I Heard It On The NARN

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I mentioned Ronald Reagan’s 1981 speech about the situation in Poland:

It’s as valid and important today as it ever was.

Anyway – Merry Christmas, all!

19 thoughts on “I Heard It On The NARN”

  1. Ronald Reagan, ah, the good old days.
    Nov. 13, 1986: “In spite of the wildly speculative and false stories of arms for hostages and alleged ransom payments, we did not, repeat, did not, trade weapons or anything else for hostages. Nor will we.”
    March 4, 1987: “A few months ago I told the American people I did not trade arms for hostages. My heart and my best intentions still tell me that’s true, but the facts and the evidence tell me it is not.”

  3. Reagan: allegedly, maybe, bent the rules to vanquish communism, freeing hundreds of millions.

    B. Clinton: Definitely bent the rules to get his jeeper honked.

    H Clinton: Most likely broke the rules to conceal illegal contributions to her “family’s” “charitable” foundation.

    Take your pick.

  4. Oh sure Mitch – “vanquishing communism” – as if that’s a big deal. Emery could easily match that with Hillary’s brilliant Russian reset and her husband’s bold stroke of diplomacy in letting Loral’s ‘sensitive missile technology’ go to the Chinese after their chairman Bernard Schwartz had ponied up about a million-and-a-half.

    Merry Christmas to all!

  5. Happy Holidays and Merry Christmas to All!

    Whose woods these are I think I know.
    His house is in the village though;
    He will not see me stopping here
    To watch his woods fill up with snow.

    My little horse must think it queer
    To stop without a farmhouse near
    Between the woods and frozen lake
    The darkest evening of the year.

    He gives his harness bells a shake
    To ask if there is some mistake.
    The only other sound’s the sweep
    Of easy wind and downy flake.

    The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
    But I have promises to keep,
    And miles to go before I sleep,
    And miles to go before I sleep.
    “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” by Robert Frost

    Enjoy the season

  6. MBerg: The Cold War was won because of Pope John Paul II and because of shipyard workers in Gdansk. The burdens of imperialism just got too expensive for the Soviet economy to maintain, which weakened the Soviet Union’s ability to control its satellite countries. When the Soviets tried to liberalize their economy, things got out of hand. And when a few historical accidents happened one night at the Berlin Wall followed by Hungary announcing free movement to Austria, things just fell apart within a few weeks. And by then Reagan was no longer President.

  7. Emery,

    Kudos on the Frost reference. Always liked that one.

    Speaking of evergreen – the liberal orthodoxy never gets old. Or any more accurate::

    MBerg: The Cold War was won because of Pope John Paul II and because of shipyard workers in Gdansk.

    The shipyard workers in Gdansk weathered the crackdown because of aid sent to them by the US, with the aid – overt and not so overt – of the pope, and Lane Kirkland of the AFL-CIO…

    …who, along with Thatcher, were brought into the cause by…Ronald Reagan.

    The left keeps trying to paint over history. I won’t let ’em.

    The burdens of imperialism just got too expensive for the Soviet economy to maintain, which weakened the Soviet Union’s ability to control its satellite countries.

    Right, except the thing is, absolutely none of Reagan’s critics were predicting this in 1980. Or 1986. Or even, in some cases, 1990. Most of the people who’ve said exactly what you’ve said for the past 20 years were saying “the USSR is here to stay” at the time, and thought that the idea that the Soviets could collapse was quaint provincial madness.

    The left just keeps trying to paint over history. I point it out .

    When the Soviets tried to liberalize their economy, things got out of hand.

    And the Russians decided to “liberalize their economy”…why? Out of the goodness of their hearts? Because they saw all the good it was eventually going to do the Chinese?

    Or because Reagan put them under pressure that their system couldn’t stand up to?

    And when a few historical accidents happened one night at the Berlin Wall followed by Hungary announcing free movement to Austria, things just fell apart within a few weeks.

    “Historical accidents” whose context was entirely set up by Reagan’s activities in the previous decade.

    Wait – you think those “historical accidents” could have happened in 1983?

    And by then Reagan was no longer President.

    I’m always amused that the left thinks one of the greatest empires in history was laid low by the benign bureaucrat like Gorbachev, rather than the person who was the motive for Gorbachev being put in power in the first place.

  8. The CIA was saying it was the effective end of Russia while Reagan was stirring up the whole cold war rhetoric. He was a great communicator though, so, people bought it.

  10. So the CIA botched Cuba, Vietnam, the fall of the Shah, the Indian nuke program, the strength of the Soviet military, multiple Soviet and Chinese weapons programs, the rise of Al Queda in Sudan and Saudi Arabia, 9/11, the presence of WMDs in Iraq, the likelihood of an insurgency in Iraq, and Pakistan’s links to the Taliban – but they nailed it in re the collapse of the USSR?

    I suppose it’s possible that the blind squirrel found a nut. But you know where my money is. Reagan was much better at communication than the CIA was at intelligence.

    There are, of course, monuments to the perspicacity of the CIA in Warsaw, Prague, Tallinn and Krakow. No, I made that up. It’s Reagan. But what do they know?

  12. Emery paraphrased:

    “But Reagan was human and flawed, and that cancels any good he’s done.”

    You’re a silly man, Emery, but a merry Christmas to you anyway.

  13. You don’t think Reagan lying to the American public is a problem?

    Sure. To the extent he did.

    I”m a lot less worried about lies told thirty years ago at a time when we had a functional Fifth Estate, that redounded overwhelmingly to the benefit of humankind, than the situation we have today, where the media lies with impunity to support its preferred candidate.

  15. “I”m a lot less worried about lies told thirty years ago at a time when we had a functional Fifth Estate, that redounded overwhelmingly to the benefit of humankind, than the situation we have today, where the media lies with impunity to support its preferred candidate.”

    Does anyone else wonder what will be ‘established truth’ by the end of Trump’s first term?

  17. A very interesting comment MBerg. I think it’s fairly certain that Trump is probably the best at using the media for his own advantage. He received billions of dollars of free coverage just by tweeting or saying something others would consider scandalous or unheard of. We called him unpresidential, and that is exactly what he wanted to hear cause it dominated the news cycles while making it possible to avoid focus on his lack of qualifications and knowledge for the job. On personal scandals that would have brought down the best politician, he accused others of doing exactly what he had done. The media then focused on the accusations and response rather than the accuser. Using Twitter as his primary mode of communications, he could not go into depth, which was to his advantage as they were slogans, not policies. Explanations of what he meant were left to his surrogates. And, if you notice when those explanations were not grounded in fact that strategy was to drown out the questioner. But your comment is interesting because you have learned just what to do and say to counter the opposition. It is not a case of someone thinking they are smarter or are among the elite, it’s all about the strategy, not the facts.

  18. SSOLS Emery puked: “The Cold War was won because of Pope John Paul II and because of shipyard workers in Gdansk.”

    Michail Gorbechev said: ““I take very hard the death of Ronald Reagan, a man whom by fate sat with me in perhaps the most difficult years at the end of the 20th century,”

    I say: GFY SSOLS Emery.

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