I just forwarded this to my sons and asked them to read this. When I was in high school, I believed the news. The "homeless crisis", "brink of nuclear war", etc. It was all fear mongering and hate from the Leftists. Not so slowly, I turned and became conservative. I remember at the time, The Police (a favorite band) had a song, "Russians", that played into these fears of nuclear war. This was GenX indoctrination. Anyway, like all the fear based propaganda of the left, it never pans out... Much like today. I hope my son's understand this.
I mat Ronald Reagan once. I was five years old and a kindergartner. I wandered away from my parents at an event where Mrs. Reagan was being honored. I just walked up and introduced myself. He was very kind and fatherly when we spoke. He asked me what was my name and age and where were my parents. His security people located them and he gave me a program from the event with his autograph. This was in May, 1971. He was on the ballot for the first presidential election I was old enough to vote in. He died on my birthday. I have tremendous respect for President Reagan.
I want to thank you for this outstanding article on one of our greatest and one of my personal favorite Presidents! The 40th President of the United States, Ronald Reagan was a giant! He was known as "the Great Communicator" because of his trademark oratorial skills, charisma and sense of humor. He had honed his craft over years of working in TV and Hollywood. Reagan was first introduced to Americans as the warm and congenial host of General Electric Theater. He was twice President of the Screen Actors Guild from 1947 to 1952 and from 1959 to 1960. He was a solid actor who many classic films like Knute Rockne, All American, Santa Fe Trail, Kings Row, This Is the Army, Million Dollar Baby, Bedtime for Bonzo, and the Killers to name a few. But politics was truly his destiny. His moment came we gave his famous "Time for Choosing" Speech at the 1964 Republican National Convention in support of their Presidential nominee Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater. In 1966, Reagan defeated the popular longtime California Governor Democrat Pat Brown to win the Governor's Mansion. He would go on to be one of the Golden State's best governors. He cut taxes, increased government spending to address the state's fiscal crisis, did welfare reform, turned a budget deficit into a surplus, and cracked down on campus protests. He would be easily re-elected in 1970. After leaving the Governor's mansion, he took the plunge and ran for President in 1976. He came closer than any presidential candidate to defeating an incumbent President in the primary. He came within a hair of beating President Gerald R. Ford. In 1980, he demolished all his opposition in the Republican primary and beat incumbent President Jimmy Carter in a historic landslide.
As President, Ronald Reagan didn't contain the Soviet Union nor did he subscribe to detente. He confronted the Soviets directly and actively rolled back their influence. He kicked the Soviets and the Cubans out of Grenada and rescued American students studying at St. George's University in 1983. He put the squeeze on the Russians by giving billions in aid to the Mujahideen in Afghanistan to wear them out on the battlefield and cut a historic oil deal with Saudi Arabia in exchange for weapons and other benefits to cut off half of the Soviet's hard currency. He rebuilt America's military, intensified the arms race, started the Star Wars Initiative, he assisted freedom fighters behind the Iron Curtain, and made his famous and bold speech where he told Mikhail Gorbachev to "tear down this wall!". Not to mention his supply-side economics and lower-marginal tax rates which created a twenty-year economic boom. That's not all, Reagan has many other accomplishments from his eight years in the White House from 1981 to 1989. This would include restoring American patriotism, starting our formal alliance with Israel, the Civil Liberties Act, the Montreal Protocol, the Immigration Reform and Control Act, appointed the first woman to the Supreme Court Sandra Day O'Connor, made MLK Day a national holiday, expanded the Voting Rights Act, expanded the Fair Housing Bill, bombed Libya, negotiated the INF Treaty with the Soviet Union, the Tax Reform Act, the Anti-Drug Abuse Act, raising the drinking age to 21, created sixteen million new jobs, fired 12,000 striking air traffic controllers who refused to return to work, and the Social Security Amendments.
There is a vicious rumor a slander really, that Ronald Reagan was racist, sexist, homophobic, and didn't care about AIDS victims. All of these charges are completely false. As to the charge of racism, Reagan was very far from being a racist. As a boy, Reagan invited his two black teammates to spend the night at his home when the local hotels wouldn't put them up for the night. As President of the Screen Actors Guild, he called for Hollywood to hire more black actors. The black middle class expanded during Reagan's Presidency and unemployment for black and Hispanic youth was at record levels. His parents instilled in him from a young age a hatred of racial discrimination. His mother was a devoted member of the Disciples of Christ Church, and his father didn't allow him to see the infamous 1915 film Birth of a Nation because it glorified the Ku Klux Klan. As President in March 1983 in the same speech in which he called the Soviet Union an "evil empire", he also decried "the resurgence of some hate groups preaching bigotry and prejudice". At a reception for the National Council of Negro Women in July of that year, he declared: "I’ve lived a long time, but I can’t remember a time in my life when I didn’t believe that prejudice and bigotry were the worst of sins." It should also be noted that President Reagan had an adopted black granddaughter who he loved dearly.
As to the charge of sexism, it couldn't be absurd. Reagan loved and respected both his wives Jane Wyman and Nancy Reagan and his daughters Patti and Maureen, appointed three women to his cabinet those being Elizabeth Dole as Secretary of Transportation, Ann Dore McLaughlin as Secretary of Labor and Margaret Heckler as HHS Secretary. As mentioned above, he appointed the first woman to the Supreme Court. Lastly, he hired thousands of women to work in his administration. Now as to the allegation Reagan hated gay people. Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, Reagan was progressive for his time in his attitude toward the gay community. He put up his friend Ted Graber a gay man and his lover Archie Case, up in his private quarters at the White House for the night. He was good friends with closeted gay movie star Rock Hudson. Patti Reagan wrote in a 2003 article in TIME Magazine about how when she was a little girl in the early '60s and watching a Rock Hudson movie on TV, he explained to her that some men were more interested in kissing men than women. According to Patti, he said it in a positive and totally nonjudgemental way. The Reagans also had friends who were a lesbian couple who would babysit their children.
As Reagan's Attorney General Ed Meese has said, deceptions of Reagan as antigay are "totally unfair and totally unrepresentative of his views or anything he ever said." Reagan speechwriter Peter Robinson said that "the notion that he was somehow callous or had a cruel or cynical attitude towards homosexuals or AIDS victims is just ridiculous." As President, he increased funding for AIDS research every year he was President. There is a myth that Reagan didn't mention AIDS publicly until 1987. This is absolutely untrue, the first time he mentioned AIDS was in a press conference in 1985, in which he stated it was "a top priority" and that there was "no question about the seriousness" of the disease and the "need to find an answer." In a 1986 press release he stated, AIDS was a "major epidemic public health threat" that it "remains the highest public health priority." I'll never forget watching his funeral on TV in 2004 as a boy. I remember it being such a sad day for America.
I would say that not only do I agree, but the problem was in some respects even worse. Reagan was an ideological outsider, elected by conservatives but surrounded by what we would today call RINOs ("Rockefeller Republicans") who absolutely dominated the party establishment. Worse still, there were so few real conservatives in 1980, especially with any significant credentials, that Reagan was forced to choose ideological opponents in many cases just to get minimal competence.
We faced the same problem in Little Rock in the late 1990s. Governor Huckabee was forced in many cases to choose Democrats to fill key positions because there were still hardly any Republicans in the state outside a few enclaves. Conservative Democrats, yes. But to give the scale of the problem, in 10.5 years as governor, Huckabee never had even 1/3 of either house of his state legislature.
I'd say people forget these things, but the truth is, most people never realized these things in the first place.
You are correct. The RINOS are not working for America. I think you will relate to what I found researching this series. Here is the first in the series. The first two set the stage and the third in the series uncovers what help create the DEEP $TATE and what was their first overt acts…… https://davidsthoughts.substack.com/p/deep-tate-where-we-are-now
I just forwarded this to my sons and asked them to read this. When I was in high school, I believed the news. The "homeless crisis", "brink of nuclear war", etc. It was all fear mongering and hate from the Leftists. Not so slowly, I turned and became conservative. I remember at the time, The Police (a favorite band) had a song, "Russians", that played into these fears of nuclear war. This was GenX indoctrination. Anyway, like all the fear based propaganda of the left, it never pans out... Much like today. I hope my son's understand this.
I mat Ronald Reagan once. I was five years old and a kindergartner. I wandered away from my parents at an event where Mrs. Reagan was being honored. I just walked up and introduced myself. He was very kind and fatherly when we spoke. He asked me what was my name and age and where were my parents. His security people located them and he gave me a program from the event with his autograph. This was in May, 1971. He was on the ballot for the first presidential election I was old enough to vote in. He died on my birthday. I have tremendous respect for President Reagan.
That definition fits both FDR and HST.
I want to thank you for this outstanding article on one of our greatest and one of my personal favorite Presidents! The 40th President of the United States, Ronald Reagan was a giant! He was known as "the Great Communicator" because of his trademark oratorial skills, charisma and sense of humor. He had honed his craft over years of working in TV and Hollywood. Reagan was first introduced to Americans as the warm and congenial host of General Electric Theater. He was twice President of the Screen Actors Guild from 1947 to 1952 and from 1959 to 1960. He was a solid actor who many classic films like Knute Rockne, All American, Santa Fe Trail, Kings Row, This Is the Army, Million Dollar Baby, Bedtime for Bonzo, and the Killers to name a few. But politics was truly his destiny. His moment came we gave his famous "Time for Choosing" Speech at the 1964 Republican National Convention in support of their Presidential nominee Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater. In 1966, Reagan defeated the popular longtime California Governor Democrat Pat Brown to win the Governor's Mansion. He would go on to be one of the Golden State's best governors. He cut taxes, increased government spending to address the state's fiscal crisis, did welfare reform, turned a budget deficit into a surplus, and cracked down on campus protests. He would be easily re-elected in 1970. After leaving the Governor's mansion, he took the plunge and ran for President in 1976. He came closer than any presidential candidate to defeating an incumbent President in the primary. He came within a hair of beating President Gerald R. Ford. In 1980, he demolished all his opposition in the Republican primary and beat incumbent President Jimmy Carter in a historic landslide.
As President, Ronald Reagan didn't contain the Soviet Union nor did he subscribe to detente. He confronted the Soviets directly and actively rolled back their influence. He kicked the Soviets and the Cubans out of Grenada and rescued American students studying at St. George's University in 1983. He put the squeeze on the Russians by giving billions in aid to the Mujahideen in Afghanistan to wear them out on the battlefield and cut a historic oil deal with Saudi Arabia in exchange for weapons and other benefits to cut off half of the Soviet's hard currency. He rebuilt America's military, intensified the arms race, started the Star Wars Initiative, he assisted freedom fighters behind the Iron Curtain, and made his famous and bold speech where he told Mikhail Gorbachev to "tear down this wall!". Not to mention his supply-side economics and lower-marginal tax rates which created a twenty-year economic boom. That's not all, Reagan has many other accomplishments from his eight years in the White House from 1981 to 1989. This would include restoring American patriotism, starting our formal alliance with Israel, the Civil Liberties Act, the Montreal Protocol, the Immigration Reform and Control Act, appointed the first woman to the Supreme Court Sandra Day O'Connor, made MLK Day a national holiday, expanded the Voting Rights Act, expanded the Fair Housing Bill, bombed Libya, negotiated the INF Treaty with the Soviet Union, the Tax Reform Act, the Anti-Drug Abuse Act, raising the drinking age to 21, created sixteen million new jobs, fired 12,000 striking air traffic controllers who refused to return to work, and the Social Security Amendments.
There is a vicious rumor a slander really, that Ronald Reagan was racist, sexist, homophobic, and didn't care about AIDS victims. All of these charges are completely false. As to the charge of racism, Reagan was very far from being a racist. As a boy, Reagan invited his two black teammates to spend the night at his home when the local hotels wouldn't put them up for the night. As President of the Screen Actors Guild, he called for Hollywood to hire more black actors. The black middle class expanded during Reagan's Presidency and unemployment for black and Hispanic youth was at record levels. His parents instilled in him from a young age a hatred of racial discrimination. His mother was a devoted member of the Disciples of Christ Church, and his father didn't allow him to see the infamous 1915 film Birth of a Nation because it glorified the Ku Klux Klan. As President in March 1983 in the same speech in which he called the Soviet Union an "evil empire", he also decried "the resurgence of some hate groups preaching bigotry and prejudice". At a reception for the National Council of Negro Women in July of that year, he declared: "I’ve lived a long time, but I can’t remember a time in my life when I didn’t believe that prejudice and bigotry were the worst of sins." It should also be noted that President Reagan had an adopted black granddaughter who he loved dearly.
As to the charge of sexism, it couldn't be absurd. Reagan loved and respected both his wives Jane Wyman and Nancy Reagan and his daughters Patti and Maureen, appointed three women to his cabinet those being Elizabeth Dole as Secretary of Transportation, Ann Dore McLaughlin as Secretary of Labor and Margaret Heckler as HHS Secretary. As mentioned above, he appointed the first woman to the Supreme Court. Lastly, he hired thousands of women to work in his administration. Now as to the allegation Reagan hated gay people. Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, Reagan was progressive for his time in his attitude toward the gay community. He put up his friend Ted Graber a gay man and his lover Archie Case, up in his private quarters at the White House for the night. He was good friends with closeted gay movie star Rock Hudson. Patti Reagan wrote in a 2003 article in TIME Magazine about how when she was a little girl in the early '60s and watching a Rock Hudson movie on TV, he explained to her that some men were more interested in kissing men than women. According to Patti, he said it in a positive and totally nonjudgemental way. The Reagans also had friends who were a lesbian couple who would babysit their children.
As Reagan's Attorney General Ed Meese has said, deceptions of Reagan as antigay are "totally unfair and totally unrepresentative of his views or anything he ever said." Reagan speechwriter Peter Robinson said that "the notion that he was somehow callous or had a cruel or cynical attitude towards homosexuals or AIDS victims is just ridiculous." As President, he increased funding for AIDS research every year he was President. There is a myth that Reagan didn't mention AIDS publicly until 1987. This is absolutely untrue, the first time he mentioned AIDS was in a press conference in 1985, in which he stated it was "a top priority" and that there was "no question about the seriousness" of the disease and the "need to find an answer." In a 1986 press release he stated, AIDS was a "major epidemic public health threat" that it "remains the highest public health priority." I'll never forget watching his funeral on TV in 2004 as a boy. I remember it being such a sad day for America.
Want to learn more about Ronald Reagan and the 1980s? Here is a book list for everyone with some great titles:
* An American Life by Ronald Reagan
* Reagan: The Life by H.W. Brands
* The Crusader: Ronald Reagan and the Fall of Communism by Paul Kengor
* A Pope and a President: John Paul II, Ronald Reagan, and the Extraordinary Untold Story of the 20th Century by Paul Kengor
* Caribbean Crisis: The Invasion of Grenada, 1983 by N.S. Nash
* The Soviet-Afghan War: How a Superpower Fought and Lost by Lester W. Grau & Michael A. Gress
* The Brink: President Reagan and the Nuclear War Scare of 1983 by Marc Ambinder
* Magaret Thatcher: Herself Alone: The Authorized Biography by Charles Moore
* The Battle for the Falklands by Max Hastings & Simon Jenkins
* Reagan's Victory: The Presidential Election of 1980 and the Rise of the Right by Andrew E. Busch
* After Reagan: Bush, Dukakis, and the 1988 Election by John J. Pitney, Jr.
* Wild and Crazy Guys: How the Comedy Mavericks of the '80s Changed Hollywood Forever by Nick de Semlyen
* Michael Jackson: The Magic, The Madness, The Whole Story, 1958-2009 by J. Randy Taraborrelli
* When the Game Was Ours by Larry Bird & Earvin Magic Johnson
* At the Altar of Speed: The Fast Life and Tragic Death of Dale Earnhardt by Leigh Montville
What if I was to tell you that Reagan had “traitors” in his administration trying to take him out just like Trump…… https://davidsthoughts.substack.com/p/deep-tate-deja-vu
I would say that not only do I agree, but the problem was in some respects even worse. Reagan was an ideological outsider, elected by conservatives but surrounded by what we would today call RINOs ("Rockefeller Republicans") who absolutely dominated the party establishment. Worse still, there were so few real conservatives in 1980, especially with any significant credentials, that Reagan was forced to choose ideological opponents in many cases just to get minimal competence.
We faced the same problem in Little Rock in the late 1990s. Governor Huckabee was forced in many cases to choose Democrats to fill key positions because there were still hardly any Republicans in the state outside a few enclaves. Conservative Democrats, yes. But to give the scale of the problem, in 10.5 years as governor, Huckabee never had even 1/3 of either house of his state legislature.
I'd say people forget these things, but the truth is, most people never realized these things in the first place.
You are correct. The RINOS are not working for America. I think you will relate to what I found researching this series. Here is the first in the series. The first two set the stage and the third in the series uncovers what help create the DEEP $TATE and what was their first overt acts…… https://davidsthoughts.substack.com/p/deep-tate-where-we-are-now