Ronald Reagan
Was Reagan A Dove?
From Foreign Policy b/w of The Daily Beast comes some really fascinating thought on Ronald Reagan’s approach to foreign affairs:
Was the Gipper as tough as his fans make him out to be? “Today’s conservatives have conjured a mythic Reagan who never compromised with America’s enemies and never shrank from a fight,” Peter Beinart writes in an excerpt of his new book, The Icarus Syndrome: A History of American Hubris, in Foreign Policy magazine. “But the real Reagan did both those things, often. In fact, they were a big part of his success.” Beinart says Reagan was “terrified of war” and he fought suggestions, from both within and outside his own administration, that he bomb or send troops into Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Cuba. Beinart also takes issue with the conservative boast that Reagan “frightened” the Soviet Union into submission. “The problem with this story is that Reagan began abandoning his hard-line anti-Soviet stance in late 1983, 18 months before Gorbachev took power,” Beinart writes.
A critical case in point here would be the bombing of the Marine barracks in Lebanon in 1983. It killed 241 American servicemen, the most killed in an assault on American troops since World War II. Reading about the attack’s response is illuminating:
Political Prostitution
The late great Pres. Ronald Reagan once famously equated politicians to prostitutes. That little quip drew self-conscious titters from both sides of the political aisle.
But the “Gipper” was wrong, not in principle but in terminology. Politicians aren’t prostitutes. They’re pimps.
Had Reagan lived to see the latest effort in socializing his beloved Republic, the “Gipper” would no longer question which group – peddlers of flesh or influence - is the worst of those willing to trade the sacred for the profane. He’d know.
Because once President Barack Obama signs the so-called health care bill, imposing the most sweeping government devaluation of individual liberty in a generation, he will have legalized a political prostitution Reagan couldn’t have imagined. I suspect Reagan would have watched with growing horror as federal lawmakers dealt away Constitutional freedoms for the scant comfort of executive orders and sweet, home-district bribes.
It’s as if Washington D.C. has become its own red-light district, and prostitution its chief commodity. After all, Democrats hawked their latest bill of health-care goods as a feel-good scheme couched in meaningless phrases of social justice and human rights.
Prostitutes at least have the minimal comfort of knowing that though they’re selling a profoundly intimate and personal value, it is at least theirs to sell. Politicians, on the other hand, act as unprincipled pimps, selling others into the slavery of government dependence with nary a thought for the value they cheapen.
Economic Depressions Don’t Exist Under Totalitarian Systems
So contends Lev Nazrozov. He writes:
Out-of-control predatory capitalists have perpetrated a worldwide economic depression. Capitalism’s degenerate character is now extraordinarily visible during this time of multiple crises.
On each side of the page there is a picture of a miserable emaciated proletarian who carries on his back a huge pack of money, with a bourgeois seated atop of the pack and smoking a cigar.
By simply allowing the government to dominate every sector of the polity, by embracing totalitarianism, we might be able to avoid the woes of economic recession? Historical study makes such a conclusion seem ridiculous. While totalitarian economies did not suffer from “depressions”, per se, one could argue that consumers and citizens lived under a system which continuously mimicked the effects of depression.
Cutting Taxes = Increasing Revenue
Taxes were very high, but no real revenue was coming in. That’s because the system of taxes at that time was an early form of income tax that centered on the government taking a large percentage of a farmer’s crops.
So Ching Ti did something bold and innovative: he cut taxes.
Overnight, taxes went from over 50% down to about 3%. Farmers, who had fled to the hills to escape draconian tax rates, now came home and began farming again. To make a long story short, Ching Ti’s greatest problem while governing was trying to keep all the grain in his barns from spoiling.
It seems that ancient Chinese history is good for more than just cutesy script on a fortune cookie.
Swear on the Constitution
Our U.S. Constitution is a remarkably efficient document. It is our only founding charter. Many times changed, rendered, adumbrated. But it’s essence is unshakable. Written in Thomas Jefferson’s handwriting, edited against his will, pored over, discussed, hushed about, while it lay about some small wooden tables in independence Hall, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Americans believe, that the Constitution is the link between our government and our lives. Congress and the Executive, can not overstep the harmony that exists, by each American following his path of liberty. Unfortunately, too many harmful minds, want too much power in this country. Power never vested in the Constitution. Power never meant to be handled by bureaucrats or officials or committees. We need to change all this. The oath of office should be sworn on the Constitution. In the Capital Rotunda. Among the historicity of remains from past great ages of the United States.
Drones in our night skies. Unelected lawyers interpreting the U.S. Constition. Surveillance. Internet spying. Blackouts and Stasi-like encroachements. Torturing. Deaths and internment of American citizens. Socialization of medicare for the elderly, and healthcare for those in mid-age. Food stamps and deductibles for people who do not work. Taxation over representation. Data-accumulation. Groping at airports. Fumbling and nefarious Justice Department officials. Cronies. Welfare abuses. War and destruction as an industry, like Hollywood and Corporate America! Blame-games. Undermining of basic civil rights. Monetarism-mongering! Unaccountability and state-sponsored fear. Campaigns of division. Solutions disguised for self-created problems.
Mitt Romney’s American Delusion
Republican voters are being put through the pincers. We are back to 2008. Heaps of strong candidates, but no consensus. Great speeches, but no substance. PAC money spent by the millions, but no conclusive results. GOP candidates are even welcoming Democratic voters, to smear each other, to add to their victories, or to just plainly embitter each other. The Republican race is not going to get any more civil. Once, we see these subterfuges, we can ask the real questions: what will it take to unseat Obama in November, and who can best do this?
In America the conservative movement has been changing. Neo-conservatives, who had for roughly two decades (1980-2000) held the strongarm of the party, are gone with the Bush Administration’s doctrine of “pre-emptive strike” and the PATRIOT ACT. We are in the midst of the dregs. Still trying to find out which direction this country will spill it’s spirit of changelessness.
For all his grandeur, Mitt Romney just has not taken his campaign to the next level. Rick Santorum has peaked, but more likely will not hold his miniscule leads. Newt Gingrinch’s populism and Ron Paul’s constitutionalism, so similar to each other, are self-negating. None is in charge. Marginal candidates can’t win delegates, nor the RNC party’s nomination. Mitt Romney, the ever-chameleon like business mogul, can’t strike a human touch to save his life and political prospects.
If Mitt Romney is the front runner of the wolves, ready to flay Obama; what is his version of the American Dream? How does he see this country, through which prism? Is it a legalistic, rigidly technocratic, institutional approach? It seems, his advantage is not his base, his character, anything as much as his warchest. He won’t run out of steam. Even if the delegate count gets close in Tampa, FL this spring; he’ll be able to resurrect himself, make the necessary promises and sail away with the nomination.
Andrew Breitbart Dead at 43
Media-sauvant and Internet fortune-peddler Andrew Breitbart died last night at age 43 in Los Angeles. Breitbart made an ambulance-chasing name for himself, by exposing the rich, powerful and connected.
Scandals that he helped to uncover, included ACORN undercover exposes, Rep. Anthony Weiner’s sexting scandal, Shirley Sherrod’s NAACP racist-rant in front of the USDA, and burning (virtual) wires by taking on most anyone on Twitter, Facebook, Reddit over politics, internationalism, globalism and American society.
Like many of this first decade, he was a contrarian, a (serpent) tongue-split rhetorician full of bombast and verbosity. Remorseless, in his yearning to undo American socialism; he attacked when-, and where-, ever he could.
The first laptop-gonzo, and blackberry-holstering crackpot of the social media age, died abruptly: when he keeled over on an evening walk. According to sources he spent long stretches of his life on the road, reporting and speaking the truth about the powererful through computing and New Media. He is survived by his wife Susannah Bean and four kids.
Obama: End of the Road
During four years of non-presidency, the 2012 election in the United States will finally furnish us a leader! While the media are jabbing away fruitlessly at the GOP candidates, one thing is certain: Barack Obama will not be elected twice. If he is (least likely), there will be rebellions in America’s Main Streets.
Just this morning; the USA Today reported, for instance, that the auto-industry bailouts of 2008, were a success! Success? More like highway robbery. There were two articles, one a reprieve to counter. But it is clear who is instigating GOP roadblocks: socialists, occupy wall streeters, the media, the IMF, the U.N. and other fat-cat democrat-billionaires and their crony go-for-mediocre claptraps. Cries for the ouster of president Barack Obama are heard world-wide.
Nightmare scenario reality: Obama’s assault on the markets, are plunging the world into darkness. In congress money is used like never before, to make Washington D.C. more like Paris. Let us be clear: no sane American wants/wanted this. It is time for this ghost, to make his ghoulish departure.
A government which becomes so large it is able to give to everyone, anything at anytime it wishes no matter the cost, will take it all away. Violently.
What has Obama done?
To sum up: he has stalled the economy (purposefully) into a ditch, ruined our dollar, made promises lies, frivoluosly disobeyed the constitution, waged war on all faith, handicapped elderly in a cement straight-jacket, given taxes to Egyptians for jihad against Europe, increased immigration and pummelled this great land with medicare, benefits, welfare, handouts, support, birth control, donations, freebies, impositions on all!
Auto-industry bailouts worked; only insofar as it was the only decision in a one-man’s debate. Another way to have dealt Detriot would have been; to let companies fail, let them go: whatever is left, would be parcelled out among those lasting.
Santorum’s Statism Problem
Let us make fresh.
The reason why Rick Santorum would not oust Barack Obama in November, is not his faith. It is simply that he is running a ‘social message’ of uniform decency against a ‘social message’ of uniform healthcare. Plainly, Obama’s health plan, is vital: but not more pressing than the economic calamity of bailouts, frauds, money-laundering, spending and public debt. These are focal issues of the 2012 election.
Santorum is the politician everyone can super-impose themselves on. He’s no CEO like Mitt Romney, no renowned speaker like Newt Gingrich, not intellectual like Ron Paul. No, he is a regular Pennsylvania lawyer, who argued some weird World Wrestling Federation cases. Somehow he is unspectacular enough, that he could almost be your town butcher, postal deliverer or stockyard piler. You would think this is a strength. But it is not.
Eventually, while trying to keep your political pronunciations to a minimum, to correspond to the widest social base possible, you hit a tollboth going 160 mph. Santorum is earnest, he surely is: means well to families and the elderly, but he has yet to prove his salt. His record is plain: he has taken massive amounts of Washington D.C. beltway funding, voted to raise the debt ceiling, is in cahoots with the (so-called) ‘military industrial complex’ and dislikes many anomalies of our population: young pregnants, migrant-labor, jobless, gays, blacks. He has been able to entrench his campaign in an atmosphere of rustic humbleness and simpletonness.
Reporters Silent on Ron Paul
The more connected you are, within the Washington D.C. circuit; and on the long-stretch between Los Angeles and New York, the more clout you have as a politician. Especially, if you’ve squandered taxpayer money on “bridges to nowhere” (Rick Santorum), Olympic “Games” (Mitt Romney) or have been kick-backed by Fannie & Freddie (Newt Gingrich).
All these, of course, are fine examples of Capitalist enterprise, of leadership and smart capital-management. But what do all these undertakings reveal, about abilities in leadership, necessary to plug the dam of the 2008-unward recession? Not, much.
Ron Paul is the antithesis. He negates almost in it’s entirety, every other issues brought by his opponents in the GOP presidential race. He is not reported on, because those who indeed try to, fail miserably: the way Gerald Seib did, moderating the Republican Debate in South Carolina. Ron Paul is too honest: clear, succinct, philosophically astute. This makes him a slippery fish, to place in the Republican Party, although he is by far the most consequently, stalwartly arch-conservative since that other Gipper, that slipped his way into the White House: Ronald Reagan!
Being less ‘politicized’, in other words by having put his neck out on an execution-block, or guillotine, to amass money, has meant he has to do with less campaign finance. But what Paul has lacked in initial spending, his patriots have donated in turn. No other US politician has ever raised a sum, close to over 1 million, which Paul’s campaign has been able to do in 2011. What this means, is; people base decision on mass-media, pandered bits-and-pieces of evening chatter, boxed soundbites (often misinterpreted) while heading out the door in the morning. Ron Paul is lucky to get 3 minutes airtime, after a debate platform.
United Liberty







