Jesus Christ, Kowalski, can’t you show some respect? I’ve got some critical things to add about President Reagan too, but I’m going to wait at least until the body is in the ground before smearing them all over the Web. While you obviously don’t want to give him credit for the things that happened during and after his administration – such as the fall of Soviet Communism (the ideology of your ancestors?) only the truly blind fail to credit him for at least accelerating the process. So the comfort with which you assign him blame is a logical disconnect. If we can argue that the Soviet Union would have fallen anyway, why can’t we argue that the Death Squads would have also?
Rightly or wrongly, we’ve established the tradition of assigning both credit and blame for the major events that occur during a presidential administration, and on that basis alone Reagan was one of our five greatest presidents; if you disallow that sort of thinking, then the Clinton Economy “would have happened anyway.” So what’s it going to be, logical consistency or left-wing wackaholism?
UPDATE: I guess the body’s getting cold, because the vultures are circling. See lovable troll Christopher Hitchens bragging about his vocabulary, Tony Pierce demonstrating his lack of one, Marc Cooper whining like a little crybaby, and our favorite Carrie Bradshaw wannabe carry on in predicatable fashion.
I’ll give him credit for 2 things:
1. Yes, accelerating the fall of the Soviet bloc. But again, it was Gorbachev that really kicked it in motion. He could have done what they did in China- but didn’t. (See my next contribution.)
2. Raising taxes once it turned out that “Reaganomics” would bankrupt the US. Unfortunately, the current resident of the White House didn’t get this.
However, the buck has to stop somewhere, and ultimately Reagaan bears “command responsibility” for the massive corruption, the coddling of Saddam, the nurturing of al Qaeda and the neocons, and of course the War on Drugs.
Reagan was hardly among our 5 greatest presidents: I can count Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, Teddy and Franklin Roosevelt ahead of him. Heck, I’d say Clinton was ahead of him, too.
So let’s cut the Reagan idolatry and propaganda. It was inappropriate in the 80’s, and it’s inappropriate now.
…the massive corruption, the coddling of Saddam, the nurturing of al Qaeda and the neocons, and of course the War on Drugs.
Quite a laundry list you’ve got there. Well, gee, who did Burt Lance work for, anyhow? I seem to recall that it was Carter. And the coddling of Saddam is pretty funny given that your major beef with Reagan was the sale of arms to Saddam’s enemy, Iran, so how does that work?
The rest of your list is right out of loony-tunes land, so I’ll do you a favor and ignore it.