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Author Topic: The myth about Ronald Reagan
raybond
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The man who sold the world Ronald Reagan and the betrayal of main st America.

A good read


"The aftermath of Reagan's presidency," Garry Wills wrote in a famous introduction to his 1987 book "Reagan's America," "has proved, over and over, that Reaganism without Reagan is unsustainable." In the two decades since Wills' book was published, a significant portion of the press and public seems to have forgotten that. William Kleinknecht is on a mission: In "The Man Who Sold the World: Ronald Reagan and the Betrayal of Main Street America," he is out to demonstrate that Reaganism with Reagan never worked.
Kleinknecht, a veteran crime correspondent for the Newark Star-Ledger and the New York Daily News and an American Society of Professional Journalists award winner, is angry. But unlike many writers who have taken scatter shots at the Reagan legacy, Kleinknecht hasn't lost his temper-in Henry James' words, he has found it.
In a fiery and lucid introduction he writes, "This book is born of annoyance: a great bewilderment over the myth that continues to surround the presidency of Ronald Reagan. It gives voice to a vast swath of psychically disenfranchised Americans, millions of them, lumped most thickly in the urban areas on either coast, who never understood Reagan's appeal." Kleinknecht's thesis is nothing less than that Reagan was the "obvious enemy of the common people he claimed to represent, this empty suit who believed in flying saucers and allowed an astrologer to guide his presidential scheduling. ..." The great conundrum "is this: none of [the] unmistakable harbingers of American decline is being laid where it belongs-at the door of Ronald Reagan" [emphasis Kleinknecht's].
In the tradition of most previous Reagan critics, Kleinknecht doesn't try to draw a bead on Reagan from an ivory tower. He goes after Reagan from the blue collar on up: "He enacted policies that helped wipe out the high-paying jobs for the working class that were the real backbone of the country. ... His legacy-mergers, deregulation, tax cuts for the wealthy, privatization, globalization-helped weaken the family and eradicate small-town life and sense of community."
Reaganomics did create fortunes, but mostly for those at the top of the economic ladder; it also brought "a reversal in the slow gains that the working class and the poor had made in the previous two decades."
During a month when Republicans dug in against Barack Obama's stimulus plan, Kleinknecht's words, written last year before the economic crash, ring clear. "Reaganism replaced Enlightenment thinking with the corrupted Romanticism that portrays free-market purism as an article of religious faith that is the real meaning of America. The answer to any of the economic challenges of the twenty-first century is to do nothing. Cut taxes, eviscerate all regulation of private enterprise, and trust the market to guide our fates." If this sounds like hyperbole, then you weren't listening to the Republican response to President Obama's bailout proposal.
"The Man Who Sold America" has much in common with another recent scathing indictment of the Reagan administration, Will Bunch's "Tear Down This Myth: How the Reagan Legacy Has Distorted Our Politics and Haunts Our Future." Both books cover much of the same territory: Contrary to the nearly two decades of idolatry from the right, Reagan was no more popular than numerous other modern presidents (as Kleinknecht notes, just 27 percent of eligible voters elected him in 1980, a year which saw a record-low turnout at the polls), the legacy of the famous 1980 tax cut was an era of deregulation that spawned CEO and Wall Street greed, and, most important, the Reagan revolution did not do what it set out to do, namely to reduce the size of government ("Big government," writes Kleinknecht, "was not stripped away in the Reagan years; it was just redirected to the needs of private enterprise").
However, Bunch sees Reagan primarily as a pragmatist whose image has been hijacked by a neoconservative cabal while Kleinknecht sees Reagan himself as the betrayer of what once was regarded as genuine conservatism. Reagan's early backers "were not Burkean conservatives or acolytes of the John Birch Society. They had little interest in social issues. ... Most were not even particularly passionate in their anticommunism. They viewed Reagan quite simply as a potential liberator for the entrepreneurial class." They were men who simply "wanted deep cuts in their taxes and government regulators out of the way."
Many seminal thinkers of 20th century American conservatism-Kleinknecht cites Russell Kirk, Richard Weaver and German-born émigré Friedrich A. Hayek, to whose names I would add G.K.Chesterton-regarded large corporations as "a threat to folkways and small-scale private property. It was, after all, not government but big corporations that did so much to wipe out agrarian culture. The former machinist or farmer now bagging groceries at Wal-Mart is not exactly a conservative icon."
This is interesting because Kleinknecht's case against Reagan isn't based on the former actor's adherence to traditional conservative values but on his disregard of them. There are two enemies of a real conservative society, thought Chesterton; one of them "is State Socialism and the other is Big Business." In other words, the enemy is bigness, no matter on which side of the political spectrum it originates. Hayek, quoted by Kleinknecht, wrote something similar in his highly influential book "The Road to Serfdom" (1944): "... [T]he movement toward totalitarianism comes from two great vested interests: organized capital and organized labor. Probably the greatest menace of all is that the politics of these two most powerful groups point in the same direction." Such sentiments, Kleinknecht writes, "were swept out of Washington in the 1980s. Relief from government regulation was one of a handful of core beliefs that really mattered to Reagan and his business supporters, and anything that stood in the way of the natural consolidation of the nation's productive forces was a barrier to be removed." Or as Reagan's good friend whom he appointed attorney general, William French Smith, put it, "Bigness doesn't necessarily mean badness."
"The Man Who Sold the World" is the most concise and well-thought-out argument against Reagan. Kleinknecht is no poet; he too often writes at the top of his voice. Nonetheless, if he is guilty of occasional pamphleteering, there's never any doubt as to his meaning, and many of his phrases linger after one has closed the book. "By discrediting government as a legitimate and meaningful presence in the lives of Americans," he writes in his final chapter, "The Second-Rate Society," "Reagan repudiated the very concept of national leadership. By exhorting Americans to place self-interest above all, he undermined the spirit of sacrifice and the possibility of a common effort to solve our most pressing national problems."
Kleinknecht isn't just writing to be heard by liberal Democrats: His challenge to conservatives is nothing less than to once again be conservative.

Allen Barra writes for numerous publications, including The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times.

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Wise men learn more from fools than fools from the wise.

Posts: 3827 | From: beautiful California | Registered: Sep 2008  |  IP: Logged | Report this post to a Moderator
CashCowMoo
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Why is it all of a sudden being successful is bad, and if you are rich then it is your fault others are poor?

Seriously, why even write about Regan right now? The poor guy is dead and a well respected President.

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It isn't so much that liberals are ignorant. It's just that they know so many things that aren't so.

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T e x
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quote:
Originally posted by CashCowMoo:
Why is it all of a sudden being successful is bad, and if you are rich then it is your fault others are poor?

Seriously, why even write about Regan right now? The poor guy is dead and a well respected President.

yikes...

ok, I'll bite--

1. what is the phrase "all of a sudden" referencing?

2.show me a few posts limning "successful is bad"

3.ditto re (2) showing "if you're rich, it's your fault"...

4. Reagan? c'mon...

4- (a) dead: So are George Washington and Lincoln to name some revered presidents--in other words, it's OK to write about or discuss presidents who have passed on.

4- (b) Reagan well respected: true, ranks high in popular polls, perhaps less so in historians' views... but this is telling:

quote:
Representative Barney Frank, a liberal Democrat from Massachusetts, said: ''He really did turn away from the notion that there was a positive role for government. When he said in his first inaugural, 'government is not the answer to our problems, government is the problem,' he really meant it.''
That's from here:

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/09/us/40th-president-opponents-critics-see-reagan -legacy-tainted-aids-civil-rights.html?sec=health&&fta=y

Now, that last "sound bite" kinda jumps offa the tongue, eh?

Problem is, lack of regulation of the market-playazzz is EXACTLY and PRECISELY how we got here.

make sense?

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Nashoba Holba Chepulechi
Adventures in microcapitalism...

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raybond
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Seriously, why even write about Regan right now? The poor guy is dead and a well respected President
------------------------------------------------

Because he is the father of policy that has put us in the mess we are in right now.

He was niether the conservative nor the moralist that most conservatives talk about he was the father of trickle down.

He started the ball rolling that led us to the end of the path that we are standing on and he spent our nations wealth at the expense of our working citizens. All while our press made him out to be a hero. Thats Why. You won,t agree and I don't ask you to.Why don't you read the book you might see things today in a little different light.

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Wise men learn more from fools than fools from the wise.

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logandtimber
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Regan wasnt the father of squat. Regan was just George Bush Sr.'s first puppet. And those two terms led to his own presidency. The whole rise to power started when JFK got assinated. Bush Sr was head of CIA at the time. The second Bobby Kennedy was a guarantee to win the presidency too. He got killed during the primaries. Rather than lose ted. the last kennedy brother, they let bush take power.

After 1 Bush term, Logic set in, and we elected Clinton. It took him 8 years, just to get this economy making money again. But Bush wasnt about to let Gore finish the job Clinton Started...

Two stolen elections later. Here we are. Bush Jr should've been impeached a dozen times in those 8 years...

Freedom lives!
But so do groups who want to own the whole world. Secret societies, 1000's of years old, who will stop at nothing to do so. Dick Chenney is the top ranking shriner. He answers to Bush Sr...

Same group that put Hitler in power, and funded the Nazi movement. Same group that got Roosevelt to do the new deal economy, killing the gold standard. And setting up world banks to collect interest in gold bullion. When all they are giving is paper money... Govt, Religion, Secret Societies. They all believe they are doing "The right thing".Blind faith in the system, and the authority that guides you. But guaranteed! The real people in power, are not visible or known. They just manipulate.

Its like the pyramid, with the all seeing eye. Bottom layer is you and me.
Middle layer controls us. The Govt, cops, military, banks, economy, religous clergy, corporate giants, mafia's or any other authority around the world. Pecking order allows a few high ranking people to control them all...
Those middle layer people answer to the top layer. Protected families that own everything. start wars. Organize govt. Organize religion. And manipulate the world, so that they can stay there.

I believe that "the end of days" is a version of their plan. But I also believe people will have an evolutionary burst(which we are in the middle of) And enlightenment will spread exponentially. Then we will use our technology to clean up the mess... You gotta stay optiistic Sarah Palin. You crazy......

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stocks rocks!!!

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glassman
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you've got some points right but a few are off-mark...

when Kennedy was assasinated? Bush Sr was president of the Zapata Petroleum Corporation, in Houston TX...

he finally came to Washington in '66 when he got elected to the House...

Nixon appointed him as ambassador to the UN in 71 and Ford appointed him to be the unofficial liason to China where he set up the foundations for the financial crisis we have in trade deficits with them today... then he went to the CIA in 76...

Bush is not the "eye", he's the hammer. and my bet is that nobody has ever even heard of the "eye" associated with any important power cuz it would not be allowed..

But I also believe people will have an evolutionary burst(which we are in the middle of) And enlightenment will spread exponentially.

there will be no enlightenment; not if this guy can stop it [Big Grin]

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glassman
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some interesting facts:

Zapata Petrolum is rumored to be a CIA front. their SEC filings from 60 to 66 are just absent from the public domain...

prior to that they are available and after that they are available...

there is a similar situation with Bush Jr's case in Harken Energy.

the skull and bones connection to the CIA is hard to prove or disprove, but is th emost likely explanation.

obtaining oil from around the world when our "cheap" oil was obviously running out can be placed under the overall definition of "National Security" and it allows for the movement of lots of resources...

how Cheney got his hooks into the Bush's is the most interesting question to me.

my BET is that Cheney was there to carry Dubya out of his most embarassing situation one day and the "whole world" opened up to him...

how you keep info like that and don't end up in a plane crash is the difficult question....

i wonder if Cheney engineered the embarrassing situation or just got lucky?

US Army Brigadier General Russell Bowen wrote that there was a cover-up of Zapata's CIA connections:

Bush, in fact, did work directly with the anti-Castro Cuban groups in Miami before and after the Bay of Pigs invasion, using his company, Zapata Oil, as a corporate cover for his activities on behalf of the agency. Records at the University of Miami, where the operations were based for several years, show George Bush was present during this time


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Don't envy the happiness of those who live in a fool's paradise.

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logandtimber
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I heard Chenney is the top ranking shriner. He is the top Mason. That is an extremely powerful position. He may have help George jr out of a jam. But he was surely in with the in before hand. Or like you said. He'd be Wellstoned already.

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stocks rocks!!!

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glassman
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quote:
Originally posted by logandtimber:
I heard Chenney is the top ranking shriner. He is the top Mason. That is an extremely powerful position. He may have help George jr out of a jam. But he was surely in with the in before hand. Or like you said. He'd be Wellstoned already.

Cheney was tossed out of Yale and was working as lineman for the power company, he testfied before congress when Bush Sr appointed him as Sec Def that he took six years to get his degree at the university of wyoming cuz he was not a good student...

this ain't the sharpest knife in the drawer, he wormed his way into this group of people somehow...

that six years got him several draft deferments... odd that he became SecDef with draft deferments huh? esp when the appointer was a GOP war veteran [Wink]

what's a war vet doing hiring draft dodgers?

I had occasion to spend some time in Wyoming two years ago... the people up there that were willing to talk about him said to me that they didn't understand how he had become "the way he is"... none were proud of him anymore.

Rumsfeld was his "mentor" at first in Washington... then he became Rummy's boss...

the strangest part of all is that Cheney claims 40 years of Govt Service. in 32 of those years? he somehow managed to accumulate 50 million dollars... not bad for a kid who took 6 years to graduate from the Univesrity of Wyoming...

of course that's not legal for civil service employees...

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Don't envy the happiness of those who live in a fool's paradise.

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glassman
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LOL... now this is funny, people blame Clinton for "weakening the military"?

Cheney's most immediate issue as Secretary of Defense was the Department of Defense budget. Cheney deemed it appropriate to cut the budget and downsize the military, following President Ronald Reagan's peacetime defense buildup at the height of the Cold War.[31] As part of the fiscal year 1990 budget, Cheney assessed the requests from each of the branches of the armed services for such expensive programs as the B-2 stealth bomber, the V-22 Osprey tilt-wing helicopter, the Aegis destroyer and the MX missile, totaling approximately $4.5 billion in light of changed world politics.[29] Cheney opposed the V-22 program, which Congress had already appropriated funds for, and initially refused to issue contracts for it before relenting.[32] When the 1990 Budget came before Congress in the summer of 1989, it settled on a figure between the Administration's request and the House Armed Services Committee's recommendation.

In subsequent years under Cheney, the proposed and adopted budgets followed patterns similar to that of 1990. Early in 1991, he unveiled a plan to reduce military strength by the mid-1990s to 1.6 million, compared with 2.2 million when he entered office. Cheney's 1993 defense budget was reduced from 1992, omitting programs that Congress had directed the Department of Defense to buy weapons that it did not want, and omitting unrequested reserve forces.[29]

Over his four years as Secretary of Defense, Cheney downsized the military and his budgets showed negative real growth, despite pressures to acquire weapon systems advocated by Congress. The Department of Defense's total obligational authority in current dollars declined from $291 billion to $270 billion. Total military personnel strength decreased by 19 percent, from about 2.2 million in 1989 to about 1.8 million in 1993


sheeeesh...

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Don't envy the happiness of those who live in a fool's paradise.

Posts: 36378 | From: USA | Registered: Sep 2003  |  IP: Logged | Report this post to a Moderator
   

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