Ronald Regan: Good or Bad?

 I grew up in a family of Reagan worshippers, there's no other way to say that. My father in particular admires him so much that to this day criticizing Reagan in front of him can make family reunions explosive to say the least.

What I think of him? Probably as a person he was not that bad and perhaps he even believed in some of the things he said. But he was nothing more than a mere pawn in the end. The Republicans were still living in fear that their next president could become another Nixon, so they picked somebody who would just follow orders. Like the present US president he was pretty good at that.

If I were to judge his presidency I would rate it pretty low. We are not talking Lincoln or Wilson territory but it still had some pretty bad moments. The War on Drugs is a long, painful, unmitigated disaster which turned the US from being the "Land of the Free" into the world's largest prison camp. Not happy at destroying liberties at home the US government set about cajoling and blackmailing other countries from around the world into joining the "Crusade fo the Greater Good". He got himself involved in a needless showdown with Lybia which, while nowhere near as bloody as the present "War on Terror", costed many innocent lives (think about the Pan Am bombing and the bombing of Tripoli). He put the military-industrial complex into high gear. The original intention was to force the Soviet Union into over spending to crack their economy (don't know you but ever since I was boy I was told that Soviet Russia was incredibly powerful and wealthy so when I saw what lied behind the Iron Curtain I was taken aback to say the least). In the end Socialism took care of itself but the Star Wars stuck around (and US taxpayers are still generously financing the neverending R&D phase). During the Reagan presidency another Crusade against liberties, which started earlier and had been relatively harmless, was put in high gear: anti-smoking laws started to become more severe and to be truly enforced. Here too foreign countries were cajoled and blackmailed into joining the March of Fools.

Need I say more?

Ego:

I'm with Brainpolice here; he hurt the free-market brand.

Ego agrees with BP and I?

This is a sign of the end times.

Niccolò:

This is a sign of the end times.

End of times for false prophets such as yourself! 

liberty student:

Niccolò:

This is a sign of the end times.

End of times for false prophets such as yourself! 

 

 

I am the the third revelation.

Brainpolice:

Isn't that what makes him a horrible spokesman for "limited government", since people consequentially associate the results of his expansionism with "limited government" and therefore oppose it? This point was already harped on earlier in the thread.

You may very well be right but his words taken on their own account were quite good.  Also I think it can go both ways, I was a consevative once and now Im a libertarian. I was driven in this direction to a great extent by Reagan's words. It doesn't take a genuis to realize his talk and his actions were two entirely different things. And again I think his "talk" was pretty good.

*boinks the ray-gun cult*

I think Reagan is a good example of where classical liberalism leads to.

Reagen defended government fire departments as consistent with the idea that government should exist only to protect one person from another. How absurd.