Do you think this show is anti-Reagan?

The Soviet empire was clearly guilty of many atrocities, but it's quite easy to be honest about those -- America has no stake in such truths, beyond "look how evil the enemy is!" What's so frustrating about the cult of devotion that's grown up around the memory of Reagan is how self-serving it is for the U.S., compounded by how much awful stuff he's responsible for.

I've been arguing a similar stance on this board for years now. American users are too easy to dismiss the crimes committed by their country simply because the enemy did worse things. In a twisted way you could reason that the Soviets were more honorable in their crimes - they did them their selves and mostly to their own people. The Americans paid others to do their dirty work in other countries.

IMO, Reagan's legacy are all the wars the US were involved since the fall of communism. He gave even more power to the military and the weapons industry that the US have to create wars so those industries won't crash.

Fighting a religious war is like fighting over whose imaginary friend is better.

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Very well stated,I think..

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I can see that you're committed to your point-of-view, and it's unlikely that either one of us is going to read the other's posts and think, "Gee, maybe I was wrong."

But for the sake of anyone who might be reading this, and is genuinely interested, I'll try to address some of your more egregious misstatements. I'm not going to bother pretending this is my field of expertise, or take hours out of my day to dig into my book shelf for source material; it's simple enough to investigate these matters, and I encourage all those interested to do so.

I actually presented some evidence and cogent arguments. You could persuade me if you did the same and they were compelling, but in addition to repeating some inaccurate claims peddled around the far left, you're effectively admitting that you're a closed minded ideologue here. I did hope to engage you in an open minded discussion, but fortunately you're not my only target audience. I responded to you because I didn't want your lengthy screeds to stand unchallenged and possibly mislead those too uninformed to know better.

Let's start with some of your more blatantly ignorant statements on fact and proceed from there.

And as for "great economic boom", I'd love to see some figures. Is this the same economy that was either stagnant or in recession for the 1980s?

You mean early in the decade, after Reagan had inherited a "malaise" mess from Jimmy Carter complete with anemic growth and soaring, double digit inflation?

The second dip of a severe double digit recession ended in 1982 and the boom began as Reagan's policies took effect. The US GDP saw growth reaching 8% and 9% in several quarters, and even hit 7.3% for the full year in 1984, the highest figure since the 1950s. Those are numbers China would envy these days, and this was the already developed USA in the late 20th Century.

The unemployment rate dropped from 10.8% to 7.3% two years into the recovery, and continued to fall to about 5% by the end of Reagan's tenure, despite a rapidly growing labor force that included huge influxes of women and immigrants. In fact the female labor participation rate got over 50% for the first time. Monthly net job gains were often over 300,000 or 400,000, with one month (Sep. 1983) alone seeing over 1.1 million jobs created, the highest number on record.

Contrast that with Obama's dismal record where job gains were negative or non existent even years after the recession technically ended in 2009, and even in recent years the administration has been forced to feign happiness over monthly numbers in the 1-200k range, barely enough to keep up with population growth. Since 2009 the unemployment rate has fallen more slowly than it did during the Reagan boom despite a shrinking labor market this time (that's relevant because those who give up looking for work are no longer counted in the fraction that produces the "unemployment rate").

GDP growth has also been anemic, with no year during Obama's presidency even getting up to 3%.

Two severe recessions responded to with very different policy sets and followed by two very different recoveries. Reagan also backed Fed chief Volcker's strong monetarist policy, and his boom coincided with inflation, a gradually worsening problem for many years, finally being conquered, as the inflation rate fell from 10.3% in Dec. 1981 to 1.9% by Dec. 1986, a sustained decline Keynesian Democrats (e.g. Paul Krugman) had laughed off as impossible, especially during such strong economic growth. Yet another major prediction Reagan's opponents got wrong.

Victory in the Cold War, the liberation of hundreds of millions of people, and a great economic boom. These are the salient events that occurred on his watch....

If you're a commissar who's worried about protecting the Dear Leader's image, then yes, those are definitely the salient events. Based on what I've read (and I'd wager I read a damn sight more than the man himself) giving Reagan the title of "victor" in the Cold War -- and by extension, said liberation -- is ludicrously reductive.

Only Baghdad Bob would deny those were the salient historical events of the Reagan era (your original wording was "on his watch"). You don't even try to provide alternatives. Now clearly some people would like to debate how much if any credit Reagan deserves for winning the Cold War and/or the strong economy, but the usual line of attack from Democrats was that Reagan "got lucky", not that the Cold War ending wasn't a big deal. Even most sensible Democrats have come around to crediting Reagan with playing a large role in winning the Cold War, and have enough respect for his personal talents that various politicians (including Obama) have tried to emulate him in some ways in hopes of becoming the "Reagan of the left".

As for whether Reagan played an important role in winning the Cold War, many of those most directly involved, would say so. Here's Polish Solidarity leader Lech Walesa, hardly a "commissar", on the matter:


"Reagan should have a monument in every city"

http://www.timesunion.com/news/article/Reagan-John-Paul-II-honored-with-statue-3707733.php

Here he expounds.

"When talking about Ronald Reagan, I have to be personal. We in Poland took him so personally. Why? Because we owe him our liberty. This can’t be said often enough by people who lived under oppression for half a century, until communism fell in 1989.Poles fought for their freedom for so many years that they hold in special esteem those who backed them in their struggle. Support was the test of friendship. President Reagan was such a friend. His policy of aiding democratic movements in Central and Eastern Europe in the dark days of the Cold War meant a lot to us. We knew he believed in a few simple principles such as human rights, democracy and civil society. He was someone who was convinced that the citizen is not for the state, but vice-versa, and that freedom is an innate right.I often wondered why Ronald Reagan did this, taking the risks he did, in supporting us at Solidarity, as well as dissident movements in other countries behind the Iron Curtain, while pushing a defense buildup that pushed the Soviet economy over the brink. Let’s remember that it was a time of recession in the U.S. and a time when the American public was more interested in their own domestic affairs. It took a leader with a vision to convince them that there are greater things worth fighting for. Did he seek any profit in such a policy? Though our freedom movements were in line with the foreign policy of the United States, I doubt it.President Reagan, in a radio address from his ranch on Oct. 9, 1982, announces trade sanctions against Poland in retaliation for the outlawing of Solidarity.I distinguish between two kinds of politicians. There are those who view politics as a tactical game, a game in which they do not reveal any individuality, in which they lose their own face. There are, however, leaders for whom politics is a means of defending and furthering values. For them, it is a moral pursuit. They do so because the values they cherish are endangered. They’re convinced that there are values worth living for, and even values worth dying for."

http://www.tommyduggan.com/VP070204lech.html

Of course Walesa was on the front lines of rolling back the Iron Curtain in the 1980s and received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1983 back when that award still meant something. I'd wager he's read and experienced a damn sight more than you on the subject.

So did Margaret Thatcher:

"Others hoped, at best, for an uneasy cohabitation with the Soviet Union; he won the Cold War - not only without firing a shot, but also by inviting enemies out of their fortress and turning them into friends."

http://reagan2020.us/eulogies/thatcher.asp

A little hyperbole since some shots were fired, but Reagan managed to bring down the Soviet empire without a world war, something most "experts" previously considered impossible.

Or prominent Cold War historian John Lewis Gaddis:

"What one can say now is that Reagan saw Soviet weaknesses sooner than most of his contemporaries did; that he understood the extent to which détente was perpetuating the Cold War rather than hastening its end; that his hard line strained the Soviet system at the moment of its maximum weakness; that his shift toward conciliation preceded Gorbachev; that he combined reassurance, persuasion, and pressure in dealing with the new Soviet leader; and that he maintained the support of the American people and of American allies….Reagan’s role here was critical (p. 375)."

http://www.unc.edu/depts/diplomat/item/2007/0103/book/book_sempa03.html

Of course no one is claiming any one man won the whole struggle by himself, but Reagan's role was vital. Reagan himself didn't go around claiming to have won the Cold War. He was a famously modest man, and kept this quote on a plaque on his oval office desk:

"There is no limit to what a man can do or where he can go if he doesn’t mind who gets the credit."

And this notion that "pundits" of the West -- by which I assume you mean prominent journalists -- were busy attacking the U.S. for its sins in the 70s or 80s is just nonsense. But it's useful for your narrative because it turns the Gipper into a man of vision who's persecuted in his own country for doing what's right. Utter fiction. With few exceptions, the press was as amenable as a lap dog. Dissidents from behind the iron curtain were lauded as heroes, while elsewhere in the world they were tortured and mutilated with full U.S. cooperation.

Some of those same dissidents would disagree with you. Read gulag survivor Alexander Solzhenitsyn's famous 1978 Harvard speech, for example, where he criticized the West for not injecting moral condemnation of communism into its foreign policy, the misguided nature of "Detente", for spiritual weakness, and for generally having become too insecure and passive in the face of evil.


http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/alexandersolzhenitsynharvard.htm

A couple of years later there's a president viewing geopolitics in similar terms (indeed who had been making similar arguments for over a decade), which prompted Solzhenitsyn at one point to say about Reagan, "I admire many aspects of your activity, rejoice because the United States at last has a president such as you, and I unceasingly thank God that you were not killed by the villainous bullets."

Hollywood was generally cranking out moral equivalence, "pox on both their houses" crap during the Cold War, and allusions to Latin American policies you oppose and cheap shots against Reagan frequently found their way into movies and tv shows. And the liberal media waged war against Reagan with an intensity and hatred that may have surpassed what happened to George W. Bush decades later.

For starters, it's clear why you'd feel compelled to add "of those souls trapped behind the iron curtain", because the idea that Reagan helped steer the course of the 1980s towards emphasizing human rights is a screamer. If we don't look exclusively at the Soviet Union or Cuba, the evidence points squarely in the opposite direction (El Salvador, Nicaragua, South Africa, Haiti, Guatemala...).

This just shows you have no idea what you're talking about. Even Democrats (at least those with at least a little historical knowledge and/or experience) are more likely to attack Reagan for injecting morality into Cold War policy and rhetoric.

You're basically just saying "but...but...he did some bad things too!", which misses the point. At most you'd be arguing that he was a hypocrite, not denying that his Cold War moralizing represented a noteworthy and welcome transition from past practice. That said, you simply listing a few nations doesn't constitute a real argument even on that alternative front. Weak sauce. I've already rejected your key premises there.

We'll leave aside the screed about one system of government or school of thought being inherently evil, which I don't think adds much to the conversation,

Again, Solzhenitzen would disagree. In fact he'd argue that you're part of the problem.

but I will say that this particular nugget could just as easily be lobbed at the robber barons of Wall Street. We don't call their way of thinking an "ideology"

That's because it's not. "Robber baron" was a silly epithet leftist activists applied to successful businessmen in the late 19th Century, men whose innovations modernized society and dramatically improved living standards for common people, and many of whom gave enormous amounts to charity. At most it would apply to certain actors within a system, not the system itself. Comparing that phenomenon to the evil of communism is insanely dumb.

There's a lot more to say about Reagan and financial deregulation, not to mention making the tax system highly regressive, but I'll leave that to others.

Sure. Regressive...progressive....pretty much everyone got a tax cut, and future automatic tax hikes for lower and middle income people were avoided because Reagan ended inflationary bracket creep, a too often overlooked reform.

Reagan was extremely intelligent.

By what measure? The only indirect evidence you provide are his published correspondence, but even then it's an offhand comment. (I'd love to read a few letters that led you to this conclusion.) As I say, I'm not an historian, but it's no challenge to find examples of him saying things that are patently false. The charitable interpretation is that he was simply ignorant; otherwise, he clearly had no compunction about lying.

I've mentioned his policies, speeches, and letters. Since you aren't interested in supporting your own claims with any evidence or really in even having this discussion, I'm not inclined to waste time digging up mountains of quotes to spoonfeed you. His words are publicly available. I'd encourage anyone to go read them unfiltered, from at least the 1960s on.

Again, it's telling that once people got the right to vote in a truly free and fair election they ditched the Marxist Sandinistas and elected the widow of a Contra freedom fighter into power.

Ooookay. I think I've spent enough time on this.

The Nicaraguans apparently disagreed with you.

But for someone who was complaining about "misguided notions of relativism and moral equivalence", this is a pretty shocking attempt to dismiss a horrific period in human history, one directly caused by U.S. foreign policy.

Hogwash. The US didn't cause the Marxist takeover of Nicaragua. It does, however, deserve some of the credit for the decades of stable democracy that country has enjoyed since.

....so this wasn't just a Reagan thing.

No, he only escalated it. But feel free to blame Carter as well. I do.

And FDR and Truman and other presidents for their actions? You failed to respond at all to my WW2 list putting your Reagan one in perspective, or address the deeper issues of morality and historical context I raised. That's understandable for a leftist who's committed to clinging to his discredited ideology at all costs. You could have condemned US presidents in general, but that would have undermined your original assertion that Reagan in particular was somehow unsuited for the office, and while blaming the US for supporting the wicked Soviet regime in WW2 (sort of trumps El Salvador) is something an anarcho-capitalist might do, left wing propagandists almost never do it for obvious reasons of self serving hypocrisy.

Or you might argue that such WW2 actions were justified given the circumstances, but that would be conceding that circumstances can justify actions that, on their face, are much worse than anything you're accusing Reagan of. That would be an implicit concession that Reagan's actions could also be justified, that a short, bullet point list of alleged foreign policy sins cherry-picked from context is essentially meaningless, and the debate would then have to shift to whether the context of the struggle against global communist domination warranted or at least mitigated such alleged actions. An extended, reasoned examination of the morality and impact of the Soviet empire and its communist client regimes around the world would ultimately leave your position untenable. So it's hardly shocking that you're cutting your losses and withdrawing here.

What's unclear is why you bothered to reply at all, since you mostly just repeated already addressed and/or refuted points.

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I don't defend America anymore, since Trump was elected.

Sounds shallow.

Sure, Russia/USSR was, arguably far, worse. But at a certain point that is not a defense that means all that much in regard to certain issues. Like climate change for one.

Climate change had nothing to do with the Cold War, except tangentially as a lot of hard core socialists have found refuge in the AGW alarmist movement afterwards (watermelons).

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