Because Reagan lived,
the world is a better place.
Posted on 06/09/2004 4:26:33 PM PDT by KentTrappedInLiberalSeattle
America's greatest president has gone home. God worked through Ronald Reagan (news - web sites) on Earth and now He's taken him back. Reagan is survived by his wife, three children, and the hundreds of millions of people he saved by winning the Cold War. Thanks to him, the United States of America never ceased to be, as Reagan said, "a place to escape to" -- the last stand on Earth.
No thanks to liberals, I might add. More enraging than their revisionist history of Reagan, is liberals' revisionist history about themselves. Now liberals claim they liked Reagan at the time. This is extremely believable -- aren't we all fond of someone who regularly exposes us as liars, cowards and hypocrites? It's just human nature.
In fact and of course, liberals loathed Reagan. Their European friends loathed Reagan -- the protests against our current president are positively anemic compared to the massive protests against President Reagan when he went to visit our dear "allies," whose sorry asses we spent billions of dollars defending against the Soviets for 50 years. Even the moderate Republicans currently trying to insinuate themselves onto Reagan's legacy weren't especially fond of Reagan at the time -- especially when attacking him publicly would get them invites to the tonier Georgetown cocktail parties. Only authentic Americans loved Reagan.
From the descriptions in the media, you would think the reason Reagan was beloved by Americans was that he was an affable fellow who could tell a good joke. That's a description of Bob Dole, not Ronald Reagan.
Reagan was a March hare right-winger. He had enough faith in the American people to know that as long as the facts were clear, they would rise to the occasion and be March hare right-wingers, too. As Reagan himself said, back in 1964: "Our Democratic opponents seem unwilling to debate these issues. They want to make you and me believe that this is a contest between two men ... that we are to choose just between two personalities."
Reagan forced Americans to confront the real ideological divide between conservatives and, as he said, "our liberal friends." But now liberals are trying to muddy the political waters by passing off Reagan's popularity as a result of his personal magnetism. I note that liberals were strangely immune to that magnetism at the time. Only now do they talk about Reagan's outsized personality as if he worked some sort of beguiling magic over the electorate and tricked them into supporting policies they never quite understood.
While Reagan had undeniable magnetism, what set him apart was that he had the courage to speak the truth and trust the American people. In the 1964 speech that launched his political career, "A Time for Choosing," Reagan never smiled. He told no jokes -- though he did say some amusing things inasmuch as he was talking about "our liberal friends."
In the throes of the Cold War -- still hot in Vietnam -- Reagan forthrightly said liberals refused to acknowledge that the choice was not between "peace and war, only between fight and surrender." In words that would have come in pretty handy in Spain just a few months ago, he said liberals tell us "if we only avoid any direct confrontation with the enemy, he will forget his evil ways and learn to love us." All who disagree with the "peace" crowd, he said, "are indicted as warmongers." To this, Reagan said: "Let's set the record straight. There is no argument over the choice between peace and war, but there is only one guaranteed way you can have peace -- and you can have it in the next second -- surrender."
This wasn't sunny old grandpa carrying candy around in his pocket for children. After watching Walter Cronkite's coverage of the Vietnam War in December 1972, Reagan told President Richard Nixon, "under World War II circumstances, the network (CBS) would have been charged with treason."
Reagan quoted "Mr. Democrat himself," Al Smith, for the proposition that the Democratic Party was no longer the party of Jefferson, Jackson and Cleveland, but was now the party of Marx, Lenin and Stalin. (And that was 30 years before they tried to push Hillarycare on us.)
Reagan was a bulldog, completely, implacably right-wing on every issue. He was the right-wing Energizer Bunny. He never quit and he kept beating liberals. He cut taxes 25 percent across the board his first year in office; he walked away from Gorbachev at Reykjavik; he fired all those air traffic controllers -- and wouldn't let them come back even when they wanted to; he gave speeches about "welfare queens" and polluting trees; he nominated Antonin Scalia (news - web sites) and Robert Bork to the Supreme Court; and he enraged grim liberals when he warmed up his radio mike by saying, "My fellow Americans, I'm pleased to tell you today that I've signed legislation that will outlaw Russia forever. We begin bombing in five minutes."
But now they're telling us Reagan was a "pragmatist." Well, not according to him. As he was wrapping up the Republican primaries in 1980 and moderate weenies in the Republican Party were trying to move him to the "center," Reagan said: "No, I'm not moving my positions any. ... I believe the same things that I've been speaking on for years, and I don't see any reason to change."
Thank God he didn't. Because Reagan lived, the world is a better place.
Pray for W and Saint Nancy
bingo............Coulter nails it...
now Ann about the food group meat.....
Tom Daschle put his own spin on why Reagan could get on so well with Democrats - it was because Reagan had once himself been a Democrat, and with that perspective, Reagan could at least speak in a civil tone with Democrats.
Turn that reasoning around backwards. If Tom Daschle had once been a Republican, perhaps then he would have more compassion for his fellow Senators who are Republican, and be able to converse in a civil manner with a Republican President.
But alas, Tom never had that experience, and Republicans shall remain forever a closed book in his read on life.
Of course FDR began the socialism that has brought America to our present decadence. His only claim to greatness is the war against Nazism and Japan, but even that is sullied (in not a small way) by the way he betrayed the Eastern European countries to the Soviet Monster. FDR (and Churchill I might add) was way too accommodating to Stalin and much too complicit with Soviet Communism. Likewise, as I understand it, China was betrayed to the Communist Conspiracy by the Democratic administrations.
No matter how much conservatives might want to admire FDR; the man was indisputably a pure socialist.
This has been a great irritant to me as well; all they give us is the 64 speech (my favorite), the Farewell address to the nation, one clip from the Challenger speech and occasionally the Brandenburg Gate speech. They can't even play the entire Evil Empire Speech!
I grew up during the Reagan years. I was 12 when he was first elected. I remember going to "Rock Against Reagan" concerts on the mall every summer around July 4th. I didn't go because I hated Reagan (I liked him alot), but ther groups playing were really good and it was a HUGE party. I remember reading hate filled articles in the Washington Post & hearing the reporters say horrible things. I also remember asking my Dad why people hated him....he told me the PEOPLE DON'T HAT REAGAN...the media hates Reagan.
I think that he was in a wheelchair. For what reason, I do not know.
That would be such a sad state of self-destructive devolution, that it is understandable why we will probably never meet anyone who has had this experience. Even Jeffords could only stoop to going "Independent".
One can only hope that Daschle can only go "up" from here on out.
Doh, why don't I ever preview a post?
HATE not HAT
Does anyone else remember who said his economics plan was "Voodoo economics" then when he got the opportunity performed his own (read my lips) "voodoo economics" plan?
I started stacking up the top five too, after reading Ann's outstanding column. I'd put them: Washington, Lincoln, Jefferson, Reagan, Teddy Roosevelt.
I keep re-assessing FDR. In my youth, I bought the popular image of him leading us through the depression and WWII. After learning he started Social Security and had many socialists in his government, he went way down. Since then, I've learned SS was originally intended to be self funding like an insurance plan and he really had prescience about WWII. We would have been in a lot worse shape if he hadn't been preparing for it for a couple of years. He's still a mixed bag, but I don't think I know enough to rate him.
Normally I like Mark Steyn's columns better than Ann's, but this she equals or surpasses his. Compare for yourself: Tear down this wall!
Where Pelosi is concerned, I'm guessing it's rigor mortis.
Nothing against Ann, but Laura Ingraham and Rush have been saying this all week on there radio shows.
Also, Joe Scarborough has been the most elegant person on TV when talking about Reagan. I just wish more people would watch his show, instead of Greta Van Sustern. Greta is a tabloid type show.
Fortunately Freepers keep records. 
Posted earlier by adam_az
The only area I thought Reagan was weak was the borders with Mexico. Reagan should have done more to stop illegal immigration. It seems to me, no President wants to put troops on the border with Mexico.
Thats why I say, Tom Tancredo in 2008. He will put troops on the border.
I saw all those liberals in Congress in mourning. Perhaps they really do miss the Gipper. Then again they also know they don't really have any one like him in the American memory. Ann is right in that they're playing a couple of bases short. They have a lot of catching up to do and coming together for President Reagan won't erase the fact they detest and loathe his legacy and innumerable accomplishments that won him a place in the hearts of the American people. And they despise his philosophy that is simply the expression of common sense in the American people. Thank God we haven't lost it.
ROTFL! That struck me as extremely funny.
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