Ronald Reagan, R.I.P.
June 06, 2004 ~ 3:53 a.m.
I couldn�t believe the news as I logged on tonight�former President Ronald Reagan is dead, at 93 years of age.
I will say, it very well may be just as well, as for the past decade, he fought the cruel disease known as Alzheimer�s.
But still, as long as Reagan was alive, it was like holding on to something precious all the same. Now that he�s dead, all feels lost. Terribly lost.
I was only in my teens when Reagan was president. I was 11 when he was elected in 1980 and 19 when he left office in January 1990. My fondest memory of Mr Reagan was in 1985, when he delivered his anti-terrorism speech. Today�s young generation needs to know that the line against terrorism wasn�t drawn by Bush the 43rd. It was Reagan who first declared that terrorism wouldn�t be tolerated. He worked extensively with British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in combating the IRA, as well as terrorist groups in South America and the Middle East.
Reagan, along with his wife Nancy, also delivered the now famous, almost catchphrase-like, �Just Say No (to Drugs)� message. Although I think the War on Drugs is horribly prohibitionist, and agree with libertarians that the government has no right to outlaw a drug unless it has been proven without a shadow of doubt that the drug in question is fatally dangerous, I believe that the �Just Say No� message was a valiant one. It was more of a message warning the youth of America what they might be getting themselves into than an outright prohibitionist statement.
Now, being of a generation that loved to pretend that it had an excuse to be politically apathetic, via Watergate�as if their parents� experience was their tortured experience too�we used the Iran-Contra affair as justification. How terribly we were let down by Reagan and Congress� approval for squelching the Sandinistas and influencing Middle East policy while we were at it! You just can�t trust the government, damnit, and my vote doesn�t count!
The fact of the matter is, Reagan�s tax cuts, his belief is pure supply-side economics��Reaganomics��that was given validity by learned economists such as Bob Bartley and Jude Wanniski, helped put a positive American economic platform into overdrive, thusly creating jobs and sending many families into middle-class status. Television took notice of the �can-do� attitude that Reagan had lit in the American psyche with its most notable sitcoms of the Reagan era: Family Ties and The Cosby Show. The Cosby Show was especially relevant in showing how minorities could move into the upper stratum of American society by studying hard and keeping the faith in Reagan�s supposedly minority-unconscious terms.
It was during the Reagan era that AIDS exploded onto the scene. The disease was identified by scientists as far back as 1959, but it didn�t make an impact on society, and sexual mores, until the early �80s. The sudden rush of sexual paranoia cannot be blamed on Reagan. All Americans panicked under the fear of AIDS and the puritanical strain that has always dictated American sexuality just extrapolated tenfold. It exposed why Americans continue to be the most sexually obsessed people on earth while at the same time remaining the most puritanical. American fear and loathing of �the gay disease� is what dictated the schizophrenic sexual energy of the �80s, not Mr Reagan. Reagan didn�t understand the disease, and as a man of conservative conscience, he rightly figured that if people didn�t control their urges, then the disease would hit them. What for political liberals seems so unforgivably ignorant was, in fact and in reality, a re-affirmation of his Catholic beliefs in modesty. He never bashed gays or those afflicted with AIDS as so many are wont to believe.
I remember going out with some friends to a Chinese restaurant at the age of 16, and, one of the guys, upon picking up a piece of sweet-�n-sour chicken with a blue streak running through it, subsequently threw the chicken down and remarked, �Ew, that one had AIDS!� All the paranoia and subsequent hostility to AIDS cannot be attributed solely to Reagan. It was up to the American public to act responsibly�and many chose not to. A lot of Americans want to blame Reagan for their own prejudices at the time, which is not only irresponsible, but downright disgusting.
In a way, it�s a shame that Mr Reagan�s second term will always be remembered as his undoing, as the justification that liberals always present in their case against the former President. But Reagan inherited the Nicaraguan and Iranian dramas from Carter. It was Carter who tried to institute a �same thing, different dictator� sceme in Nicaragua and oversaw the whole Iran drama. How could Reagan fight an ideological and tactical battle with the Soviet Union without trying to staunch the influence of the Sandinistas in Central America? How could he base policy in the Middle East with the Ayatollah�s Iran in mind?
Want to blame Iran-Contra on Reagan? Fine. Just ask yourself what you would have done during that time and place in history. What choices would you have made? As far as I�m concerned, the Iran-Contra scandal weighs upon Reagan the way the Iraq War weighs upon Bush�both were understandable exercises opted by presidents who felt as if they were doing the right thing given the situation�if not for the liberals controlling the media and revisionist history books in the public schools who insist on teaching otherwise. The Iran-Contra affair and the Iraq War should both be judged objectively, based purely on facts and outcomes. But we all know that there�s as much chance of that happening as there is of finding an untouched young boy at Neverland.
God bless you, Mr Reagan. Thanks for the years and the memories�not to mention the plentitude of opportunities you created for millions of Americans. History would judge you well, were it not so liberally biased.
� M.E.M.
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Copyright � 2001-2007 by M.E. Manning. All material is written by me, unless explicitly stated otherwise by use of footnotes or bylines. Do not copy or redistribute without my permission.
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