Posted on 06/13/2004 6:24:21 PM PDT by quidnunc
This being a political season, I ought to focus your minds by saying a few words in defence of hypocrisy.
I know that a lot of you think you are opposed to hypocrisy. You want to cast your vote for a straight arrow, a man who sticks rigidly to his word and never breaks promises, a leader of unwavering conviction. This may sound appealing at election time, but it is always a mistake.
-snip-
To understand this fully, watch this weekend's Ronald Reagan memorials. When I think of him, the words that come to mind are those of his best biographer, Lou Cannon: "What made Reagan different was the power of his ideas and his stubborn adherence to them."
That stubbornness did the world little good. At a moment when the world was changing in dramatic ways, Mr. Reagan stuck firmly to a script that had been written in the late 1950s. It sounded good, since it addressed the basic animal desires of pocketbook and physical security, but it became dangerously unmoored from practical reality.
Conservatives like to say Mr. Reagan ended the Cold War, because the Cold War drew toward an end while he was president. Actually, because he refused to see the Soviet Union as anything other than a changeless "evil empire," and because he was so singularly devoted to nuclear expansion, he ignored vast opportunities for change. He almost certainly made the Cold War last two or three years longer than it would have under a more flexible, thinking leader.
The closer you examine the period's history, the more this becomes apparent. American historian Frances FitzGerald, whose Way Out There in the Blue is the most detailed and impartial chronicle of the Washington 1980s yet written, points out the central paradox of the claim that Reagan ended the Cold War: "[S]ince it is the inveterate propensity of Americans to relate the fall of sparrows in distant lands to some fault or virtue of American policy, it went against the grain … to propose that the enormous military buildup of the Reagan years had no role at all in the demise of the Soviet Union."
A myth was created to link Mr. Reagan's tragic inflexibility to the heroic flexibility of Mikhail Gorbachev, in which "SDI [Star Wars] and the U.S. military buildup forced the Soviets to spend more than they could afford on their defences and/or convinced them of the inherent weaknesses of their system."
Summarizing her book's detailed research, she writes, "The evidence for this proposition is wanting." What actually did happen in the 1980s was that "the Soviet economy continued to deteriorate as it had during the 1970s. The economic decline, of course, resulted from the failures of the system created by Lenin and Stalin — not from any effort on the part of the Reagan administration."
-snip-
(Excerpt) Read more at theglobeandmail.com ...
Canaduh....America's hat.
what a bunch of bunk.
You should have told us this was a Gorbasm. Where's the Gorbasm theme music?:)
No, Canada is the piece of bird poop on America's hat.
See my profile. I've got a link to a Baylor University page that shows that leftists were saying the best we could hope for was an uneasy peace with the Soviets.
Closed-minded liberals who don't pay attention to history and the world around them will never understand what Reagan was all about. I still hold out hope for open-minded liberals who seek the REAL truth.
To Canada: "Take off, eh!"
I don't know why anyone posts this kind of crap on FR. Who gives a $hit what this one Canadian thinks. Many Canadians loved Ronald Regan as much as most of we Americans did. There are a number of Regan detractors in this country too. To hell with them all, no matter their country.
Fitzgerald's book is hardly impartial; it brings out all the old Reagan-bashing canards of the left in an attempt to show how he "sold" SDI to the public. It is one of the most biased books I have ever read on Reagan.
Canaduh, where all the Torries went to keep from getting hanged.
Bingo!
What you need to understand though is that quidnunc will take any article (from any source) that makes Canada look bad in any way and post it. For example, this article is taken from the Globe and Mail ... a liberal-biased newspaper.
Obviously the writer was not aware that the Ruskies were so feared Reagan becoming the US president in 1980 that they funneled money into Jimmy Carter's presidential campaign. This fact documented in KGB archives opened in the last several years.
So what foreign interests are dumping money into the 502's that are attacking "W" right now?
Fails at communication? To begin with, I was responding to scooter2's question as to who cares about what one Canadian writer has to say about an American issue. As for the issue of an attack on quidnunc, I was clarifying to scooter2 quidnunc's agenda ... to paint Canada in a bad way at every opportunity. Perhaps I have misread quidnunc's objective ... but I don't think so. I am familiar with their posting habits ... with respect to Canada at least. There was nothing incomplete about my statement.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.