Ronald Reagan isn't worthy of praise on his birthday

[웃 910]

Letter to the Editor: Ronald Reagan isn't worthy of praise on his birthday

By: Jared Goldberg

Published February 8th, 2011

I wish sometimes that I could move to the fantasy world that conservatives like Business School Senior Alexander Franz and LSA Senior Jonathan Pape inhabit. (The real Reagan, 2/6/2011). In the conservative utopia, tax cuts pay for themselves and former President Ronald Reagan is the next best thing to Jesus. However, human beings don’t inhabit the conservative Never-Neverland. We live in reality. The Right’s obsession with Reagan has created this mythic figure that never existed. The information either glossed over or ignored by Franz and Pape is quite revealing of the conservative mindset. Reagan was the most overrated president in the history of our republic, to put it kindly, and was a prolific war criminal, to put it more accurately.

The People’s Park protests in 1969 at University of California, Berkley were not made violent, as Pape and Franz imply, by the students and other protestors. They were made violent by Reagan’s ordering of California Highway Patrol officers and the California National Guard to suppress them in an event known as “Bloody Thursday.” Hardly something to take pride in.

His massive tax cuts, which benefitted the wealthy predominantly, exploded the deficit and tripled the debt to nearly $3 trillion by the time he left office. Those beloved tax cuts may have been a boon to the wealthy, but inequality grew astronomically. Unemployment in 1981 grew to 10.8 percent.

Reagan didn’t return the United States to prominence. He helped the wealthy at the expense of the poor and working classes. While Iran-Contra was a passing footnote for Franz and Pape, I will call it for what it was: an unconstitutional power grab. Congress wouldn’t allow Reagan, through the Boland Amendment, to directly aid the Nicaraguan Contras, paramilitary groups that engaged in massive human rights abuses. So, in order to get around that whole pesky separation of powers thing, he illegally sold weapons to Iran and used the money to support groups that routinely kidnapped, tortured, executed and raped civilians.

Franz and Pape also neglected to inform their readers that their hero supported South African apartheid. He ignored AIDS until 1985, after thousands had already become infected and died. Let’s not forget that it was Reagan who armed and trained Osama Bin Laden during the Soviet Union’s disastrous 10-year invasion into Afghanistan.

I’m sorry, but in the real world, such a president isn't worthy of such praise 100 years after his birth. Reagan’s legacy will be class warfare against the poor, support of racists and mass murderers abroad and an ideology that has been consistently proven wrong.

Jared Goldberg

Alum

http://www.michigandaily.com/content/letter-editor-reagan

[lvcouple2010 11]

Ronald Reagan was the single biggest factor in the fall of the Iron curtain and freedom for millions of people around the world. He is beloved by Americans on both sides of the aisle and was perhaps the most respected American leader (note: "respected", not loved or adored) of the 20th century. We could use a man of his caliber in the White House today.

[Deputy Purple 1,294]

Ronald Reagan was the single biggest factor in the fall of the Iron curtain and freedom for millions of people around the world. He is beloved by Americans on both sides of the aisle and was perhaps the most respected American leader (note: "respected", not loved or adored) of the 20th century. We could use a man of his caliber in the White House today.

I second everything you said...

Further, it was his conviction to do what he believed in not what other's convinced him of that earned him that respect.

[Ban Hammer 12,837]

In the conservative utopia, tax cuts pay for themselves and former President Ronald Reagan is the next best thing to Jesus. However, human beings don’t inhabit the conservative Never-Neverland. We live in reality.

yet, the left believes in taxing everything that exists to pay for liberal pipe dreams.

[I AM NOT THAT GUY 5,715]

Reagan is dead. I don't think he cares.

[Trumplestiltskin 5,791]

yet, the left believes in taxing everything that exists to pay for liberal pipe dreams.

Still baiting I see.

[Ban Hammer 12,837]

Still baiting I see.

quit biting then.

if that's bait to you, then i suggest a thicker skin.

[Trumplestiltskin 5,791]

Or you could adopt a less confrontational posture. Dodgy generalisations lead to flame wars, you've been here long enough to know that.

[Ban Hammer 12,837]

Or you could adopt a less confrontational posture. Dodgy generalisations lead to flame wars, you've been here long enough to know that.

spare me your outrage. it was a comment on the writer's thoughts. if you can't figure that out, then go back to school.

[I AM NOT THAT GUY 5,715]

Chuck and Duncan Show (Repeat)

[Hilarious Clinton 452]

Or you could adopt a less confrontational posture. Dodgy generalisations lead to flame wars, you've been here long enough to know that.

Do shut up. You never have an opinion anyway. Just lots of blah blah blah.

[Trumplestiltskin 5,791]

spare me your outrage. it was a comment on the writer's thoughts. if you can't figure that out, then go back to school.

No outrage here. Just seems to me that you are always stoking the fire.

Do shut up. You never have an opinion anyway. Just lots of blah blah blah.

No.

[Ban Hammer 12,837]

No outrage here. Just seems to me that you are always stoking the fire.

no, it's not.

[Trumplestiltskin 5,791]

Ronald Reagan was the single biggest factor in the fall of the Iron curtain and freedom for millions of people around the world. He is beloved by Americans on both sides of the aisle and was perhaps the most respected American leader (note: "respected", not loved or adored) of the 20th century. We could use a man of his caliber in the White House today.

I don't think that's really true outside of the US.

Reagan never seemed to me to be a particularly notable President - other than that he was less blatantly corrupt than Nixon (though the Iran Contra affair is still extremely dodgy).

no, it's not.

Just saying what I see.

[Brother Hesekiel 2,235]

By a wide margin, Reagan was the worst president of modern history.

He was a president for the wealthy, at the expense of everyone else in this country. No compassion, no mercy. An actor and a cowboy through and through.

The decline of public services he initiated when turning around what the best president of modern times, Roosevelt, had started, is just breathtaking. The hundreds of mentally ill, homeless people roaming the streets of my California hometown, Ventura, are living tesimony of his closing of the mental hospitals in California through his time as Governor.

His very own son, Ron Reagan, a politically active fellow, as respectful as he is, makes no secret out of the fact that he despises his late father for what he has done to the American people and this country in general.