[Destro]

My thoughts and reflections on the greatness of Ronald Reagan:

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.

[Destro]

Curse my typos!!!

[motife]

"You ain't seen nothing yet!"

[Peach]

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

[Incorrigible]

You are very talented Destro. Given that certain threads get repetitive, I really enjoy seeing your posts outside of that topic. I'm glad you're here on FR and that you have stayed despite your occasional trials!

[Preech1]

My favorite quote.... http://www.thebutterscotchthreshold.com/freesoundz-175.mp3

[nuconvert]

BUMP

[Bob J]

Don't allow the media to spin Reagans death as they did his life. Go to the FR Reagan Vigils post and pledge to organize or attend a vigil in your area.

[MEG33]

A truly wonderful post,Destro..Thank you.

[Brad’s Gramma]

BTTT!!

[joesnuffy]

Excellent post....thank you

[beavus]

"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.)

[El Gato]

August 17, 1992 ..Republican National Convention,.
"When you see all that rhetorical smoke billowing up from the Democrats, well ladies and gentleman, I'd follow the example of their nominee; don't inhale."

[El Gato]

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.

Actually many of them did not support any war against Hitler, they actually favored him. He was after a Socialist and most importantly had signed a friendship treaty with Uncle Joe Stalin, their idol even before WW-II. It was only after Hitler, frustrated at his inability to cow and conquer the United Kingdom, attacked the Soviet Union, did they come to support the war effort. After the war they merely returned to their former ways. Of course RR was never than kind of "leftist", he was Scoop Jackson or Sam Nunn type of Democrat, nothing like the leaders and much of the rank and file of what passes for the Democrat party these days.

[garbanzo]

It was the deep knowledge — and pray God we have not lost it — that there is a profound moral difference between the use of force for liberation and the use of force for conquest.

Never this way shall another pass like this...a grateful country and world will remember you.

[Sapper26]

"A recession is when your neighbor looses his job. A depression is when you loose your job. A recovery begins when Jimmy Carter looses his job." Ronald Reagan (paraphrased)

[Tamzee]

Another...

"How do you tell a communist? Well, it's someone who reads Marx and Lenin. And how do you tell an anti-communist? It's someone who understands Marx and Lenin."

[Tamzee]

And another you don't have, one of my favorites...

"Some People Spend An Entire Lifetime Wondering If They Made A Difference...Marines Don't Have That Problem"

President Ronald Reagan, 1985

[ChadGore]

Re: . . . and more people are employed than ever before in our history.

The same can be said today. The number of working Americans, 138.5 million, is a level never previously attained in our history.

[VOA]

bump

[OESY]

More of the Wit, Wisdom and Humor of Ronald Reagan:

Before I refuse to take your questions, I have an opening statement.

You and I have a rendezvous with destiny. We will preserve for our children this, the last best hope of man on earth, or we will sentence them to take the first step into a thousand years of darkness. If we fail, at least let our children and our children's children say of us we justified our brief moment here. We did all that could be done.

I have wondered at times what the Ten Commandments would have looked like if Moses had run them through the U.S. congress.

Politics is supposed to be the second oldest profession. I have come to realize that it bears a very close resemblance to the first.

Politics is not a bad profession. If you succeed there are many rewards, if you disgrace yourself you can always write a book.

"...I know it's hard when you're up to your armpits in alligators to remember you came here to drain the swamp. (February 10, 1982)

I have left orders to be awakened at any time in case of national emergency, even if I'm in a cabinet meeting.

I am not worried about the deficit. It is big enough to take care of itself.

You can tell a lot about a fellow's character by his way of eating jellybeans.

But there are advantages to being elected President. The day after I was elected, I had my high school grades classified Top Secret.

Above all, we must realize that no arsenal, or no weapon in the arsenals of the world, is so formidable as the will and moral courage of free men and women. It is a weapon our adversaries in today's world do not have.

While I take inspiration from the past, like most Americans, I live for the future.

Life is one grand, sweet song, so start the music.

When the Lord calls me home, whenever that may be, I will leave with the greatest love for this country of ours and eternal optimism for its future.