Freedom vs socialism; paychecks vs safety nets; peace through strength; goodness triumphs over evil

I'm getting old and my memory is failing so please correct me where my memory is wrong or if I'm making up memories. Also, please expand where I fall miserably short.

It's my recollection that Reagan was so successful because he was a leader with a vision who promoted strength, freedom, optimism, patriotism and righteousness. And he could communicate his vision with commonsense, humility and good humor. He did not succeed by pandering, evolving and adapting. He brought various factions together by promoting the ideas that freedom was much better than socialism, strength better than weakness, fiscal restraint better than big spending and debt, patriotism and good triumphs over evil and evil empires, and that America's best days were yet to come. He described a shining city on a hill vs national malaise and economic collapse.

He brought together social conservatives (the so-called Christian Right), fiscal conservatives, defense conservatives and even blue collar workers (many of whom were democrats). And he didn't do it by pandering. He did it by communicating truth and traditional conservative values, ie, the founding principles. He promoted the principles of smaller government (constitutionally limited government). Greater productivity through fewer regulations and less government control. Greater opportunity, jobs and prosperity through less government, lower taxes, lower spending, less debt. Better, richer life through freedom vs socialism. More satisfying family life through God and goodness vs evil. And, of course, peace through strength. All with an understanding and appreciation of history, our founding and our national heritage. He promoted patriotism and had an unabashed, unwavering faith in God.

The majority of Americans saw that the country as a whole would benefit through his philosophy of conservatism and strength vs the failed democrat policies of socialism and weakness, and that they would individually benefit under his plan of freedom and prosperity. All boats rise (even blue collar union boats) with the rising tide.

And it turns out that most Americans liked his traditional conservative message. Especially after following the misery of Jimmy Carter's socialist/democrat failures, economic disasters and failures of weak foreign policy (sound like anyone we know).

Now is the time to strike again after Obama and the godless socialist democrats have all but destroyed the country and the economy with their socialism, abortionism, homosexualism, foreign policy weakness, slothfulness, corruption and unlawfulness.

The last thing we need is to evolve, adapt and pander to the lowest common denominator. Peace through strength is still the obvious winner in world affairs. Secure borders and national sovereignty better than open borders, human trafficking, terrorism, smuggling, drug running, gun running, crime, etc. Fiscal strength rather than big spending and economy killing debt. Freedom and prosperity through free enterprise vs socialism and big government control. Abiding by the Constitution and the rule of law vs enacting unconstitutional programs and ruling by executive fiat and corruption. Stronger families through jobs and pay checks vs unemployment or welfare checks. A stronger healthier society and family life with less crime through promoting religious freedom and wholesome Judeo-Christian values.

Our founders had it right when they constitutionally limited the powers of the central government and guaranteed our God-given unalienable rights through the Bill of Rights and left the bulk of government to the states and the people to control locally. Reagan's message and vision was right for America and right for the world. His vision of freedom triumphing over communism was absolutely spot on (even for the Russian people) as well as his message of good triumphing over evil.

We do not need to abandon and evolve away from this vision. We need to embrace and revive it.

You are quite right, our path is not to evolve away from this vision but to embrace and revive it. We should embrace it because it's good for America and good for winning elections.

There are many today who will concede that it's good for America but a recipe for failure at the polling booths. We call them Rinos for the most part but I am more and more coming to call them careerists who have analyzed the the landscape and concluded that the best way to further their careers is to enable the monster-system which fills their constituents' rice bowls even as these careerists loudly deplore the system. Most of them know as we do that this monster-system is hurtling toward a cliff and there will be nothing but broken rice bowls and bitter memories of liberty as the Republic pitches into the void. Nevertheless, they enable as they dissemble.

Ronald Reagan was able to lift men's vision to a higher ideal but also to a practical reality. He succeeded wonderfully at the polls although he was less successful in implementing a permanent restoration of the American dream.

There were many tricks exploited by Democrats, whom I choose to call leftists, which enable them to frustrate the very good policies outlined in your piece. At all costs, Democrats know they must change the subject from liberty and prosperity to other issues. What issues have they been successful with in diverting the electorate away from America's founding principles?

Above all, the left has exploited race as a way of changing the subject. In 2008 a perfect storm coalesced around Barack Obama and all of Reagan's vision was simply swept into irrelevancy by the charisma of the First Black President. We have analyzed ad nauseam on these threads how resort to racialism has enabled the left to shut down debate and proceed with its agenda. Never in American history, even considering reconstruction and the civil rights struggles of the 1960s, has race played so potent but pernicious a role in American politics. We have put a tyrant in the most powerful position in the world and we are virtually impotent to check his depredations.

More generally, the left has invoked race to eliminate all rational analysis of its entitlements programs and it has afforded both the providers and the receivers of government largess a comfortable rationalization which permits that process to go unreformed even as the Republic approaches the cliff. So thoroughly successful has this Goebbels-like big lie concerning racism been invoked by the left that they reap 95% vote from African-Americans and appear on course to approach those numbers eventually among Hispanics and Muslims. The fact that unemployment is astronomical among African-Americans relative to white Americans has done nothing to shake the effectiveness of the left's exploitation of race among this demographic.

But it's not race alone that the left has exploited to mask its agenda. We see the pernicious game of identity politics being played out in feminism, homosexuality, and secularism, to identify just a few. An unwed mother of minor children goes to the polls utterly unconcerned about federal government's fiscal irresponsibility and the inevitability of a crash with its unavoidable consequences for her children. She goes to the polls believing that her children must be protected against their fathers, society, and capitalism by the very government which creates the threats to her children. She is diverted away from reality to a worldview which is utterly destructive of her own interests but she will vote that worldview, just as African-Americans will vote a worldview that virtually guarantees their misery.

If we are to repeat Ronald Reagan success at the polls we must find a way of restoring his vision which is another way of saying we must reintroduce into the consciousness of the electorate Ronald Reagan's worldview and prevent the Democrats from insinuating their diversions of race gender etc.. It is helpful but not decisive that we have the better view, we must also present it as compellingly as did Ronald Reagan.

In addition to changing the subject, the Democrats like to change the forum which, when coupled with the cultural changes you have described, makes it very difficult for Reagan's message to penetrate.

By changing the forum I mean that the left tends to drag issues from the smallest most democratic political unit to the largest least democratic political unit such as from city to State then to federal and on to the United Nations. They also try to change the nature of the forum along the way so we go from a representative system at city level, perhaps a mayor council arrangement, to a bureaucratic entity which may or may not be elected, such as a zoning board or a Housing Authority. As we move up the food chain in size we find the left pushes political questions away from the people off to ever more remote bureaucracies or to unelected judges.

The ideal forum for the left is a totally unelected, supranational bureaucracy with power that extends down to the city level.

I suggest we take a page out of the left's penchant for forum shopping and do a little bit of choosing of forums ourselves but in a wholly constitutional context:

Article V

A process which would place us in a far more sanguine demographic landscape with much better chances to prevail.

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