I interpreted it as telling him to shut up. If I misinterpreted it, I apologize. Feel free to tell him to stuff it, that’s cool.
C’mon! Is there anybody with experience in these boards who did NOT expect a lot of overwrought, albeit exceptionally pleased-with-themselves Reagan bashing when the man finally passed? If you’re upset about it, then your just a n00b. 
I take no pleasure in the death of Ronald Reagan, though I am glad that he no longer has to suffer from Alzheimers, and now maybe his family can resume their own lives.
On the other hand, I know I’ll be nauseated at the “historical revisionism” we’ll be getting over the Reagan legacy, and will have to spend the next few weeks forcing myself not to shout out “voodoo economics!”, “Iran-Contra!”, and “Nancy’s astrologer!” whenever some idiot tries to equate Reagan as “the greatest President ever.” :rolleyes:
And if Carter had been reelected there would have been no 9/11. (I know next to nothing about the history of the Mujahadeen, but it sounds like you are conceding this point.) Blaming Reagan for the outcome of his actions is not expecting leaders to have 20-20 hindsight but rather to possess a bit of wisdom. Arming and funding terrorists leads to more terrorism, which eventually will come back to bite us in the ass. You don’t have to be a psychic to know that.
If Carter had been elected, we have no idea what would have happened in the middle east 20 years later. Perhaps it would have been better, perhaps far worse. Or perhaps it would be irrelevant because we’d all be radioactive dust today. Speculating on what would have happened is futile. We know what did happen. Since 1950, the U.S. pursued a policy of containment and coexistence with the Soviet Union, and for 30 years they coexisted. Reagan pursued a policy of aggressive engagement, believing that the Soviet Union could not survive it and would collapse, and within 10 years, it collapsed. Now there’s an attempt to deny that linkage, but it won’t fly. Just watching the news and reading the papers, it’s become a fairly universal belief that Reagan had a lot to do with ending the cold war. Except on this board, of course.
Quite a few Americans want it (I sure do), but you have a point it isn’t all that popular of an idea. The one real beef I have against Clinton is that he abandoned the idea of national health care. Clinton was to those who wanted national health care what Reagan was to the religious right. Clinton sold out those who wanted national health care, as Reagan did with the religious right. I’m still shocked how many on the religious right today think well of Reagan. HOW could they miss the fact that Reagan spent almost no political capital trying to advance their agenda? Reagan may have tossed in a blurb about a constitutional amendment against abortion. However, he sure didn’t do anything significant to try and make it happen.
And you believe everything you read in the papers??? You are confusing correlation with causation. Have you forgot the Soviets attacked Afghanistan before Reagan got in office, and that ended in military defeat for them? The Soviet military was pathetic. Reagan just lied claiming this wasn’t the case.
It’s a fairly universal belief in the US that Saddam Hussein was involved in 9/11. That a lot of people believe something that isn’t true has absolutely no bearing on its truthfulness.
Note I am not at this moment commenting on the truthfulness of the assertion af Reagan’s role in the collapse of the USSR; I am commenting only on your “scads of people believe it, it must be true!” defense of it.
gobear, I repeat.
And what do you mean that Reagan ensured that you’ll never get national health insurance? Was there a constitutional amendment that I missed?
I’m going to resist commenting on Reagan’s domestic policies, except to say that I’m glad he wasn’t running our country (insert bad joke here about Mulrouney and Reagan’s close relationship).
But I do think the world’s worse off for his foreign policy decisions – for Iran-Contra, for his approach to Afghanistan especially – for his cowboy politics, for his Manichean view of the world. He’s left a legacy to the world, and it isn’t a pleasant one – Reaganomics/“voodoo economics” has been repackaged a dozen different times, renamed and resold, and is now the way a fair number of countries do business.
The race to eulogize the man as some sort of hero is terrifying, and revisionism at its worst. Ron Reagan, the great actor, who spent his political career playing one of his war heroes on the world stage, is now playing the role of the great leader and hero president, gone too soon. And it’s still not true.
“To the living we owe our respect. To the dead we owe only the truth.”
– Voltaire
Sam:
I don’t really know where to start.
Who, specifically, do you mean when you use the word “left,” Sam? Do you mean the Communist parties in Europe and the US? European Social Democrats? American Democrats? Who?
I don’t know about Canada, but I grew up in the States, went to college during the Reagan years, and was very active in protests against his administration’s policies. I was certainly a member of the left. NO ONE I knew thought that the Soviet Union was in any way superior to the West.
You hear what you choose to hear, Sam – as I am about to demonstrate to you once again.
Can you provide any evidence at all for these assertions?
Yes, but your definition of “Soviet cheerleader” includes anyone slightly left Barry Goldwater, apparently.
Afghanistan was widely regarded as terrible strategic misstep on the part of the USSR, and clearly revealed exactly how weak the Soviets really were, militarily speaking. And what in hell does Vietnam’s communism have to do with this topic?
Yes, detente. That’s not the same as saying that it was generally believed that the Soviet Union was on the verge of “winning” the Cold War, is it? Nor is it the equivalent of claiming that the Soviet Union was “superior” to the West, is it?
No, but you were around back then. You should remember that the Right claimed that SDI was a purely defensive project.
And, again, I disagree with you, and challenge you to provide evidence that the USSR felt in any way “threatened” by Reagan’s idiotic – and thoroughly unrealistic – SDI program.
Indeed. I believed then, and I believe even more strongly now, that the Reagan administration’s support of those terrorists was catastrophically short-sighted. Again, I want to point out to you that you are praising Reagan for his support of terrorism – the exact same reason for which you condemned Saddam Hussein, and promoted the invasion of Iraq.
The “liar game?” When have I ever called you a liar?
Once again, to reiterate: you hear what you choose to hear, Sam, and, apparently, see what you choose to see.
But I don’t mind repeating. Here are three direct quotes taken from Reagan:
Unfortunately, americanpresident.org no longer maintains an “In their own words” page of quotes. However, if necessary, one can find these quotes widely reported. Google is your friend. Here is one “unbiased” source.
I presented these quotations in the OP of that earlier thread. During the course of the debate I asked you several times to recant your claim that they were false. You never did so. I present them now again, with linked reference.
I find it extremely disrespectful of you to paint all of Reagan’s opponents with one broad brush, and ridicule us as if we all held opinions that belong the left’s lunatic fringe. And you play this trick constantly, Sam.
And I’m not “parsing” your words; I can only read what you write, and respond to it as such. For example:
Here, reasonable opposition to Reagan’s decision to position cruise missiles in Europe is reduced to “a visceral reaction from the peace-at-any-cost crowd.” Is it possible, Sam, that this characterization does grave disservice to people who:
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thought through the issue carefully;
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do not support “peace at any cost;” and
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decided that they could not support Reagan’s actions?
Or are we all just a bunch of tree-hugging “Soviet cheerleaders” in your book?
Oh go to hell, you pompous Canadian blowhard. If you want to risk your own children, be my guest. I don’t want to risk mine, thank you very much, and can respect a German father who feels the same way – even if I might disagree with him.
No, you made the claim. You back it up.
Or, of course, on the other hand, the collapse could have come earlier. We’ll never know, since we don’t have a time machine and we can’t experiment with history.
So, as far as it goes, the above is little other than an article of faith on your part.
Yes, I misunderstood you and drew incorrect conclusions from your arguments. My bad.
Well, except for the CIA and the American War College, each of which had issued reports between 1979 and 1981 indicating that the Soviet Union could not sustain itself for more than 12 years. (Its later collapse in 9 years was a surprise, but the collapse had been accuarately predicted.)
Most people agree that supporting Afghani freedom fighters was a good idea. Reagan’s people chose the one group that had a vocal hatred of the West–a point about which the Reagan administration was warned–rather than supporting several other groups who were available. They deliberately armed the people who would prove the most hostile to the West in future years.
Oh, yeah. The one that he announced to Gorbachev in Reykjavik that he would deliver to the Soviets, only to have his staff hurriedly deny his claim.
I have never seen any evidence outside pro-Reagan apologists that indicate the Soviets believed that Star Wars could work. We knew it couldn’t, why should they be less astute than we were?
If we get to read Gorbachev’s diaries someday and find him trembling in fear, I may be persuaded otherwise, but there is no legitimate support for the idea that SDI did anything but retard U.S. government support for genuine science while helping to roll us into huge deficits.
Clearly? I suppose you clearly think America is really weak militarily today as revealed by the consistant insurgence in Iraq.
Mr. Svinlesha: Look, I’m never going to convince you that Reagan was a huge factor in ending the cold war, and you’re not going to convince me otherwise. I’ve been studying the issue for too many years, and I was too intimately involved in the entire debate while it was happening, and I suspect you were too.
As a way of throwing you a bone, though, let me offer two things. First, that “LIAR!” comment was tongue in cheek. People have been calling me a liar for trivial things recently, and I thought you’d get the reference (specifically, Hentor the Barbarian’s repeated upper-case “LIAR!” comments over choices of phrases). After reading my message again, I don’t think it comes across at all in the humorous spirit I intended. In fact, it sounds pretty snarky. My apologies.
Second, I want to point out that Reagan took a lot of heat from conservatives as well as liberals over his Soviet Union policy. When he at first pressured the Soviets with harsh rhetoric, the left was very upset. But later, when he started working with Gorbachev and agreeing to arms reductions and other accomodations, the right attacked him with a fury. George Wil, Buckley, and lots of others were all over him for going ‘soft’, and luckily he didn’t listen to them. And I have to say that I was one of the ones worried that he was going too soft. Reagan felt that Gorbachev was in a fragile situation, and once he had a guy he could ‘work with’ he was careful not to put him into a situation where he might get yanked and replaced with a hard-liner. Reagan was right, and the conservatives were wrong.
I thnk Reagan’s later years played a far bigger role in making sure the Soviets didn’t collapse into chaos and civil war than his earlier years played in making them collapse at all.
It’s nice that Americans were inspiring by Reagan’s sabre-rattling, and that certainly serves to give people a good feeling. But I just don’t buy the “Reagan said boo and they fell over in fright!” theory of world and economic history. Reagan did some good things and some bad things and undoubtedly contributed to their fall and the way they fell (which is really the more important thing) but the Pope did more tangible things to bring about the downfall of the Soviets that we can actually point to as having a real effect.
I was 29 in 1980. Had been married for a year. Had a decent paying job. Plenty of hours. Even a little overtime now and then. Lived in a nice little place. Had no trouble providing for me and my wife.
What mess?
Didn’t have a mortgage, I take it? 16% interest rates were a massive burden on the middle class. My first mortgage was at 11.75%, and that was brutal. I can’t imagine paying near credit card rates for a home mortgage.
And I hope you won’t be claiming that today’s economy is ‘terrible’, because in every measure I can think of 1980 was not only worse than today, but much, much worse. Unemployment, inflation, interest rates, GDP growth, tax rates, you name it. All were at near-crisis levels. Even gas prices were higher than they are today in constant dollars.
The good news is, by the end of the Reagan era most families couldn’t afford homes… they were lucky to have jobs. Anyway, they didn’t have those oppressive mortgages!
All the figures I’ve seen put our unemployment rate in the 1980 at slightly lower than our current rater.
You’re definitely right about inflation, but it’s a little odd to mention it in the same breath as interest rates. After all, our interest rates rose massively during the Mulroney years because Bank of Canada John “Ahab” Crow saw inflation as his white whale, and (if I can mix a metaphor) strangled it along with the economy through an extreme tight money policy.
It was Gordon Thiessen, under the Liberals, who loosened up the BoC’s purse strings. Since then, inflation has gone from 0.2 in 1994 to 2.8 in 2003, and will likely continue to rise. So you pretty much have to take your pick whether you want low interest rates, or low inflation, because it’s difficult if not impossible to have both at once.
I haven’t been able to find a good source for our GDP over the last two decades (StatsCan only goes back to '99), but it’s a pretty bad indicator of activity and quality of life, regardless. As for tax levels, whether they were at “near-crisis levels” depends entirely on your political beliefs, and your economic philosophy. I think taxes in certain sectors need to be raised. I think supply-side economics which Reagan (and his partisans in our country) championed is bad for people, and in long run, bad for an economy.
And what does your situation in Canada in 1979 have to do with Reagan’s legacy anyway
For those of us who fight for a cleaner environment, car pooling, public transit, bike lanes, and who prefer not sending troops to Middle-Eastern countries, this is only good news.
Oh, of course… but then, I didn’t think Reagan or Clinton were good presidents, at least policy-wise.