Mark Steyn on the meaning of Ronald Reagan

Post #158,635 by marlowe 6/6/04 12:12:56 PM Reply	Mark Steyn on the meaning of Ronald Reagan [link\|http://www.steynonline.com/index2.cfm?edit_id=70\|Dutch was as Dutch got done] Excerpts: Unlike these men, unlike most other senior Republicans, Ronald Reagan saw Soviet Communism for what it was: a great evil. Millions of Europeans across half a continent from Poland to Bulgaria, Slovenia to Latvia live in freedom today because he acknowledged that simple truth when the rest of the political class was tying itself in knots trying to pretend otherwise. That's what counts. He brought down the 'evil empire', and all the rest is fine print. At the time, the charm and the smile got less credit from the intelligentsia, confirming their belief that he was a dunce who'd plunge us into Armageddon... Edmund Morris has described his subject as an 'airhead' and concluded that it's 'like dropping a pebble in a well and hearing no splash.' Morris may not have heard the splash, but he's still all wet: The elites were stupid about Reagan in a way that only clever people can be. Take that cheap crack: If you drop a pebble in a well and you don't hear a splash, it may be because the well is dry but it's just as likely it's because the well is of surprising depth. I went out to my own well and dropped a pebble: I heard no splash, yet the well supplies exquisite translucent water to my home. But then I suspect it's a long while since Morris dropped an actual pebble in an actual well: As with walls, his taste runs instinctively to the metaphorical. Reagan looked at the Berlin Wall and saw not a poem-quoting opportunity but prison bars. I say: Oh, the simplisme. [link\|http://www.angelfire.com/ca3/marlowe/#20040606\|Home link] ---------------------------------------------------------------- DEAL WITH IT. Americans: a pack, not a herd. Never mind the nerve gas. Where's the, um... "It\ufffds Warholian: in the future, all conflicts will be Vietnam for 15 minutes." - Lileks [link\|http://www.angelfire.com/ca3/marlowe/index.html\|http://www.angelfire...arlowe/index.html]
Post #158,644 by deSitter 6/6/04 1:16:16 PM Reply	Puke This is a real man: [link\|http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/remember/1998/goldwater_5-29.html\|http://www.pbs.org/n...ldwater_5-29.html] The antithesis of Rayguns. But I know all you losers are just beside yourself today, that your idiot mentor is gone. Think of your track record here Sir Bot - you've been wrong about EVERYTHING. You're NEVER right. If you're behind it, it's automatically wrong. Doesn't your software have an error-correction mechanism? -drl
Post #158,686 by rcareaga 6/6/04 9:35:48 PM Reply	Re: Puke Ah, Ross, do you notice that the empty hat is never flung out of its hole anymore when the winds blow ill? He's sickening, our little philbot, at the steady gales of reality blowing away his delusional constructs. It is a beautiful thing to watch him shrivel. cordially, Die Welt ist alles, was der Fall ist.
Post #158,763 by Ashton 6/7/04 7:31:26 AM Reply	No whitewash for the garrulous Gipper though he was surely your intellectual and tactical superior, in the black arts of shoveling the bafflegab with blab-words n'flags. Now here's a specimen of one with actual Guts and demonstrable brains, thus incomprehensible alien to the Nintendo Eloi-class: [link\|http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2004/06/07/mccarthy/index_np.html\| Eugene McCarthy]. While Ronnie had yet even to sidle into GE Home Theatre, Gene was [alone] willing to face the Bogeyman from Wisconsin. Antiwar hero He made history by challenging a president who had plunged the nation into a calamitous war. More than three decades later, Gene McCarthy reflects on his legendary race against Lyndon Johnson -- and the current campaign to unseat George W. Bush. - - - - - - - - - - - - By John F. Callahan June 7, 2004 \| At the end of November in 1967 when the Vietnam War seemed at the point of no return, with chaos on campuses and violence in the streets of American cities, Sen. Eugene McCarthy did what in those days was unthinkable: He challenged an incumbent president for the nomination of their party. Running against Lyndon Johnson was not the first time Gene McCarthy had shown iconoclastic courage. In 1952, at the height of Sen. Joseph McCarthy's popularity, when not a single senator would step forward to debate the subversive-chasing demagogue, 32-year-old, second-term congressman Eugene McCarthy came forward to oppose Sen. McCarthy (no relation) on the Radio Forum of the Air. Throughout the 1950s and '60s, Gene McCarthy sought to curb the influence of the CIA and the military-industrial complex on American foreign policy, and as a senator he led the fight to extend Social Security coverage to the mentally and physically disabled. - - - - - - - - - - - - Natch he's 180\ufffd from your rusted-in-place compass.. why he even imagined that "SOCIALIZED" concern for elderly, disabled might be OK! Now as to the reborn Trotskyites of your buds in the PNAC - oh wait.. yours is a Pure-blog edjaKayshun, so origins of mindsets would be another foreign concept. Do Neocon-androids dream of a nation of electric marlowes?
Post #158,778 by Silverlock 6/7/04 9:34:36 AM Reply	As President, Reagan will always be remembered for his fine supporting actor role in 'Bedtime for Bonzo'. ----------------------------------------- It is much harder to be a liberal than a conservative. Why? Because it is easier to give someone the finger than it is to give them a helping hand. Mike Royko

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