Dear Friends,
It seems to me that Ronald Reagan was a great president. He took the United States, from an economic point similar to the one we are in, and turned it around to have low unemployment, good growth in GDP and won the Cold War to boot. Not small accomplishments.
One of his strengths was that he followed Machiavelli’s maxim, that a wise prince secure the loyalty of the population over the approval of the aristocracy, in that the people are far more numerous than the aristocracy and have more power of violence (political power), as a result. Marshaled under the prince people power can suppress the power of the aristocracy. Ron Reagan had to go around the political and information establishments to get his changes through.
The changes Ron Reagan wanted to pass, and did pass, were an anathema to the existing political establishment at the time. Deregulation was vilified as leading to the deaths of millions… didn’t happen. Placing medium range nuclear missiles in Europe was called overly provocative, and President Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative was derided as Star Wars, an impossible dream. Ron Reagan was vilified at every turn by the unbiased media.
All the terrible outcomes predicted by the unbiased media didn’t pan out, and all the outcomes the unbiased media opposed, came true. President Ron Reagan, as it turns out, was prophetic in his policies. The total collapse of the USSR and the Communist Bloc was a direct result of President Reagan’s grappling with the Soviets. Lest we forget, the world was under the constant threat of nuclear annihilation. Ron Reagan lifted that cloud from out heads.
Deregulation and lower taxation proposed by president Reagan and opposed by the Democrat Party and a large faction, (the progressive faction), of the Republican Party, resulted in a complete turnaround in the American economy. Interest rates went from 16% to 7%, unemployment went from a post war high of 10.8% down to a more reasonable 6% and lower.
President Reagan opened up drilling within the borders of the US as much as possible to lower the cost of energy. He understood that energy, as a primary input to the economy, is critical to the smooth functioning of it. When artificial constrictions are put on the supply of energy, by overly zealous government regulation, the price becomes more volatile and hammers the economy. He got the government out of the way.
Not only in energy but in a whole host of areas from transportation to space exploration. These resulted in an expanding of the US economy unheard of since the early post war period. I remember MacDonald’s was advertising for workers in 1987 $9.00 an hour! In 1987 dollars that is like $20.00 today! The economy was going gangbusters.
The progressive wing of the Republican party took over in 1988 and went back to regulating and taxing… despite rhetoric to the contrary. The outcome was as predictable as the input would be from the progressives, higher unemployment and lower GDP growth. Hard to imagine that if you put a bullet in the belly of the economy it won’t function as before.
When the conservative faction of the Republican Party, (people who wish to conserve the legacy of the enlightenment) regained supremacy in 1994, in the Congress, they went on an austerity binge and were vilified for it. The unbiased media was unrelenting in their vitriolic presentation of the cuts and spending controls the Republicans put through. “Mean spirited” is how the unbiased media put it as I recall. The austerity that resulted in the balancing of the budget for the first time in decades.
The Conservative branch of the Republican Party was decimated by the hammering the unbiased media gave them for their balancing the US budget, and the credit for the accomplishment went to the progressive president, who had fought tooth and nail, the measures that begot the result.
We will see the exact thing play out in the coming years. The Conservative Republicans will be vilified in the Unbiased media and the credit for the outcome of the pro liberty faction’s measures will be meted out to the anti capitalists (Protyranists), who will fight them every step of the way.
We shall have to wait to see how this round plays out but we know where the battle lines are. The philosophical descendants of President Ronald Reagan, the Tea Party, and other conservative groups will be vilified as was their ancestor Ron Reagan. He would have gone around the unbiased media, directly to the American people to explain his agenda, he would do it effectively and with a glint in his eye.
Maybe that is why Sara Palin is so reviled and despised by the unbiased press, who heap mounds of vitriol on her… because she is a good communicator and is the philosophical descendant of Ron Reagan?
The guy who was just a dumb actor.
