GayPatriot

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Ronald Reagan in a nutshell

by

Like many fans of the greatest domestic policy president of the last century, I’ve been trying to find an appropriate way to remember/honor this great man on the centennial of his birth.

Many have written eloquently about his nature, his background, his political philosophy and his accomplishments.  Others are planning magnificent celebrations.  We here at GayPatriot are putting together a small event in Los Angeles.  E-mail me for details.

Yet, as I remember this marvelous man, two things stand one, first, his love for Nancy.  He was born good, but she made him great.  And the second thing perhaps stands out because of the times we’re in and the solutions his successor (in the White House) has proposed.  In contrast to the incumbent chief executive, Ronald Reagan knew in his heart that Americans didn’t need the heavy hand of the state to get them out of an economic mess.  Indeed, he believed that it was the heavy hand of the state which got them into that mess — and which was preventing them from finding a means of egress.

“Government,” he reminded us in his first inaugural address, ” is not the solution to the problem.  Government is the problem”:

Seems that the ideals which define the Tea Party parallel nearly perfectly those put forward so eloquently by the Great Communicator.

Ronald Reagan had great faith in his fellow Americans.  He didn’t believe in seeking solutions in Washington, D.C., but in the ingenuity of the American people, in factories in Ohio, farms in Iowa, labs in North Carolina and yes, even in garages in California.

The Gipper had confidence in the American ideal, belief in American exceptionalism and was convinced that America’s best days were ahead.  Oh, and, he had a deep and enduring love for Loyal Davis‘s little girl.

Comments

  1. >>>I’ve been trying to find an appropriate way to remember/honor this great man

    Maybe you could find a ‘Silence = Death’ or ‘AIDSgate’ t-shirt to wear. Reagan didn’t address AIDS until 36,058 Americans had been diagnosed with AIDS and 20,849 had died. If he had acted quickly, things might have played out quite differently. His Jesus freak advisors like Gary Bauer wouldn’t let him. They thought all the right people were dying of AIDS and apparently Reagan agreed.

    As far as your itty-bitty government, fiscal conservative argument against the government rapidly responding to a crisis like AIDS: Reagan had no trouble with spending wildly when it came to his ‘War on drugs,’ the heroic invasion of Grenada, covering up the Iran-Contra Scandal, or the Savings and loan bailout to the tune of $160 billion in taxpayer monies. I could go on …

    In terms of his fiscal genius and conservative values:

    During his eight years in office, Reagan increased federal spending by 53 percent, added a quarter of a million new civilian government employees, escalated the War on Drugs, created the “drug czar’s office,” and lowered the value of your 1980 dollar to 73 cents.

  2. I really don’t know why fiscal conservatives love Reagan so much. He raised taxes almost every year he was in office, increased government spending at an unprecedented rate and increased the size of the government. He started the dangerous notion that deficit creating tax cuts are ok simply because they’re tax cuts. He got us started on this out of control spending that plagues us so badly today in tripping the deficit. While the economy rebounded, it resulted in a drastic increase in the income gap, the rich benefited at a much higher rate, leading to an increase in poverty. Yea, he was a great man, but hardly a strict fiscal conservative.

  6. to Auntie Dogma and your lil… oooops I mean your pal Steve Barnes…..

    Granting the exceptions that all generalizations allow for, conservatives believe that those on the left are wrong, while those on the left believe that those on the right are bad…. Having said that, the question then begs to be asked, “Has any spokesman of the Republican party ever said anything analogous about Democrats’ not caring about the suffering of children… or for that matter, liberals not having a conscience?

    There’s an old adage out there that says, “When you don’t confront evil, you hate those who do”.

    So it was that during the 1980s, the left expressed far more hatred for Ronald Reagan than for Leonid Brezhnev. When Reagan labeled the USSR an “evil empire”, liberals around the world were enraged… but their anger at the time wasn’t targeted at the communists.

    Today the left has a similar contempt for those who take a hard line on Islamic terrorists. The liberal media routinely places quotation marks around the words “War on Terror”. That’s because to the left, such a war was manufactured for nefarious reasons.

    Sometimes when you catch a liberal entrenched in his/her political dogma, you can really understand how from it’s very inception, liberalism has always been a secular utopian religion. People on the left are so caught up in their utopian ideology, they believe their way offers the one and only way free of conflict and inequality…. The left believes their future is only a few more government programs away from becoming reality…. And who is it that stands in the way of such perfection? Conservatives. Wow, how could a utopian not hate all conservatives?????

    Hatred of conservatives is so much a part of the left that the day they stop hating conservatives will mark the beginning of the end of liberalism as we know it.

  7. Auntie Nonsense, just how was Ronald Reagan responsible for anybody dying of AIDS? AIDS wasn’t spread by lack of government spending or by Reagan failing to make an official declaration of homosexuality’s goodness. It was spread through intravenous drug use and extreme promiscuity, behaviors millions of gay men chose to indulge in even in the face of a nearly 100% fatal disease. Given that fact, Auntie, just how was Reagan supposed to have stopped AIDS? By assigning government nannies to all gay men to stop them from sleeping around and shooting up?

    Auntie Nonsense, stop blaming Reagan and other “Jesus freaks” for the failure of the gay community and individual gays to act morally and responsibly in the face of AIDS. Reagan was totally right when he said government wasn’t the answer. It certainly wasn’t and isn’t the answer to a disease that’s as preventable by individuals as AIDS is.

  8. AIDS was and is another item in the long list of tragedies liberals exploit for political and personal gain. They sure as shit don’t give a rotten damn about it now and I highly doubt they ever did, beyond milking it for sympathy, money or competitions to “prove” how much they care more than anybody else.

    Now gays make AIDS sound like something to aspire to and bareback porn is growing in popularity. Truly sad.

  11. Hi Cas.

    Can you name a recent president who didn’t preside over an increase in the national debt? Thanks.

    Say AJ,

    the rich benefited at a much higher rate, leading to an increase in poverty.

    So he was responsible for the rise in poverty which began in 1978? I’ll guess you’ll ASSert he had nothing to do with it falling around 1983?

    I give you half of a point for not using the “Decade of greed” lie.

  13. Ah, the usual suspects are in their usual deranged tizzy. Perhaps they would have preferred a world without Ronald Reagan… a world in which tax rates of 70% were levied on incomes as low as $40,000 per year, a world in which the Soviet Union still enslaved half of Europe, a world of permanent American decline and malaise.

    Judging from their support of the Kenyan Marxist, one must conclude that such would in fact be their dreamworld.

  14. Hi TGC,
    “who didn’t preside over an increase in the national debt?” First, it seems strange to query my claim by appearing to imply that Fed Debt rose under every President. I thought the claim was that Reagan was a fiscal conservative par excellence. So, rising debt doesn’t seem to go with the claims being made for Reagan’s conservative bona fides, For that reason, I said nothing about the periods other than Reagan.

    However, its a good question, and to answer your question:
    Since I said that debt rose through the Reagan period, I guess I should be precise:
    Gross Federal Debt went up in Reagan and Clinton’s presidencies, as unadjusted dollars, though more slowly in the second half of Clinton’s presidency. Publicly held fed debt went down after 1997-2000, unadjusted dollars. As a % of GDP, Gross Fed Debt rose from 40% to 56% during the Reagan years. It rose from 56% to 67.3% by 1997, then fell to 58% in 2000, fell slightly to 57.4% in 2001, then rose thereafter.Just publicly held Fed Debt rose from 33 to 42% as a % of GDP during the Reagan years, hit a high of 49.3% in 1994, then fell to 35.1% in 2000 as a % of GDP. It rose thereafter to at least 2007.

    If one looks at Section 1, Tables 1.1-1.4, p21-28, one can see that the budget surpluses occurred through combinations of higher receipts, and lower spending (during the Clinton years, though the tax hikes during the Reagan years helped to increase receipts, even as outlays increased, and cut the size of the budget deficits that the Fed Gov’t was running at the time).

  18. Auntie Hatebag:

    You say Reagan didn’t address the AIDS crisis until so many had been diagnosed. Okay. What exactly should he have done? Break out his magic President wand and say: “Here’s some money for you!!”?

    The only thing he could have done sooner is the one thing that libs would have hated him even more for: “Practice safe-sex, and take responsibility for your own health while you still have it.”

    How has an appeal for personal responsibility ever sat with the liberal grievance mongers throughout the last half century?

    So you can repsectfully stuff your righteous indignation and hatred squarely where the sun don’t shine. And take your little buddy Steve with you.

  19. a simple “none” would have sufficed and you wouldn’t have had to use so much time and energy on bloviating.

    Heh.

    It’s funny how the folks who attack Reagan for deficit spending and debt expansion are the same folks who have no problem with Obama’s massively greater debt, and indeed, attack Republicans who want to cut spending.

  20. If I recall correctly, and please correct me if I’m wrong, Reagan’s CDC tried to close down the bathhouses and treat the disease like any other outbreak, but was fought at every turn.

    Perhaps Steve and Granny Goodness would like to have seen us emulate Cuba’s method of dealing with AIDS?

  21. Gays can’t be held responsible for spreading AIDS, just as other minorities can’t be held responsible for violence and poverty in inner cities. Progressive Dogma dictates that minorities are never responsible for the ills they suffer.

  22. I will take Reagan adding $1.8T to the debt in 8 years while achieving a great good (victory in the Cold War), over Obama adding nearly the same amount *in each fiscal year* while achieving nothing, any day of the week.

    Reagan’s deficits were still the wrong thing to do, of course. But people are right: under the Constitution, Congress decides the budget. The domestically-spendthrift Democrats in Congress were then, as today, a giant factor.

  23. (continued) And likewise, the Gingrich Republicans and the “bond vigilantes” were huge factors in the 1990s relative success in restraining the growth of spending, that Clinton just happened to be standing there for.

    Reagan appears now as a towering figure, not only because he won the Cold War, but because he was so much better a President than any of his successors. It’s sad that Reagain could only cut domestic spending by 1% a year (per Cato: http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/presidential-spending/), but that makes him the least of a bad lot. Looking at the spendthrift ways of his predecessors and his successors, it was an accomplishment.

  25. Hi TGC,
    “Oh, a simple “none” would have sufficed and you wouldn’t have had to use so much time and energy on bloviating.”

    OK, if you want to say so, but I am uncertain if you read my post carefully, or not. The historical record proves you wrong, when we consider debt as a % of GDP. Since you didn’t specify what terms you were using when speaking of “national debt,” I gave you two different measures (as well as measures for publicly held debt).

    Also, if you speak of national debt, corrected for inflation, then you are mistaken again, as it is very clear that the REAL national debt went down in the later part of the Clinton years (and also during some years of Jimmy Carter’s Presidency). The last Republican President to see a fall in REAL national debt was Richard Nixon, in odd years of his Presidency.

    Unless you want to hold on to nominal variables (and why do this?), the real story is different from the one many people believe.

  26. And VK,
    I am not attacking Reagan for his debt record. I understand that liberals have their grievances at Reagan’s record. I only point out that Reagan is lionized as a “true” conservative, when what that appears to mean today is a supply side, cut tax, cut government spending individual (except in a time of national emergency, such as war) at least with regards to economic matters. Reagan did not do this for much of his Presidency. I think he did a lot of good, but he did so in a pragmatic fashion which did not allow ideology to get too heavily in the way. His willingness to back tax increases on occasion is an example of this.

    Also, TGC, I guess you have to give credit to the Democrats in the House for backing his measures when given the opportunity, right?

  27. I guess you have to give credit to the Democrats in the House for backing [Reagan’s] measures when given the opportunity, right?

    First, they often didn’t. Second, when they did, well yeah… they deserve the same credit that you would give a patient for following a doctor’s orders, or a child for letting a parent to yank them out of the way of oncoming traffic. Yes. It’s easy to admit that. Praise to the Reagan-era Democrats for not be *complete* idiots all of the time; for *sometimes* grudgingly allow’s Reagan’s common-sense measures that saved their lives.

  30. (continued) The more so as today’s Democrats probably would not.

    It is easy to forget that some Democrats used to be conservative (remember the phrase “conservative Democrat”?) and pro-America. The Democratic Party went off the cliff at a distinct time (and I left it soon after). First when Al Gore showed in the aftermath of the 2000 election that he did not possess even as much basic statesmanship or maturity as a hated figure like Richard Nixon. Second when in the aftermath of the 2003 Iraq war, some lefties calculated that they could regain power and attention by making up a whole bunch of “BUSH LIED!!!(tm)” Big Lies. The Democrats haven’t been the same, since.

  32. Hi ILC,
    “It is easy to forget that some Democrats used to be conservative (remember the phrase “conservative Democrat”.” Yes, and many of them got voted out for Republicans. Also, there used to be a time when you used to have quite a few moderate Republicans, but they also are an endangered species today…

  33. Cas, that depends entirely what you wish to moderate. The “moderate” Republicans of yesteryear (actually liberals) were part of the crew that, with Democrats, have dug American into the deep fiscal hole it is in. And how much of a push are we really seeing to balance the budget, right now? Or to reform entitlements? Pushes to trim a hundred billion or two at the edges, but not nearly enough to save America. So, at least, fiscally, we continue to have rather too many “moderates”.

    Remember, in the words of one of Reagan’s mentors: extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice.

  35. Hi ILC,
    “Remember, in the words of one of Reagan’s mentors: extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice.” As much as I can understand the attractiveness of Goldwater’s dictum, I have to respectfully disagree with you on that statement.