Oh can you believe it was only a hundred years ago when Ronald Reagan was born? Which side of the Civil War did he fight on, anyway? (Answer: He didn’t fight at all, but he was an extra at the Ford Theater the night Lincoln was shot, and later claimed to have played the role of Robert E. Lee in James Joyce’s movie Ulysses S. Grant.) Oh, also, back in the 1980s when Ronald Reagan was actually serving as president in some weird state of constant incapacitation?…. Let’s remember the empty suit who led us to a Promised Land of Fox News, Tax Cuts for Multi-Billionaires and the deliberate dismantling of what had been the world’s smartest, most prosperous society in the History of the World.
Today marks the 100th anniversary of the birth of Ronald Wilson Reagan. If you’re a Conservative True Believer, you’re no doubt going to be celebrating with a huge party…and charging it to your grandchildren. For what was Reaganism but self-delusion and self-congratulation in the service of a lie? I’m all for remembering a man who (whether deservedly or not), played an outsized role in modern American history. Still, while a good part of the population (and the “Liberal” media) are tripping over themselves lionizing the late, great Gipper…how about we remember the reconstructed evil that characterized the Reagan years?
Perhaps the greatest legacy of Ronald Reagan was that he gave birth to the fiscal crisis we face today. One of his most famous quotes was
The nine most terrifying words in the English language are ‘I’m from the government and I’m here to help.’
What Reagan failed to recognize was that effective government regulation could serve business interests very effectively. The era of modern regulation began under FDR, whose New Deal aimed to promote fairness in competition. To Reagan’s way of thinking, though, ALL government regulation was bad; the free market can and should be responsible for regulating itself, and government only increases inefficiency and reduces competitiveness.
Well, guess what? Thanks to deregulation, we got (among other things) the subprime mortgage market, which was allowed to regulate itself to the point of almost bringing the entire world economy to its knees. Effective government oversight could and likely WOULD have prevented the events the led us to the morass of recession and to the brink of depression.
This isn’t to say, of course, that this recession can be laid solely at the foot of Reagan’s sarcophagus. Economic downturns are part and parcel of the normal economic cycle. I do think, however, that a sound argument could be made for saying that the depth and breadth of this recession would have been much less severe had Reagan not worshiped at the altar of deregulation.
Would that deregulation was Reagan’s only significant failure….
We don’t need birthday tributes to remind us of Reagan’s legacy - the homeless do it every day.
- Andy Borowitz
I have neither the time nor the inclination to engage in a full dissection of the Reagan legacy, so how about a list to hit the “high” points?
- Reagan’s invasion of Grenada was perhaps the silliest, most absurd overreach in American history.
- The Reagan administration was one of the most corrupt in history. By the time all was said and done, 138 officials were convicted, indicted, or investigated for official misconduct.
- Reagan’s sent Marines to Lebanon, ultimately costing 241 lives.
- During the Reagan years, the number of families living in poverty increased by 1/3.
- Reagan-era deregulation and laissez-faire government oversight led to the Savings and Loan scandal, which cost American taxpayers billions of dollars.
- Reagan fired 13,000 air traffic controllers), demonstrating conclusively the contempt with which True Believers view American workers.
- The national debt TRIPLED under Reagan.
- AIDS became an epidemic, largely ignored by the Reagan Administration because Reagan felt that AIDS was God’s punishment for homosexuality.
- The Reagan Administration secretly sold arms to Iran and used the funds to illegally support Nicaraguan rebels.
- Reagan supported systematic brutality in Latin America. Among the “highlights” were the war in Nicaragua and a massacre in El Salvador.
- Ronald Reagan didn’t win the Cold War. He just happened to be sitting in the Oval Office when the decrepit, rotten-from-within USSR collapsed from it’s own corruption and inefficiency.
- A large tax cut led to a recession and unemployment that hit 10% (sound familiar??).
- Reagan embraced apartheid.
I could go on, I suppose, but I think my point’s been made. Republicans revere Ronald Reagan as the patron saint of Conservative orthodoxy, but the historical reality simply doesn’t match the hero worship. I’m not going to argue that Reagan and his acolytes were inherently and irredeemably evil…but there are many historians and reporters who will and are. I think the evidence and the historical record speaks for itself…and so I will let it.
If Conservatives and the media choose to remember Ronald Reagan and honor his place as an American President, that’s one thing. Still, is it too much to ask that these remembrances carry at least a patina of truth and honesty about the legacy of a man who was arguably one of the worst Presidents in American history? It’s one thing to fondly remember Reagan’s wit and comfort on the public stage. It’s quite another to cloud the truth in the fog of propaganda when he was in fact an inept, disengaged President, a leader who surrounded himself with advisers who in too many cases could only be described as corrupt and evil.
Remember Ronald Reagan…but can we please recognize the truth and refrain from lionizing him as the saint he most certainly was not?
