Happy Reagan’s Birthday!
By Mitch Berg
It’s Ronald Reagan’s birthday. He’d be 105 if he were alive today.
I’ve been writing about Reagan – who, along with PJ O’Rourke, Solzhenitzyn, Dostoevskii and Paul Johnson is the reason I’m a conservative today – as long as this blog has been in existence, and long before. He was the first Republican I ever voted for – growing up in the left-leaning household I did, Reagan was utterly trayf.
His eight years in the Presidency, like his two terms in California, were not perfect, and I don’t beatify my presidents, even if they’ve been out of office for two and a half decades. His last term wasn’t as stellar as his first, and his last two years were very difficult.
Still and all, he was the greatest president of the second half of the 20th Century. All it takes is one great accomplishment; he had two.
He caused the implosion of Communism. Let no liberal bobblehead tell you otherwise. They’ll say the USSR fell because of Mikhail Gorbachev; they ignore (or, more likely, never dig beyond the left’s chanting points to learn) that Gorbachev only became Premier as a reaction to Reagan.
And he not only saved the economy (for a couple decades), but thanks to the end of the Cold War, he ushered in the greatest period of unmitigated prosperity in history; Bill Clinton cashed the “peace dividend” (and the Gingrich congress prevented him from squandering it), to the benefit of everyone in the world who wasn’t living in complete tyranny.
Some hamsters say “Reagan could never get nominated today!” It’s possible. I have a copy of a George Will book from the middle of Reagan’s second term that hammers the President’s departures from conservative orthodoxy; I can imagine what today’s Mark Levins and Laura Ingrahams would say and do.
But on the other hand, listen to “A Time For Choosing”, his 1964 speech supporting Barry Goldwater, where he “came out” as a conservative. Tell me that wouldn’t fit in at a Tea party meeting:
Anyway – have a safe and blessed Reagan’s Birthday.
February 6th, 2016 at 10:17 pm
I am here because of Reagan.
I am an American citizen because of Reagan.
But as far as I am concerned, he was soft on communism.
February 7th, 2016 at 12:13 am
The most important difference between Reagan and Obama isn’t that Reagan was a conservative and Obama is a liberal.
It’s that Reagan loved his country, and Obama does not.
I don’t think Obama has anymore emotional feeling for the United States of America, positive or negative, then he did for Illinois’ senate district 13, or Illinois as a whole.
February 7th, 2016 at 12:49 am
Great Williamson rant, int he spirit of Reagan:
http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/430898/hillary-talks-about-americans-theyre-peasants
I have a problem with Williamson’s open-borders libertarianism, but I share Williamson’s on disgust with the slimy psychos who become politicians. The shit heels that bribed and lied their way into public office are owed exactly nothing from me.
February 7th, 2016 at 8:25 am
Reagan’s biggest mistake was not following up the collapse of the Berlin wall with the destruction of the Democrat party.
The time was ripe to tie the American left to the crumbling Soviet empire. With the right marketing, the Democrat brand would still be digging itself out of the rubble.
I also believe the Gipper would be an enthusiastic Tea Party leader.
February 7th, 2016 at 8:30 am
Bento, you have it exactly right. Reagan was proud to be President, because he revered America. You could see the emotion well up in him every time he spoke. He was also man enough to admit his failings to the country, which is something we may never see in a President again.
February 7th, 2016 at 1:33 pm
The Hungarians are partial to RR. They built a statue of him in honor of his 100th birthday in 2011. It’s in LIberty Square in Budapest.
Check out Ronald Reagan Statue on TripAdvisor
http://www.tripadvisor.com/Attraction_Review-g274887-d6485990-Reviews-Ronald_Reagan_Statue-Budapest_Central_Hungary.html?m=19904
February 7th, 2016 at 2:44 pm
There are a fair number of streets, squares and monuments in Eastern Europe named after Reagan.
Although, perhaps unsurprisingly, Berlin – the San Francisco of Germany, but also the single city in the world perhaps most affected by Reagan’s real legacy – underwent all sorts of garment-rending over naming a street after him.
We should have let the Russians keep Berlin.
February 7th, 2016 at 5:38 pm
No mention of the 138 people in his administration who were either indicted, convicted or jailed?
No mention of committing treason by trading missiles to our sworn enemy Iran in exchange for cash to illegally fund a rebel group?
No mention of the largest tax cut in US history that left us with $4.1 trillion in national debt?
No mention of 6 years of tax increases to make up for overshooting the runway by $4.1 trillion miles?
You can’t raise the Gipper from the dead. And if he were alive today you would run him out of town as a RINO.
February 7th, 2016 at 8:26 pm
“No mention of the 138 people in his administration who were either indicted, convicted or jailed?”
Nope. Reagan faced an incredibly hostile press and congress. How many Obama administration officials would have been indicted and convicted if the press was as hostile to Obama as they were to Reagan? BTW, the press and the liberal intelligentsia got everything wrong about Reagan. No WW3, no economic collapse, no mobs of fascists summarily executing minorities, pinkos, and pornographers. The Soviet Union collapsed because it could not do the guns and butter thing.
We are in danger of forgetting how wicked and evil the Soviet Union was, and how many of our current global problems are the result of the actions of the Soviet Union.
The one unforgivable crime of the Reagan administration (IMHO) was violating the Boland amendment, and it’s never been shown that Reagan knew that anyone in his administration was, in fact, violating the Boland amendment, though Reagan personally approved actions that pushed its boundaries.
As far as the Reagan deficits go, he admitted, after his two terms were done, that one of his biggest mistakes was trusting congress (in the person of Tip O’Neil) to keep its word on spending.
Part of the reason we are in the fiscal mess that we are in is because one party, the GOP, seems to believe that government will shrink (GOP goal) if you shrink its tax receipts, and the other party believes that government will grow (Democrat goal) if you increase its tax receipts.
They are both wrong. The federal government will grow until it is completely tapped out in its power to borrow, like the Greek government.
February 7th, 2016 at 8:39 pm
“You can’t raise the Gipper from the dead. And if he were alive today you would run him out of town as a RINO.”
Really? The same party that nominated GHW Bush X2, GW Bush X 2, Dole X1, Romney X1, and McCain X 1?
This is a left wing fantasy, endlessly repeated by by left wing pundits. It is a lie.
Where is Bill Clinton’s centrist DLC? Gone. The Dems have no interest in a centrist political strategy anymore. Hillary has repudiated all of Bill Clinton’s centrist positions, and she may still lose the nomination to Sanders, who openly embraces socialism.
February 7th, 2016 at 9:32 pm
Reagan supported Volcker’s painful and ultimately successful policy because it enabled him to graft onto it a narrative about how tax cuts in general, and his tax cuts in particular, were the secret to future economic prosperity. He frankly stole the rightful credit for the recovery from Volcker with a specious line that the improvement was almost entirely due to his taxation policies. Reagan never let the truth get in the way of a good story, and his rich supporters have been parroting his falsehoods ever since.
February 7th, 2016 at 9:32 pm
“You can’t raise the Gipper from the dead. And if he were alive today you would run him out of town as a RINO.”
People keep saying that. And I tell them to listen to “A Time For Choosing”, and tell me what part of the Tea Party platform it disagrees with. I never get an answer.
No mention of the 138 people in his administration who were either indicted, convicted or jailed?
Was it their birthday yesterday?
No mention of committing treason by trading missiles to our sworn enemy Iran in exchange for cash to illegally fund a rebel group?
The left’s definition of “Treason” is as stretchy as it is comical. There was no war with Iran.
No mention of the largest tax cut in US history that left us with $4.1 trillion in national debt?
Well, no – it was Tip O’Neill’s welching on social spending cuts that caused the debt.
And the debt was paid back with interest in the ’90s, thanks to the Peace Dividend.
No mention of 6 years of tax increases to make up for overshooting the runway by $4.1 trillion miles?
The tax increases were 1/4 of the tax cuts, and happened at a time when the economy was humming along, not in the depths of the worst recession since the thirties.
Everything the left says about Reagan is baked wind, EI.
February 7th, 2016 at 9:56 pm
Reagan’s legislative accomplishments were compromises with Tip O’neill, and Clinton accomplished more with Newt than with the Democrats. The American system works best when the ideologues can’t ramrod their poorly thought out reforms through, and are forced to hammer out the details.
February 7th, 2016 at 10:42 pm
Reagan had two priorities: vanquish Communism, and bring the economy back from the precipice.
The was criticized from the right and the left for avoiding doing all else.
It’s a feature, not a bug.
February 8th, 2016 at 12:10 am
There are times, Emery, when I know that whoever writes under your moniker is much younger than I am.
This is one of those times.
You don’t seem to understand how crappy life was in the US, between 1972 and 1980. Low growth, with lower growth to come. The 1970s was an era of limits, unequaled until Obama took office.
You have a very weak understanding of economics.
You don’t understand the basics. When you write about economics, you write from the POV of a person who thinks they know economics because they read a business magazine.
The wealth of the modern world is built on the idea of economic growth, not just current world production. Economic growth, not current global wealth, is what keeps the Malthusian demons at bay.
If you want to reduce the world to savagery, get every individual and every nation fighting for a piece of an economic pie that cannot grow. Every extra dollar you make will, by definition, be taken from someone else.
February 8th, 2016 at 12:54 am
We really do seem to have descended to a particularly stupid region of Hell. From an article on Hemingway from The Daily Beast:
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/02/06/ernest-hemingway-s-adventures-in-alcohol.html
Uh, no.
Drinking with ‘the people’ in ‘one of New York’s hip downtown cocktail joints’ would never have been a Hemingway thing. Drinking alone in a boat or a bar, maybe.
Hip joints exist to exclude the people. Hip joints are not known for who they accept, but for whom they exclude. Hemingway drank alone, with friends, or al fresco, or in seedy bars that were not popular.
I doubt that the writer of The Daily Beast article has actually read any Hemingway.
The other thing that annoys me is the entire concept of The Daily Beast. It was named (by Tina Brown) after a fictional gazette in an Evelyn Waugh novel.
Jesus, don’t they get Waugh? Waugh hated modernism. In Sword of Honor the Waugh stand-in lead character (Hugh Crouchback) gives Blighty the middle finger after it allies itself with Stalin in WW2 because England was surrendering to modernism and its horrors of social regimentation.
Jeebus I think that I am the last liberal scholar in America.
February 8th, 2016 at 5:06 am
Jeebus I think that I am the last liberal scholar in America.
Doing the work that no one else wants to do.
February 8th, 2016 at 5:26 am
Bento;
Totally agree with your assessment of EmeryIncognito.
The Democrats have more of the blame for all of the economic problems this country faces today than does the GOP, yet they never face facts. Tip O’Neill was one of their more illustrious lying, spendthrift idiots and he really stuck a knife if Reagan’s back more than once.
February 8th, 2016 at 8:37 am
You don’t seem to understand how crappy life was in the US, between 1972 and 1980. Low growth, with lower growth to come. The 1970s was an era of limits, unequaled until Obama took office.
I’m finding that is something hard to explain to “kids” – anyone under 45 – today; how genuinely awful things were back in the seventies.
“Worse than 2008-2011?”
In some ways, yes. Over the course of a decade, the US went from going to the moon to “whip inflation now” and begging Iranians for our people back and our President, in the infamous “Malaise” speech, telling us the best days were over and we’d all have to start tightening our belts.
When the movie “Miracle” came out, it was interesting talking with, and sometimes watching, people who saw the film’s opening montage ; you could see the people who remembered the hopelessness, stagnation and cultural malaise, and those for whom it was just pictures on a screen.
February 8th, 2016 at 8:54 am
As time goes by it’s easier and easier for those who propped up Reagan to craft larger and larger lies about his “greatness”. It is patently clear that today’s Republican party would impeach a Democratic President who committed the same acts (Illegally selling TOW missiles to Iran, Illegally funding the Contra terrorists) as Reagan. And let’s not forget the Beirut Embassy bombing. By pulling the United States out after the Marine bombing in 1983, he showed Islamic Fundamentalists worldwide how to “beat” the U.S.
February 8th, 2016 at 9:01 am
As time goes by it’s easier and easier for those who propped up Reagan to craft larger and larger lies about his “greatness”.
Well, no. As more and more of the electorate who weren’t there start absorbing more of the bullshit the media and academia prattle about the era, it’s actually harder and harder to tell the truth about his accomplishments and be heard.
It is patently clear that today’s Republican party would impeach a Democratic President who committed the same acts (Illegally selling TOW missiles to Iran, Illegally funding the Contra terrorists) as Reagan.
Two words for you: Fast and Furious.
Your point has been weighed and found wanting.
And let’s not forget the Beirut Embassy bombing. By pulling the United States out after the Marine bombing in 1983, he showed Islamic Fundamentalists worldwide how to “beat” the U.S.
Reagan made his mistakes. Every few years we have to tell a new generation of people “we knew he made his mistakes at the time”.
Every president does. The difference is, Reagan’s accomplishments dwarfed the shortcomings.
Which is why you all keep trying to change the subject.
Which is: worst recession since the Great Depression: Ended. Cold War: Won.
All else is wind in sails.
February 8th, 2016 at 9:30 am
Nuclear North Korea?
Put that down to the Soviets.
Nuclear Iran? Put that down to the Soviets as well.
If it weren’t for the Soviets, we would have had Chang Kai Sheck running China instead of the mass murdering Mao Tse Dung.
Without the Soviets, we would not have had a Vietnam War or a Cambodian Genocide. We would not have had the Taliban.
Needless to say, the Soviet Union’s greatest supporters in the US weren’t workers. They were intellectuals.
February 8th, 2016 at 9:50 am
Amazing how EmeryTheAntiSemiticSoci@list is stuck on talking points and is repeating them ad nauseam in the face of being p0wned over and over again. Him thinking that repeating shit make it golden is just further proof that he indeed has shit for brains.
February 8th, 2016 at 9:51 am
“They were intellectuals.”
or more correctly a large cadre of people like DG, Emery, and Emery Incognito who imagine they are intellectuals and thus members of the cognoscenti who rightfully should be defining the parameters of life for the rest of us.
I see TMT went titsup in the courts (I know you can’t talk about it BG) and yet the likes of DG are always screeching about the anti-science nature of the right – go figure!
February 8th, 2016 at 9:58 am
Ok, I know I’ve mentioned my recent travels in Eastern Europe enough already, but the pig-headed blindness of folks like EI shows that one thing can’t be repeated enough: Communism is a deadly, soul-sucking, culture-eating, nation-killing horror. I know there are gross excesses and evil greed in the capitalist system, but there’s a common desire (and generally the opportunity) to get some pie for oneself. Under Stalin, the system’s grand desire was enforcing unmitigated misery; even the “winners” in the system suffered for it. The Hungarians and the Czechs remember it well and fear that it’s return is never very far away. I can barely imagine how the Poles feel, having been even deeper in the bowels of the beast. I think a lot of the “F-you very much” attitude of Poland and Hungary to the EU right now is based on their memory of being sold out by the West twice and the fatalistic certainty that it will happen again. In this country we have the beknighted luxury of viewing Communism theoretically; it is sobering to see its effects first-hand.
February 8th, 2016 at 10:58 am
“I see TMT went titsup in the courts”
Anti-colonialism. Another movement brought to you by the Soviet Union.
This is informative:
Why I gave up African studies
http://motspluriels.arts.uwa.edu.au/MP1600gk.html
The author (Gavin Kiching) is a white Australian academic who worked in African Studies. He is a Marxist, and he has reluctantly come to the conclusion that African Studies is crap. It cannot explain the shitty world of post-colonial Africa. Marxism (as usual) has been terrible at explaining history and human relations, which, of course, is supposed to be what Marxism is best at. Kiching is at a loss. As an academic, he has one tool that he can use to explain how Africa works, that tool is Marxism, and it clearly does not explain how Africa works.
Kiching notes that in every case, the one-time colonies in Africa became worse by virtually every measure after they became independent. The one-time colonies saw human rights deteriorate and their economies collapse. Kiching notes the irony of nearly all African Studies academics being non-Africans, while the few Africans working in the field are attached to odious regimes.
February 8th, 2016 at 11:18 am
Enough with the Reagan revisionism. In truth, the economic policies he championed (like a puppet on a string to the coterie of California multi-millionaires that invented the myth of this B-grade actor) wreaked havoc on this country until the ascendancy of yet another Democrat president who has spent his entire time in office mitigating that disaster we know as “Reaganomics.”
His foreign policy? Reagan was lucky that Gorbachev was on the other side; it was he, not Reagan, who made all the overtures. These had nothing to do with Reagan and everything to do with the continuing decline of yet another mega-communist state. Actually, the wall could have come down years earlier if not for Reagan’s intransigence.
As for Reagan the brilliant strategist and world-player: it is sufficient to note that a school child is his sole communicant throughout his political life. She was his true intellectual equal.
February 8th, 2016 at 11:28 am
“Enough with the Reagan revisionism. In truth, the….”
Wow talk about an impoverished fantasy life
EI you have, of course, no way to substantiate your claims with valid research by yourself or others do you? BTW citing DG’s website does not constitute a valid source.
February 8th, 2016 at 11:42 am
EI,
The funny part is, you probably think I haven’t heard this – all of this – dozens of times since the late eighties.
There is not a single word you’re writing that hasn’t been said for a quarter century, now. And every word of it is just wrong.
Enough with the Reagan revisionism. In truth, the economic policies he championed (like a puppet on a string to the coterie of California multi-millionaires that invented the myth of this B-grade actor) wreaked havoc on this country until the ascendancy of yet another Democrat president who has spent his entire time in office mitigating that disaster we know as “Reaganomics.”
Without the “Peace Dividend”, which was entirely Reagan’s doing, and the Gingrich conservative revolution that followed in Reagan’s wake, the Clinton years would have been very different, and much less prosperous.
His foreign policy? Reagan was lucky that Gorbachev was on the other side; it was he, not Reagan, who made all the overtures.
People on the left keep acting like Gorbachev prodded Reagan. They ignore, or were more likely never taught, the fact that Gorbachev was the Poliburo’s response to Reagan, not the other way around. Reagan’s military buildup, his leadership of NATO to do the same, his support (overt and covert) of independence movements in Poland and elsewhere, and the invasion of Grenada (which the west idiot elites treat as a joke, but which Anatolii Dobrynin’s memoirs show was an epic wakeup call for the Politburo) convinced the powers that be that Reagan was calling the USSR’s bluff on threats and force.
These had nothing to do with Reagan and everything to do with the continuing decline of yet another mega-communist state.
Dinesh D’Souza tore this particular assertion to shreds in his bio of Reagan. While in 1993 everyone knew the USSR was always going to collapse, many of those same figures, from the seventies all the way through to as late as ’91, were on the record saying the USSR and the “Second World” were here to stay, and possibly healthier than the First World in their own way. And almost to a person, they were unified in declaring Reagan crazy for forecasting the USSR’s demise.
You’re participating in an Orwellian rewrite of history, EI.
Actually, the wall could have come down years earlier if not for Reagan’s intransigence.
That is pure fantasy.
As for Reagan the brilliant strategist and world-player: it is sufficient to note that a school child is his sole communicant throughout his political life. She was his true intellectual equal.
You, EI, have been snookered and played for a fool. There’s no gentler way to put it. You’re regrettably far from alone.
February 8th, 2016 at 11:47 am
A couple of quotes speak to me clearly of the kind of man Reagan was:
“I’ve noticed that everyone who is for abortion has already been born.”
“Government’s view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it.”
“We don’t have a trillion-dollar debt because we haven’t taxed enough; we have a trillion-dollar debt because we spend too much.”……….(up to 19t now!!)
February 8th, 2016 at 11:49 am
“Actually, the wall could have come down years earlier if not for Reagan’s intransigence.”
Actually, the wall would have come down decades earlier if Western intellectuals didn’t build careers on apologizing for the Soviet Union and demonizing the United States.
No one — and I mean no one — who slights Reagan as Emery did in that sentence predicted the downfall of the USSR under any circumstances. It did not happen. Many of them did predict the economic collapse of the US, of course. But the people who believed the US was doomed because of the contradictions inherent in the capitalist system never saw the end of the USSR coming.
Intellectuals are predictable. Tell them that they should be in charge instead of philistine businessmen and know-nothing politicians and bourgeois, and they will defend your mass murder of children.
One of the funniest things I’ve read is a letter from Ezra Pound to his bourgeois father begging him for money so he could stay in Europe and not have to return to teaching schoolkids in Idaho or Indiana.
February 8th, 2016 at 11:58 am
letting Pound out of St Elizabeths was a mistake.
February 8th, 2016 at 12:11 pm
A bullet for treason in 1945 would have been more appropriate.
http://blogs.weta.org/boundarystones/sites/blogs.weta.org.boundarystones/files/Ezra_Pound_1945_May_26_mug_shot_300.jpg
February 8th, 2016 at 12:45 pm
In the 1920s, Pound managed to arrange a meeting with Il Duce. Pound expressed his admiration for fascism, for Mussolini personally, and outlined his plans for a literary work that would glorify both.
Mussolini was supposedly befuddled by this American. He dismissed Pound as another wannabe client looking for a paycheck.
February 8th, 2016 at 1:08 pm
No amount of fisking and p0wnership will get through ETASS’ thick Neanderthal skull to make him learn.
February 8th, 2016 at 1:08 pm
The funny thing is that Pound was truly a great poet. From his Canto 1:
February 8th, 2016 at 3:09 pm
EI actually believes that the “Wall” could have come down earlier? Erich Honecker was going to let his subjects see the Ku-Damm close up without the Stasi being able to drag them back?
Sorry, buddy, but I was walking the Ku-Damm in August 1989, and I walked through the Alexanderplatz the next day. No way in freaking H**** was Honecker going to risk East Germans getting a taste of freedom.
February 8th, 2016 at 5:21 pm
In short, if you believe this, how can you also believe that? The answer is that the realms of belief supposedly existing in a condition of opposition and conflict are, at least to some extent, discrete. What you believe in one arena of human endeavor may have no spillover into what you believe, and do, in another.
Thus, for example, you may have assented to an argument that calls into question the solidity of facts, but when you’re not doing meta-theory, you will experience facts as solidly as the most committed and polemical of empiricists. In doing so you will not be inconsistent or self-contradictory because the question of a belief in facts arises only in the special precincts of philosophical deliberation. In everyday life, we neither believe nor disbelieve in facts as [a] general category; we just encounter particular ones in perfectly ordinary ways; and any challenge to one or more of them will also be perfectly ordinary, a matter of evidentiary adequacy or the force of counter examples or some other humdrum, non-philosophical measure of dis-confirmation. The conclusions we may have come to in the context of fancy epistemological debates (a context few will ever inhabit) will have no necessary force when we step into, and are asked to operate in, other contexts.
— Stanley Fish
February 8th, 2016 at 8:15 pm
When I see the name of Stanley Fish, I reach for my revolver.
February 8th, 2016 at 8:17 pm
Mure, G. R. (1958). Retreat from truth. Oxford: Blackwell.
February 8th, 2016 at 8:29 pm
Fish is laboring the obvious; outside the precincts of epistemology and philosophy, we never discuss facts. What we do instead is argue, and arguments are ruled by logic, not facts. Saying that a thing cannot be both true and false is not a statement about facts, it is a construct of language.
February 8th, 2016 at 9:17 pm
IE,
You’re deflecting.
February 9th, 2016 at 8:05 am
Somehow EI’s comments bring to mind the proverb we quoted in college; if you can’t blind them with brilliance….
February 9th, 2016 at 9:24 am
bike, yet more proof of contents inside of eTASS thick skull.