Reagan

[Giancarlo]

Reagan is an excellent president... and his economic policies allowed for an economic miracle whether the liberals around here like to admit it or not. His foreign affair policies were the shining star of his adminstration however causing the collapse of the evil empire, the Soviet Union. Liberals hate Ronald because he is one of the greatest leaders the republicans have, and it is in their interest to hate him. They always have... ummm... Jimmy Carter.

[Kuciwalker]

Fez - fix your tenses

[Giancarlo]

I am working on a major essay... so I am not using my energy to do so.

[Ned]

Originally posted by Comrade Tassadar


Einstein was a communist.

Never knew that before. Really?

[Ned]

Originally posted by Alexander's Horse


Er, you don't seriously believe he wrote that stuff himself?

AH, you seriously indicate that you actually believe leftist propaganda.

[Ned]

Originally posted by Alexander's Horse
Having said that there were many dark sides - notably his close involvement in blacklisting artists in Hollywood duirng the McCarthy period. That was very nasty.

Yeah, you do believe leftist propaganda.

[Ramo]

He was actually a lefty social democrat.

[Ned]

Originally posted by Alexander's Horse
I think he just knew how to deliver his lines well

Reagan was inspiring beyond belief. He was a great leader, the greatest this country has ever had.

If you were not here to witness it, you simply cannot understand the effect he had on the people and on America. He was re-elected with the greatest landslide in history. He presided over an emotional, fiscal and military rebirth of a great nation. No one can praise Reagan enough - or denounce him enough, depending on your views about the United States.

[Giancarlo]

Well I was like a young child back when he was in power (being born in 84)... and I still understand the great times he brought for the US.

[Ned]

Here is Reagan's 1983 Evil Empire speech. Those of you on the left are boung to be outraged.

"And this brings me to my final point today. During my first press conference as president, in answer to a direct question, I point out that, as good Marxist-Leninists, the Soviet leaders have openly and publicly declared that the only morality they recognize is that which will further their cause, which is world revolution. I think I should point out I was only quoting Lenin, their guiding spirit, who said in 1920 that they repudiate all morality that proceeds from supernatural ideas - that's their name for religion - or ideas that are outside class conceptions. Morality is entirely subordinate to the interests of class war. And everything is moral that is necessary for the annihilation of the old, exploiting social order and for uniting the proletariat.

Well, I think the refusal of many influential people to accept this elementary fact of Soviet doctrine illustrates a historical reluctance to see totalitarian powers for what they are. We saw this phenomenon in the 1930s. We see it too often today.

This doesn't mean we should isolate ourselves and refuse to seek an understanding with them. I intend to do everything I can to persuade them of our peaceful intent, to remind them that it was the West that refused to use its nuclear monopoly in the forties and fifties for territorial gain and which now proposes a 50-percent cut in strategic ballistic missiles and the elimination of an entire class of land-based, intermediate-range nuclear missiles.

At the same time, however, they must be made to understand we will never compromise our principles and standards. We will never give away our freedom. We will never abandon our belief in God. And we will never stop searching for a genuine peace. But we can assure none of these things America stands for through the so-called nuclear freeze solutions proposed by some.

The truth is that a freeze now would be a very dangerous fraud, for that is merely the illusion of peace. The reality is that we must find peace through strength.

I would agree to freeze if only we could freeze the Soviets' global desires. A freeze at current levels of weapons would remove any incentive for the Soviets to negotiate seriously in Geneva and virtually end our chances to achieve the major arms reductions which we have proposed. Instead, they would achieve their objectives through the freeze.

A freeze would reward the Soviet Union for its enormous and unparalleled military buildup. It would prevent the essential and long overdue modernization of United States and allied defenses and would leave our aging forces increasingly vulnerable. And an honest freeze would require extensive prior negotiations on the systems and numbers to be limited and on the measures to ensure effective verification and compliance. And the kind of a freeze that has been suggested would be virtually impossible to verify. Such a major effort would divert us completely from our current negotiations on achieving substantial reductions.

A number of years ago, I heard a young father, a very prominent young man in the entertainment world, addressing a tremendous gathering in California. It was during the time of the cold war, and communism and our own way of life were very much on people's minds. And he was speaking to that subject. And suddenly, though, I heard him saying, "I love my little girls more than anything -" And I said to myself, "Oh, no, don't. You can't - don't say that." But I had underestimated him. He went on: "I would rather see my little girls die now, still believing in God, than have them grow up under communism and one day die no longer believing in God."

There were thousands of young people in that audience. They came to their feet with shouts of joy. They had instantly recognized the profound truth in what he had said, with regard to the physical and the soul and what was truly important.

Yes, let us pray for the salvation of all of those who live in that totalitarian darkness - pray they will discover the joy of knowing God. But until they do, let us be aware that while they preach the supremacy of the state, declare its omnipotence over individual man, and predict its eventual domination of all peoples on the earth, they are the focus of evil in the modern world.

It was C.S. Lewis who, in his unforgettable Screwtape Letters, wrote: "The greatest evil is not done now in those sordid 'dens of rime' that Dickens loved to paint. It is not even done in concentration camps and labor camps. In those we see its final result. But it is conceived and ordered (moved, seconded, carried and minuted) in clean, carpeted, warmed, and well-lighted offices, by quiet men with white collars and cut fingernails and smooth-shaven cheeks who do no need to raise their voice."

Well, because these "quiet men" do no "raise their voices," because they sometimes speak in soothing tones of brotherhood and peace, because, like other dictators before them, they're always making "their final territorial demand," some would have us accept them as their word and accommodate ourselves to their aggressive impulses. But if history teaches anything, it teaches that simpleminded appeasement or wishful thinking about our adversaries is folly. It means the betrayal of our past, the squandering of our freedom.

So, I urge you to speak our against those who would place the United States in a position of military and moral inferiority. You know, I've always believed that old Screwtape reserved his best efforts for those of you in the church. So, in your discussions of the nuclear freeze proposals, I urge you to beware the temptation of pride - the temptation of blithely declaring yourselves above it all and label both sides equally at fault, to ignore the facts of history and the aggressive impulses of an evil empire, to simply call the arms race a giant misunderstanding and thereby remove yourself from the struggle between right and wrong and good and evil.

I ask you to resist the attempts of those who would have you withhold your support for our efforts, this administration's efforts, to keep America strong and free, while we negotiate real and verifiable reductions in the world's nuclear arsenals and one day, with God's help, their total elimination.

While America's military strength is important, let me add here that I've always maintained that the struggle now going on for the world will never be decided by bombs or rockets, by armies or military might. The real crisis we face today is a spiritual one; at root, it is a test of moral will and faith.

Whittaker Chambers, the man whose own religious conversation made him a witness to one of the terrible traumas of our time, the Hiss-Chambers case, wrote that the crisis of the Western world exists to the degree in which the West is indifferent to God, the degree to which it collaborates in communism's attempt to make man stand alone without God. And then he said, for Marxism-Leninism is actually the second-oldest faith, first proclaimed in the Garden of Eden with the words of temptation, "Ye shall be as gods."

The Western world can answer this challenge, he wrote, "but only provided that its faith in God and the freedom He enjoins is as great as communism's faith in Man."

I believe we shall rise to the challenge. I believe that communism is another sad, bizarre chapter in human history whose last pages even now are being written. I believe this because the source of our strength in the quest for human freedom is not material, but spiritual. And because it knows no limitation, it must terrify and ultimately triumph over those who would enslave their fellow man. For in the words of Isaiah: "He giveth power to the faint; and to them that have no might He increased strength . . . But they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary . . . "

Yes, change your world. One of our Founding Fathers, Thomas Paine, said, "We have it within our power to begin the world over again." We can do it, doing together what no one church could do by itself.

God bless you, and thank you very much.

http://www.presidentreagan.info/speeches/empire.cfm

[Giancarlo]

The only problem I have is with so many references to god but the man is entitled to his religion. Other than that, the Soviet Union was indeed an evil empire.

[molly bloom]

Is a minus rating possible?

Reagan always reminded me of Gertrude Stein's description of Oakland.

'There is no there there.'

I see no evidence of independent thought in Reagan- at best he was a shill or carny barker for vested interests, good at recycling stale rhetoric and empty bombast. Compare his hollow speeches with the speeches of Lincoln, and their filmy insubstantiality becomes more apparent.

What Gil Scott Heron said in 'B Movie' was true- after Skippy, America wanted John Wayne. But he was unavailable, so you made do with Ronald Reagan.

Hollyweird, indeed.

[Nubclear]

Originally posted by Ned
"And this brings me to my final point today. During my first press conference as president, in answer to a direct question, I point out that, as good Marxist-Leninists, the Soviet leaders have openly and publicly declared that the only morality they recognize is that which will further their cause, which is world revolution. I think I should point out I was only quoting Lenin, their guiding spirit, who said in 1920 that they repudiate all morality that proceeds from supernatural ideas - that's their name for religion - or ideas that are outside class conceptions. Morality is entirely subordinate to the interests of class war. And everything is moral that is necessary for the annihilation of the old, exploiting social order and for uniting the proletariat.

Well, I think the refusal of many influential people to accept this elementary fact of Soviet doctrine illustrates a historical reluctance to see totalitarian powers for what they are. We saw this phenomenon in the 1930s. We see it too often today.

This doesn't mean we should isolate ourselves and refuse to seek an understanding with them. I intend to do everything I can to persuade them of our peaceful intent, to remind them that it was the West that refused to use its nuclear monopoly in the forties and fifties for territorial gain and which now proposes a 50-percent cut in strategic ballistic missiles and the elimination of an entire class of land-based, intermediate-range nuclear missiles.

At the same time, however, they must be made to understand we will never compromise our principles and standards. We will never give away our freedom. We will never abandon our belief in God. And we will never stop searching for a genuine peace. But we can assure none of these things America stands for through the so-called nuclear freeze solutions proposed by some.

The truth is that a freeze now would be a very dangerous fraud, for that is merely the illusion of peace. The reality is that we must find peace through strength.

I would agree to freeze if only we could freeze the Soviets' global desires. A freeze at current levels of weapons would remove any incentive for the Soviets to negotiate seriously in Geneva and virtually end our chances to achieve the major arms reductions which we have proposed. Instead, they would achieve their objectives through the freeze.

A freeze would reward the Soviet Union for its enormous and unparalleled military buildup. It would prevent the essential and long overdue modernization of United States and allied defenses and would leave our aging forces increasingly vulnerable. And an honest freeze would require extensive prior negotiations on the systems and numbers to be limited and on the measures to ensure effective verification and compliance. And the kind of a freeze that has been suggested would be virtually impossible to verify. Such a major effort would divert us completely from our current negotiations on achieving substantial reductions.

A number of years ago, I heard a young father, a very prominent young man in the entertainment world, addressing a tremendous gathering in California. It was during the time of the cold war, and communism and our own way of life were very much on people's minds. And he was speaking to that subject. And suddenly, though, I heard him saying, "I love my little girls more than anything -" And I said to myself, "Oh, no, don't. You can't - don't say that." But I had underestimated him. He went on: "I would rather see my little girls die now, still believing in God, than have them grow up under communism and one day die no longer believing in God."

There were thousands of young people in that audience. They came to their feet with shouts of joy. They had instantly recognized the profound truth in what he had said, with regard to the physical and the soul and what was truly important.

Yes, let us pray for the salvation of all of those who live in that totalitarian darkness - pray they will discover the joy of knowing God. But until they do, let us be aware that while they preach the supremacy of the state, declare its omnipotence over individual man, and predict its eventual domination of all peoples on the earth, they are the focus of evil in the modern world.

It was C.S. Lewis who, in his unforgettable Screwtape Letters, wrote: "The greatest evil is not done now in those sordid 'dens of rime' that Dickens loved to paint. It is not even done in concentration camps and labor camps. In those we see its final result. But it is conceived and ordered (moved, seconded, carried and minuted) in clean, carpeted, warmed, and well-lighted offices, by quiet men with white collars and cut fingernails and smooth-shaven cheeks who do no need to raise their voice."

Well, because these "quiet men" do no "raise their voices," because they sometimes speak in soothing tones of brotherhood and peace, because, like other dictators before them, they're always making "their final territorial demand," some would have us accept them as their word and accommodate ourselves to their aggressive impulses. But if history teaches anything, it teaches that simpleminded appeasement or wishful thinking about our adversaries is folly. It means the betrayal of our past, the squandering of our freedom.

So, I urge you to speak our against those who would place the United States in a position of military and moral inferiority. You know, I've always believed that old Screwtape reserved his best efforts for those of you in the church. So, in your discussions of the nuclear freeze proposals, I urge you to beware the temptation of pride - the temptation of blithely declaring yourselves above it all and label both sides equally at fault, to ignore the facts of history and the aggressive impulses of an evil empire, to simply call the arms race a giant misunderstanding and thereby remove yourself from the struggle between right and wrong and good and evil.

I ask you to resist the attempts of those who would have you withhold your support for our efforts, this administration's efforts, to keep America strong and free, while we negotiate real and verifiable reductions in the world's nuclear arsenals and one day, with God's help, their total elimination.

While America's military strength is important, let me add here that I've always maintained that the struggle now going on for the world will never be decided by bombs or rockets, by armies or military might. The real crisis we face today is a spiritual one; at root, it is a test of moral will and faith.

Whittaker Chambers, the man whose own religious conversation made him a witness to one of the terrible traumas of our time, the Hiss-Chambers case, wrote that the crisis of the Western world exists to the degree in which the West is indifferent to God, the degree to which it collaborates in communism's attempt to make man stand alone without God. And then he said, for Marxism-Leninism is actually the second-oldest faith, first proclaimed in the Garden of Eden with the words of temptation, "Ye shall be as gods."

The Western world can answer this challenge, he wrote, "but only provided that its faith in God and the freedom He enjoins is as great as communism's faith in Man."

I believe we shall rise to the challenge. I believe that communism is another sad, bizarre chapter in human history whose last pages even now are being written. I believe this because the source of our strength in the quest for human freedom is not material, but spiritual. And because it knows no limitation, it must terrify and ultimately triumph over those who would enslave their fellow man. For in the words of Isaiah: "He giveth power to the faint; and to them that have no might He increased strength . . . But they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary . . . "

Yes, change your world. One of our Founding Fathers, Thomas Paine, said, "We have it within our power to begin the world over again." We can do it, doing together what no one church could do by itself.

God bless you, and thank you very much.

http://www.presidentreagan.info/speeches/empire.cfm

Not that I actually read it all...But it's about on par with the Soviet Unions condemnations against the US Both of them are blatantly propagandistic in their wording and intent

[Ned]

Originally posted by molly bloom
Is a minus rating possible?

Reagan always reminded me of Gertrude Stein's description of Oakland.

'There is no there there.'

I see no evidence of independent thought in Reagan- at best he was a shill or carny barker for vested interests, good at recycling stale rhetoric and empty bombast. Compare his hollow speeches with the speeches of Lincoln, and their filmy insubstantiality becomes more apparent.

What Gil Scott Heron said in 'B Movie' was true- after Skippy, America wanted John Wayne. But he was unavailable, so you made do with Ronald Reagan.

Hollyweird, indeed.

Molly, I have heard this repeatedly about Reagan for vitually my entire life. Pile on, Molly.

[Q Classic]

ned, don't generalize. it puts you in the same class as all the rabid leftists, just on the other end of the spectrum.

reagan has some damn good speeches, particularly the one in front of the former berlin wall.

that does not change the fact that reagan didn't have much to do with the soviet collapse.

[Ned]

Originally posted by Q Cubed
ned, don't generalize. it puts you in the same class as all the rabid leftists, just on the other end of the spectrum.

reagan has some damn good speeches, particularly the one in front of the former berlin wall.

that does not change the fact that reagan didn't have much to do with the soviet collapse.

Well he did, Q Cubed. He supported the Mujahadeen in Afghanistan and that bleed the USSR dry. He also militarily resisted communism across the globe. This certainly did not help Gorbachev.

But I agree, the primary problem the USSR had was coming out of Poland and the Vatican.

[Q Classic]

well, if you wish to believe that.

the fact is that by the time gorby came into power, the soviet system had already suffered from at least twenty years of dry rot from within. unable to match the growing technological and economic might of the west, gorby tried to modernize soviet russia to compete. it was a bold gamble, trying to allow some free reforms in order to help breed a new generation of scientists and thinkers to create the same miracle in the eastern bloc. what he failed to realize was that democracy is a contagious thing: glasnost and perestroika, once they gave a voice to the people, brought down the soviet empire from within.

it wasn't reagan, ned. it was the people who put the final blow to communism. it was the freedom-loving citizens of the democratic west using their drive to outpace their stalinist and communist eastern brothers. reagan was just one man in it, who just happened to be in charge of america at the time.

[Nubclear]

[Sikander]

Originally posted by MRT144


quoting famous men doesnt make a man any wiser.

Good one. Who said it?

[Q Classic]

well, the part he quoted includes the name...? :

Quote:

Originally posted by Ned Churchill had a saying that went something like this. If a man in his twenties was not a liberal, he had no heart. If a man in his thirties was not a conservative, he had no brain.

quoting famous men doesnt make a man any wiser.

[The Vagabond]

Thanks for citing the evil-empire speech, Ned. Read it with interest.

Well, so many persistent references to God make his speech look, at places, as a speech of a fundamentalist leader, rather than the leader of the free world.

On the other hand, I see that the words "evil empire" are mentioned only in passing. This is quite unlike Bush's recent "axis of evil", which was accentuated boldly and persistently. Nonetheless, the words "evil empire" were noticed, singled out, and brought into political jargon. Thus an extremely successful propagandistic cliche was born.

[MrFun]

Didn't Raegan declare once, that trees cause pollution??

[notyoueither]

Ladies and gentlemen, we begin bombing in five minutes... Oops.

Gotta wonder if that really was a mistake, or was it calculated to let the people in the Kremlin know just how much of a hardass they were dealing with?

[notyoueither]

Originally posted by Q Cubed
well, if you wish to believe that.

the fact is that by the time gorby came into power, the soviet system had already suffered from at least twenty years of dry rot from within. unable to match the growing technological and economic might of the west, gorby tried to modernize soviet russia to compete. it was a bold gamble, trying to allow some free reforms in order to help breed a new generation of scientists and thinkers to create the same miracle in the eastern bloc. what he failed to realize was that democracy is a contagious thing: glasnost and perestroika, once they gave a voice to the people, brought down the soviet empire from within.

it wasn't reagan, ned. it was the people who put the final blow to communism. it was the freedom-loving citizens of the democratic west using their drive to outpace their stalinist and communist eastern brothers. reagan was just one man in it, who just happened to be in charge of america at the time.

Read some of the earlier posts. Their recollection agrees with mine (as an outsider). Reagan revitalised a beaten and demoralised population. People who can do great things often do not for want of leadership.

[The Vagabond]

His name is spelled "Reagan", MrFun. I just noticed on another thread that you write "Raegan" all the time.

[notyoueither]

... of course I think Americans were certainly ready for it. I don't pick Yanks to be too enthusiastic about taking second place to anyone for very long. After Vietnam and Watergate they were generally beat though. Carter was a very good man, but he didn't have the stuff to make Americans forget. Reagan was the right man at the right time.

At least that's what it looked like to me from where I sit.

[The Vagabond]

Originally posted by notyoueither
Ladies and gentlemen, we begin bombing in five minutes... Oops.

Gotta wonder if that really was a mistake, or was it calculated to let the people in the Kremlin know just how much of a hardass they were dealing with?

It might well be so.

[The Vagabond]

It is certainly amazing how Reagan managed to raise the spirits of a demoralized America. But I should insist that this could have never happened if it was not for a completely bizarre and accidental victory of the US hockey team in 1980.

On the other hand, the Soviet Union was doomed well before Reagan came to power. Momentum was irreversibly lost in the mid-1960s. The Brezhnev leadership preferred a couple of decades of pseudo-stability to modernizing the country. In the 1960s, such a modernization was yet possible.

[Alexander's Horse]

Hindsight is a wonderful thing.

NOONE predicted the fall of the Soviet Union. It came as a complete surprise.

And I don't think you can credit Reagan with that.

[notyoueither]

On the Soviets bit... what would have happened if nobody pushed at the house of cards? Can't say can you? Neither can I. All I can say is that Reagan (and like-minded allies) did push. A lot. That is why they get credit in my books.