Posted on 06/05/2004 5:50:46 PM PDT by Destro
Ronald Reagan began his life as an every-man. Because of his humble origins he could talk to the American people in the language they spoke and understood. He did not end his life as an every-man (not every-man becomes president of the USA, or governor of California, or a labor union leader or a Hollywood actor, or a college sports hero).
Ronald Reagan began his political life like most Americans of his generation did. Reagan was a New Deal Democrat and remained so for a long time. But Reagan's greatness what separated him from other Americans is that he had a clarity of vision.
Reagan was a leftist when being a leftist was not unpatriotic. It was just another political system that was presented before the voters for approval. Reagan as a New Deal every-man had the belief that the government should help the people when they needed help and then get out of the way once that help was no longer needed. After WW2 there was a sea-change in the leftist movement in America.
What Reagan and others like him wanted was a state in which the government helped the people stand on their own two feet. The government was there to act the role of a loving parent which feeds and houses and clothes and educates their children till the children can make their own place in the world. Reagan was the first "Reagan Democrat". The New Deal seemed to be this type of helpful system to Reagan's generation and they embraced it. When the times were good government needed to step aside and let the people do for themselves, as personified during the Eisenhower administration.
Reagan's greatness was that his clarity of vision saw this change in the New Deal system arriving. Fist in Hollywood the leftists who were his compatriots went from support for the USSR as an ally against Hitler to Stalinists acting in concert to undermine the American system for the sake of the expansion of Communism. This awoke Reagan's Illinois bred horse sense. These leftists were not the leftists that Reagan knew a decade ago during the 40s.
Reagan saw the New Deal evolving into the Great Society. He saw the government turn from helping people to turning the people into the help and Reagan switched parties and became a Republican. He was a new type of Republican - a new type of conservative for a new era. This new conservative wanted to help people by letting them help themselves by getting the government out of the nanny state business and into the role of benevolent parents.
Reagan's greatest failing was that he failed to shrink the government that had its birth in the Great Society programs of Johnson. The reason for this failure (which few realised) was because the USA was at war and has been in continuos war since the end of WW2. War is the health of the state. Wars expand the reach and power of governments and in war the needs of the few outweigh the needs of the many.
What I mean by this is that during war society takes on the shape of a pyramid (or a spear point if you will) and the top of the point is the element of society that fights the war while the expanding base serves to support those at the top that do the fighting. The Cold War, post Cold Wars and the al-Qaeda war helped grow the government because that is what wars tend to do.
But Reagan allowed enough economic wiggle room through reduction in taxation to explode the American and world economies to the marvels that exist today. The free-market venture capitalism that Reagan unleashed made the PC possible and all that followed. Reagan could not have know this would be the result nor could anyone but that is why Reagan and his like put their faith in the free-market's "invisible hand" and not the economic planning of communism.
Which brings us to Reagan's greatest legacy, the reduction of socialism/communism as a revolutionary force. By this I do not mean a victory pver any nation. The fact that the USSR fell is a minor thing (nations come and go) compared to what Reagan really accomplished - the victory once and for all of the concept of the free-marklet and the conditions needed for it (such as freedom) over the planned economy of socialism - now proven to be a failure. We forget that socialism was a competing ideology with the free-market system for over a hundred years since the mid 19th century. Thanks to Reagan's revolution the free-market won out over socialism for ever. Even those nations that call themselves socialists today embrace a soft socialism more in line with the Roosevelt's New Deal than with Karl Marx and they can barely compete doing that.
That was Reagan's greatess legacy.
Curse my typos!!!
"You ain't seen nothing yet!"
Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn't pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children's children what it was once like in the United States where men were free. Ronald Reagan
We can parse out the typos - ya done good!
Especially with the analogy of the spearpoint!
My favorite quote.... http://www.thebutterscotchthreshold.com/freesoundz-175.mp3
BUMP
Honored - thank you.
I can still remember sitting in class an over the PA came the news President Reagan has been shot. It was a horrible feeling even for a 15 year old kid.
Thank you.
When he was campaigning in '80, I went to one of his campaign events in San Diego. As it was winding up, my friend and I starting walking out to beat the crowd and RR +entourage walked right past us (10 feet or so) on the way to his vehicle. We called to him (Hey Ronnie!) and he waved and winked on his way by.
A truly wonderful post,Destro..Thank you.
For what it's worth, I also saw JFK (as a VERY small boy) from his motorcade on his way to a commencement speech at SDSU. He stood up just as the car went by. I think it was '62 but I still remember it well.
BTTT!!
Thanking me? You just damned me in another post - make up your mind :)
I loved this one and it thought it deserved praise. Well done,indeed!
Excellent post....thank you
"Realize that the doctor's fight against socialized medicine is your fight. We can't socialize the doctors without socializing the patients."
-October 27, 1964
"The Founding Fathers knew a government can't control the economy without controlling people. And they knew when a government sets out to do that, it must use force and coercion to achieve its purpose. So we have come to a time for choosing."
-October 27, 1964
"You and I are told we must choose between a left or right, but I suggest there is no such thing as a left or right. There is only an up or down. Up to man's age-old dream -- the maximum of individual freedom consistent with order -- or down to the ant heap of totalitarianism. Regardless of their sincerity, their humanitarian motives, those who would sacrifice freedom for security have embarked on this downward path. Plutarch warned, 'The real destroyer of the liberties of the people is he who spreads among them bounties, donations and benefits.' "
-October 27, 1964
"Government does not solve problems; it subsidizes them. "
"Government is like a baby. An alimentary canal with a big appetite at one end and no sense of responsibility at the other."
"All the waste in a year from a nuclear power plant can be stored under a desk."
"History teaches that war begins when governments believe the price of aggression is cheap."
"I favor the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and it must be enforced at gunpoint if necessary."
"Of the four wars in my lifetime, none came about because the U.S. was too strong."
"We can not play innocents abroad in a world that is not innocent."
"Listening to the liberals, you'd think that the 1980's were the worst period since the Great Depression, filled with suffering and despair."
-RNC Annual Gala, Feb. 3, 1994
(Of course, according to Kerry, 2001-2003 was the worst period since the Great Depression. The hypsurdity never ends.)
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.