{"id":48985,"date":"2014-12-23T12:00:02","date_gmt":"2014-12-23T18:00:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=48985"},"modified":"2014-12-23T09:21:14","modified_gmt":"2014-12-23T15:21:14","slug":"when-leaders-were-leaders","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=48985","title":{"rendered":"When Leaders Were Leaders"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>33 years ago today, Eastern Europe seemed to be spiraling from crisis into deep crisis.<\/p>\n<p>Poland&#8217;s communist government cracked down on the &#8220;Solidarity&#8221; movement. \u00a0 \u00a0In response, many Poles fled across the friendliest borders they could find.<\/p>\n<p>And Poland&#8217;s ambassador to the US, Romuald Spasowski defected to the US &#8211; a capital offense in that Soviet puppet state. \u00a0 <a href=\"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=7369\">We told that story a few years ago<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>And it was in that moment, 33 years ago tonight, that Ronald Reagan showed what real leadership was. (The beef of the speech starts around 4:00 in)<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/9kiFK6xxE08\" frameborder=\"0\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>When Reagan was in office, bad behavior had consquences; the Polish (and by extension Soviet) governments suffered.<\/p>\n<p>Compare this with the vapid empty suit that&#8217;s currently in office, and the response the suit has had to provocations similar to the Solidarity Christmas. \u00a0Far from Reagan&#8217;s sharp, clear, principled response, Obama has <em>propped up<\/em> dictators like Assad, Castro and Chavez while undercutting the Poles, the Kurds, the Baltic States, the Ukrainians, and other freedom-seeking people around the world.<\/p>\n<p>Compare, contrast, and think for a moment for how far this nation has fallen in 33 years.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>33 years ago today, Eastern Europe seemed to be spiraling from crisis into deep crisis. Poland&#8217;s communist government cracked down on the &#8220;Solidarity&#8221; movement. \u00a0 \u00a0In response, many Poles fled across the friendliest borders they could find. And Poland&#8217;s ambassador to the US, Romuald Spasowski defected to the US &#8211; a capital offense in that [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[314,25,64],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-48985","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cold-war-fact-and-myth","category-history-and-its-making","category-president-obama"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48985","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=48985"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48985\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":48987,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48985\/revisions\/48987"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=48985"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=48985"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=48985"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}