Extremely intriguing. If you didn’t support worker’s rights enough, you couldn’t be named an agent of destruction against SSSR. I gotta think this over.
But a nitpick: didn’t RR cut his political teeth exposing Communist subjugation of Hollywood trade unions?
I didn’t bring it up. Sam brought it up as an example of what Reagan did right that we lefties foolishly and wrongly opposed. I will continue to contend that funding the Contras was wrong and immoral. That the Sandanistas might eventually have morphed into hardline communists is possible, but made relatively unlikely by the possibility of positive pressure brought to bear on them. Pressure to hold real elections, pressure to allow international observers to ensure they were fair, pressure to accept the results however they came out. All that was done, and was fine. It would have been even more effective if the US hadn’t focused on ostracizing the Sandinistas, basically forcing them to look to Cuba and the Soviets as there was nowhere else to turn.
Funding the Contras, not fine. The Contras were terrorists by anyone’s definition, frequently targetting civilians. The tactics they used make the current insurgents in Iraq look like frigging saints.
There is scant evidence to support that assertion, despite its being one of the underpinnings of Reagan’s vision.
[quote, or they had no connection and support from USSR and Cuba, in which case they become irrelevant to present debate. [/quote]
Already explained. Please read.
Your point being what? That they were still worse than Somoza?
Note that the Sandinistas eventually won, held elections, lost to a different group, and left power. Nicaragua still has its problems but a totalitarian regime hasn’t been one since the revolution.
Remember what happened to Somoza? You could look it up. Now, can you explain in your own words why he deserved US support and the revolutionaries seeking to overthrow him did not? This should be interesting.
Claiming to, perhaps. Finding it and exposing it, no. You could look that up, too.
I disagree. Building up the military required increased government spending, higher taxes, and a huge deficit - all things that many conservatives state they oppose. Reagan would not have betrayed his conservative base if he had decided on a different military/diplomatic strategy in the 1980’s - neo-isolationism. Suppose Reagan had decided to reduce the military, cut government spending, withdraw American commitments overseas, and basically return to the Conservative foreign policy platform of the 1930’s. Reagan could have had it all. Assuming the Soviet Union was due to collapse to its own inherent faults (and there’s been no real evidence offered to say otherwise) it would have gone down on schedule in 1991. Meanwhile Reagan would be looking like a genius for having foreseen the reduced military needs and would have been able to carry out his economic platform as well.
Wonderful what you can achieve by eliminating connections. SSSR has happily collapsed, Sandinistas happily allowed elections, and RR is happily a clueless idiot. Hunky-dory land.
So you’re saying that you support the bombing of medical clinics?
Ah, New Iskander, a clue: the world isn’t always painted in black and white.
In the West Communists were responsible for organizing many a union. They may have had a longer-term agenda, as it were, but that doesn’t take away from their accomplishments.
Now, as to Reagan: the better way of putting it is that he stood with the bosses and with organized crime against a more militant, and clean, union, and defeated it. He painted it in terms of communists vs the good folks, when in actuality it was more like genuine union versus sweetheart corruption:
We Must Keep the Labor Unions Clean
For a far, far more detailed view, including his (Reagan’s) Mafia ties and his work against the interests of the union and for MCA, see the following:
Reagan was a politician, and like most of that scummy breed, he betrayed people left and right to get to where he was.
Referring back to the OP, I’ll just reinsert this link again for the latecomers.
Already noted in 1982 as weak and vulnerable…but still had to be challenged, not just allowed to exist as is. Weakened by previous administrations, Reagan was more than determined to deliver the knockout punch.
Also, at the Pope’s funeral, Lech Walesa was quoted (second hand from CNN) that the fall of communism in Poland was attributed to the efforts of the Pope (50%), Solidarity (30%) and “other” world leaders (20%). I’ve been looking for this quote, but to no avail. The Pope may have gotten things rolling with the gutsy public support of Solidarity to start the dominos falling, and Reagan was only too happy to help the chain reaction along with methods.
Their agenda was to take over, modeled on Lenin’s successful strategy of infiltrating and taking over local Soviets (people’s councils) in Russia just before the revolution. Now, who prevented them to do the same with US trade unions?
Why do you excuse Kirkland for siding with Reagan against Communists in the 80-s but condemn Reagan for siding with the powers that were in the 40-s against Communists? He was a president of SAG, threatened with takeover by Communist front group and he fought them back. Why are you so biased against him?
Here’s just one cite (see ‘The War of Hollywood - Part 3: The Battle of Warner Bros.’):
Whoever you think Reagan was, he obviously believed in what he was doing even back then.
Please note that I am not using the term ‘Communist’ in perjorative sense. Sorrell might have been much better man then any other union bosses. There were many outstanding people in Communist movement. The point is they were blindly working to create authoritarian, undemocratic societies and pave the way for the likes of Stalin. They had to be stopped before too late.
As someone who remembers 1982, the Soviet Union was not widely regarded as weak and vulnerable in Europe. It was the pre-eminent danger of the time. In the U.K. the perception really changed after the defeat of the Soviet-funded (via Libya) strike by the National Union of Mineworkers. Let’s not forget that their leader, Arthur Scargill, addressed rallies in the Soviet Union. We (the British) had stood up for ourselves and defeated the Argentine Junta militarily abroad, and defeated Scargill’s fifth-columnists at home by the rule of law and order. Defeatism turned to optimism.
This is the part I’m disputing. In the long term, his actions in defeating the communists were a good thing for Hollywood. That doesn’t mean he did it because he believed in it (anymore than those who sympathized or actually were communists were doing it because they believed in it). The record shows that he acted in the interests of others besides the union, possibly including the Mafia. As in most real-life disputes, there was plenty of ugliness to go around.
Point being, there’s no evidence, to my mind, that he had in mind anyone’s interests but his own. It looked and looks good on his resume, but it stands in stark contrast to what he did for the rest of his life vis-a-vis the union movement.
It’s like, when playing chess, I can make the same move as a grandmaster would in some situations. Wouldn’t mean that I would beat him though, because what I have in my mind is much different from what he would have in his mind.
Ditto here. He may have acted in the same way that, say, a Lane Kirkland would have, on the surface, but not with the intention of following through for the rest of his life on it. It shows in the connections he made in fighting that fight, and in the actions he took for the rest of his political career. There was no follow-through as far as being pro-union, but there was as far as being pro-MCA, for instance.
Of course, you can provide some cites for this? Cites for Reagan’s Mafia connection?
And do you really think being an anti-communist looked good on an actor’s resume? In Hollywood?
Reagan CLEARLY believed in the cause. To suggest otherwise is to believe that the man spent the last half of his life writing op-eds, giving radio addresses, giving speeches, and campaigning on issues he didn’t care about. That’s ridiculous. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. You got some?
I agree that Reagan was sincere - I just don’t see it as being an important issue. I know I’m in the minority in this, but I’ve never been real concerned about a President’s personal integrity. Apparently it’s part of this whole “character” and “leadership” thing other voters seem to find important. But me - I want a President who knows what the country needs and knows how to get it accomplished. I judge a President by the results he acheived in office.
Naturally, Reagan makes an unlikely hero of union movement. He probably would be the first to chuckle at the suggestion. Yet he made a significant contribution, before moving on to Governorship and Presidency.
And there is a world of difference between opposing the unions, like Reagan and Thatcher have done, and taking over the unions by force, like Communists were doing.