Is America Going Soft? Will this election mark a turning point? Let's hope not.

The Wall Street Journal Opinion Journal ^ | June 14, 2004 | Pete du Pont

[quidnunc]

Since his death a great deal has been written about Ronald Reagan. About his vision and his ability to communicate with regular Americans. About the extraordinary economic growth his tax rate reductions created, and his belief that Soviet communism was an evil empire, not an alternative form of government that must be understood. About his foreign policy leadership that led Sen. Ted Kennedy to eulogize him as "the president who won the Cold War."

But Reagan was something more: a turning-point president who believed that the policy directions of the past were wrong, and that with different policies our future could be far better. We have had other such presidents, Lincoln, Franklin D. Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy. Their elections were turning points in America's policies, as was Reagan's.

Could America be at another turning point in 2004? Another time like the '60s, and '80s when people decided it was time to change the direction in which our public policies were headed? That is the question political scholar Michael Barone indirectly poses in his new book, "Hard America, Soft America, Competition vs. Coddling and the Battle for the Nation's Future."

Following the postwar enthusiasm of the 1950s, America's policies softened. In the '60s and '70s government grew, regulation increased, welfare programs expanded, crime rose while prison populations dropped, schools lowered standards and limited testing, and the distribution of wealth became more important than its creation. As Lyndon B. Johnson said, we must accept "greater government activity in the affairs of the people."

Then came Ronald Reagan with the opposite view, and the '80s and 90's saw a hardening America, one in which liberty was more important than equality, so that expanding markets became more important than expanding government. Welfare was replaced with work, mandatory sentencing drove prison populations up and crime rates down, education began to return to testing and standards, and the creation of greater national and individual wealth became our economic focus.

-snip-

[benjaminthomas]

Can you summarize how he slammed Gregory? I missed that.

[MEG33]

Gregory "challenged" Bush about Iraq being "responsible" for its security saying we(the US) "alone are there to provide that".Bush said as I recall.."You might check with PM Blair in his upcoming news conference about our being alone".

(Of course part of Iraq's responsibility is to ask the Coalition to stay until it can provide for its own security)...The media portrays us as having no allies and being alone"unilateral" it's a dem talking point)

The lack of recognition for Britain and our other allies really upsets me...I cheered.
)

[MEG33]

I have pinged you to the transcript..It's better.

[rmmcdaniell]

OK friend, how did CFR enable the media to block all good news on the economy and Iraq? Did CFR change how Dan Rather and the rest decide what gets on the 6 o'clock news?

I'll admit the media has been hurting republicans for decades. Now the sixty-day gag rule takes out an important way in which conservatives can get our message out. Bush willingly surrendered one of the few weapons against media bias.