march 52 blindfolded American hostages in front of television cameras. They wouldn’t release them for over 400 days.
In the Spring of 1979, President Jimmy Carter delivered one of the most unusual presidential speeches ever delivered from the White House. Known today as the “Malaise” speech, its theme was that America was suffering a “crisis of the spirit”. Even Democrats were not impressed. Carter was challenged for renomination by Senator Ted Kennedy. Carter won (or Kennedy lost, more accurately), but his party was divided and his nation was despondent.
Enter Ronald Reagan. Against this somber background, Reagan insisted that America’s brightest days were still in front of us, not behind us. He rejected the Vietnam syndrome, instead declaring that America was not the cause of corruption and evil abroad, but the cure for it, particularly in facing down Soviet communism. As for solving problems at home, we didn’t need the government to do more, we needed it to do less. The size, girth and expense of government was the problem, not the solution. In an era preoccupied with the “complexity” of insoluble problems, Reagan said “There are simple solutions - just not easy ones.”
Sophisticated people found Reagan, well....... unsophisticated. Also naive, not all that bright, and much too hard line.
But Reagan was telling Americans what they wanted to hear and what they wanted to believe about their country. And when they elected him by a 41 State landslide, he went to work doing what he said he would do.
He said his program to cut income taxes, government regulation and domestic government spending would unleash a rising tide of jobs, prosperity and opportunity. It did. He said that deregulating oil prices would lower the price of gasoline and end the “energy crisis”. It did. He said he would fire the air traffic controllers who were illegally striking if they didn’t return to work. He did.
As for dealing with the Soviets, Reagan said that his program of vastly increasing military spending, planting Pershing missiles in NATO countries and aiding anti-Soviet rebels throughout the Third World would one day relegate Marxist Leninism to “the ash heap of history”. This was too much for his critics, made up of a big chunk of Congress, most university professors, and much of the national news media. They regarded Reagan as either dumb, a warmonger or both, and they insisted that his policies would trigger a never-ending arms race and perhaps lead to the unthinkable – a nuclear war.
When Reagan announced his support for a space-based system to defend the country from a nuclear strike, tensions rose even higher. ABC aired a movie, “The Day After”, about America under nuclear attack. The “nuclear freeze” movement in 1984 was every bit as intense and its demonstrations every bit as large as the anti-Iraq-War movement is in 2004. History has yet to render a verdict on Iraq, but we already know who was right about the Soviets. The dumb warmonger won the Cold War without firing a shot. And soldiers were the good guys in the movies again. Martin Sheen and Marlon Brando in “Apocalypse Now” gave way to Tom Cruise and Tom Skerrit in “Top Gun”.
But Reagan did more than unlock the American economy and liberate millions of people from Communist captivity. He gave America back its smile. His sense of humor helped, but so did his belief that political differences weren’t personal differences, a sentiment that seems to have gone missing on both sides in recent years.
Where should history rank Reagan? Probably as the greatest President in the last 50 years because, like Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Reagan defined and ignited an entire political movement. For FDR it was New Deal liberalism. For Reagan, American conservatism.
Before Reagan, conservatism was instinctively reactive and mostly negative: stop spending on this, don’t do that, etc. Reagan made it both positive and pro-active - a movement based on core beliefs and clear ideas. As Ted Kennedy, of all people, put it, Reagan “wrote most of these ideas not only into law, but into the national consciousness.”
Dozens of conservative think tanks and more than 40 state-based policy centers around the country are daily churning out ideas for policymakers based on free markets, limited government and personal responsibility. Reaganism lives on.
Today we take it for granted in America that great days are still in front of us. We take for granted that lower taxes will stimulate growth. We take for granted that the best way to deal with deadly adversaries is to stand up to them, not make excuses for them.
25 short years ago, Americans didn’t take any of those things for granted. That’s what Reagan changed.
That works. I knew there was a more applicable example. =D
Yes, great commie-loving traitor that he was. It's clear that he's the template for those who have followed.
Amen...
This is exactly what I told my own sons last night.
I remember clearly, when I was a child, how my grandparents spoke glowingly about FDR. They told me: “He lifted the mood of the entire country, and made us believe again”. FDR came along in a time that was not just economic Depression... it was, collective social depression. In his fireside chats on the radio, his eternal optimism changed the attitude of the entire nation and set them on a path of recovery. At least, the people BELIEVED they were... My grandparents didn’t agree with much of what FDR did, but they loved him anyway.
Ronald Reagan was much the same. After the shame of watergate, we muddled through several years of care-taker Ford. Everyone knew the next election would go to the Democrats.. just as punishment for Nixon’s ‘crimes’. And so, we ended up with Jimmy Carter... even though, I think a majority already knew that Reagan would have been better.
Jimmuh had the mis-fortune of leading during a period of bad economic production, but his policies and inaction made things far worse than they had to be. Everyone saw his cluelessness in how to deal with the problems, and his obvious internal distress. Cue the Iranian Revolution... and, things just got worse. By the time the 1980 election came along, most in this country had given up any hope for the future of America. RR reminded us that, Hey! This is STILL the greatest country around.. and, with leadership backed by the power of the American people, CHANGES for THE GOOD can still happen.
No one.. certainly not me... ever thought Congress would index taxes to inflation to stop the “bracket creep” that relentlessly brought more money into Washington... but, they did! 25 years later, we all STILL get a ‘tax cut’ every year, as the Standard Deduction is adjusted.
No one thought we could get our hostages back from Iran.. we did. NO one thought there was any way to stop “stagflation”.. we did. The cures were painful, to be sure. I was personally unemployed twice during Reagan’s years... I nearly lost my home. But, I survived.. and, even prospered, eventually.
If you ever had ANY doubt that we don’t have a Reagan running this year.... just take a look at the answers to the FIRST question in last night’s debate: “Are we better off than we were 8 years ago”. EVERY CANDIDATE said, “NO”... Mitt, of course, answered obtusely, but... even his response equated to.. No.
ARE YOU FREAKING KIDDING ME??? How hard is it to answer that question, EMPHATICALLY YES!!! Of course, some people may not be... but, as a country? Of course we are.
8 years ago, we were at the end of the dot-com bubble and the markets were about to take HUGE losses. We’ve survived that, taken a wicked terrorist hit, and won two wars since then.. and despite all that, we’ve created MILLIONS of new jobs, increased income, increased personal net worth, seen ALL KINDS of innovative new products, seen the dramatic increases in global trade, advances in health care, etc... I could on for days.
Yet, not one of the Republican candidates could think of anything to say except, “Well.... these are hard times”. BS! I’ve lived in hard times... THIS, AIN’T IT!. What we need, is a leader who will tell this country to stop whining, get to work, and enjoy the fruits of the greatest nation in the history of the world.
Whew.... I was just going to type, “Amen”.... guess, I got carried away.. :-)
Thank you... I’m almost moved to tears.
You’re 100% correct here.. I hope you don’t mind, but I’ve cut and pasted that to use in the future...
That freaking "malaise" speech of Carter's. Geez, louis. I listened to that one on the radio and practically had a conniption. It was the most depressingly dispirited pile of crap I've ever heard in my life -- and I've been alive a long time since.
Not only do I miss Reagan, this country misses him more than it can ever know.
I agree. It annoys me when a candidate compares himself to a former president, or to hear a Kennedy [ANY Kennedy] likening Obama to JFK. It is not good rhetoric and is not believable.
Not a problem. I saved that from 2004 when it was printed, so that I could read it to my young son as he grows. If you want to see what Reagan really meant to me and to my entire family, read my FR profile. We were original Reagan Democrats - now all Republican hoping for another Reagan.
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