Democrats & Liberals: Archives

Yuo said:
“The Militarism of the Reagan Years surfaced again in 1992 with the release of a textbook used in training Latin American officers that called for use of assassination and murder as political tools.”
What was the name of this textbook?

I opposed some of Reagan’s policies and his challenge to Gorbachev scared the hell out of me. I was opposed to his huge deficit spending on escalating armaments which I knew my working life would be spent paying off.

That said, I must in hindsight, defend Reagan’s strategy to deficit spend in the hopes that it would yield a peace dividend that would permit us to reduce military spending and ratchet down military development bringing some prosperity back to workers at some point in the future. History proves that Reagan’s investment at that time did in fact produce the peace dividend that allowed the Clinton administration to cut back on military spending and reduce the national debt, just as Reagan had hoped would be the outcome.

Part foresight, part luck, and one hell of a lot of political courage, Reagan’s strategy in this regard proved right for the time and circumstances. My fear now is that Bush is taking Reagan’s strategy and adopting it without regard to the myriad of differences between the circumstances Reagan faced, and those facing our nation today. What worked once under one set of circumstances in no way comes with any assurance it will work under a different set of circumstances. Our economic and debt situation, not to mention our international situation is radically different today than in the ‘80’s.

I believe Regan really wanted the best for everybody in the U.S., and he fully believed in “trickle down” economics. I disagreed with his economic policies and a variety of other policies, but I believe his intentions were good. I’m not so sure about his appointed cabinet members who were responsible for the implementation of those policies, particularly Ed Meese and James Watt.

So we can celebrate the man, but his presidency must be considered in it’s entirety. And there are two areas that he was particularly blind to, or, to the extent of his knowledge, complicit in the problems.

First, the environment. Reagan appointed James Watt to be his Secretary of the Interior. This is a man who stated “I do not know how many future generations we can count on before the Lord returns.” Not exactly the sort of person to trust to protect old-growth forests.

Second was Iran-Contra. Ollie North et.al. broke the law. Period. How much did Reagan condone, understand, or know about it at the time? When he later testified he didn’t remember, I thought he was stonewalling. Unfortunately, it turns out he really didn’t remember. But that does not excuse him if he did in fact know about it at the time. Also, I think the Reaganites undermined President Carter in 1979 by negotiating for the hostages directly, before Reagan was officially president. While maybe not illegal, it certainly left a sour taste in my mouth. What would happen if John Kerry was negotiating to arrange for the surrender of Osama Bin Laden right now? Republicans would be up in arms! And so would I…

David, that peace dividend argument is pretty bad. It’s the same one my wife uses when she goes on a spending binge at the Nordstrom half-yearly sale. I have no problem spending money (wisely) on defense, but calling what Reagan did a “strategy” is really stretching it. :)

Charlie, the assassination book comes from the US Army School of the Americas. It’s pretty controversial.

How much did Reagan condone, understand, or know about it at the time? When he later testified he didn’t remember, I thought he was stonewalling. Unfortunately, it turns out he really didn’t remember.

That’s why he wrote it down in his personal diary, “I agreed to sell TOWs to Iran.”

A short note on iran-contra and Reagan’s Legacy. It is interesting to note how centrally this has played in people’s evaluation of his presidency- and maybe thats appropriate because those actions were clearly wrong (even if you think we should have supported the Contras, going behind Congress’s back was clearly wrong and an erosion of checks and balances).

I think if you ask people who the best president of the 20th century was, the people who would get the most votes would be Reagan and FDR- yet when people talk about FDR, they rarely talk about him doing perhaps the most despicable act in American history- the interment of the Japanese. I (seriously) wonder why it is that when talking about FDR’s legacy people tend to bracket and gloss over that terrible incident (far worse than iran-contra in my book), but tend to focus so centrally on Iran/Contra when looking at Reagan’s. Just something to think about.

Misha, Your point is a valid one if you are comparing presidents, but the times were different. African-Americans were still bearing the brunt of segregation. Japanese were hatefully called “Japs” . They were thought to be “sneaky”. The U.S. was still mostly of European origin, and far less homogenized in that era. Many people in the U.S. had never seen an Asian person in the flesh.

I did a Google on the issue, and found the following on Infoplease: “Two important legal cases were brought against the United States concerning the internment. The landmark cases were Hirabayashi v. United States (1943), and Korematsu v. United States (1944). The defendants argued their fifth amendment rights were violated by the U.S. government because of their ancestry. In both cases, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the U.S. government.”

Was FDR wrong to authorize internment of Japanese-Americans? Absolutely! But there is no valid comparison of the legal (unfortunately)internment of Japanese-Americans to Reagan’s henchmen breaking the law, against the expressed will of the U.S. Congress.

I have to agree with Mike K. Although I think Reagan’s presidency was far from a success, I believe he was very principled - and by that I mean, that he really believed in what he was trying to do. Unlike Bush I and Bush II, Reagan was not controlled by special interest groups. Many got what they wanted, but only b/c Reagan believed in them or thought they were unimportant compared to his agenda.

I am disgusted at the way the Republicans have used his passing for political purposes. Attacking Kerry for NOT attacking Reagan!!! Pointing out that these Democrats who criticized Reagan are praising him now. I wonder what they would be saying if the Democrats came out this week saying how terrible Reagan was; They would be saying that this is not the week for that, and that all of them should be honoring a past president, not playing politics.

Of all the times for Republicans to be devisive, this is not one of them.

And in response to the FDR - Reagan comparison, I have to say; First of all, the Japanese internment is regularly criticized. However, it is taken into consideration with everything else in his presidency: The Depression and WWII. There was nothing in the Reagan presidency that compared to those events, or even came close. Also, the comparison presupposes that Iran-Contra is the only thing remembered about him, and that is simply not the case. Furthermore, I do not think that Reagan would be included among the top presidents of the century.

are you seriously arguing that the Iran-contra affair was MORE despicable than the interment of Japanese-Americans based on their race? even if the country was racist, putting people in interment camps is a far cry from simply disliking someone because they are different. The interment of the Japanese was the single most despicable action the American government took since the fall of slavery as far as I am concerned. As for the press FDR now gets- people condemn the interment as if it was done by some amorphous “America”- not that FDR (and Earl Warren, by the way, as governor of California) actively took this sickening action.

As for the Supreme Court saying what it did (oh, by the way, I hope that utmost defender of the Supreme Court Edward Martin reads this), it did so under political pressure and it is no doubt one of the most embracing decisions in Supreme Court history. It has subsequently been REVERSED and treated as the practical bit of un-constitutional reasoning that it was.

I think Mike’s point was to make a comparison between the individual characters of the two leaders, not to make a value judgement about which crime was worse. FDR was a product of his time and not unusually out of sync with respect to the values held by the rest of our racist country. Reagan, however, was unusually deviant from mainstream American governmental values: that is, he was deviant from the rule of law.

Similarly, one could compare George Washington to, say, Pat Buchanan and conclude that between the two of them Mr. Washington was a far more detestable monster because of his deep, unabashed, and absolutely abhorrant racism. But (with the exception of some radical leftists) we generally are able to separate that issue from other issues in order to evaluate the leader on other criteria, in particular on critieria important to the leader’s time. Otherwise we should probably just condemn the accomplishments and lives of nearly every single American born before 1900, and probably even most of those born before 1950.

Instead, we generally judge people’s characters relative to their time. For example, while I don’t completely dismiss Thomas Jefferson’s positive contributions to the world simply because he owned slaves, but I do find fault with him for not freeing them upon his death - as his colleague George Washington did.

Mike seems to be making a similar historiographic “calibration”, so to speak. There were, of course, many Americans who opposed the Japanese interments, and FDR should have listened to them just as Jefferson should have followed the example of George Washington.

For what it’s worth, I would bet any amount of money that Reagan also supported the Japanese interments.

-Cf

If you re-read my post, what I said was that what FDR did was legal and largely acceptable (to non-Japanese Americans anyway) at the time. Reagan willingly broke the law.

Presidents (and others) should be judged by the standards of their time, even if those standards are found to be lacking by future generations.

I suspect that conservatives of FDRs time would have supported the internment, like John Ashcroft holding prisoners in Guantanamo with no charges and no trials.

“For what it’s worth, I would bet any amount of money that Reagan also supported the Japanese interments.”

ahh… unfounded assertions are so much fun, no? Reagan activity participated in giving Japanese Americans reperations for the terrible injustice they suffered, and there is no evidence to suggest that he supported this action- one should not make assertions like that without evidence. The only thing I can gather conservatives are racist” stereotype, which well, I will hold my tongue…

I do not excuse those in the 1930s from their actions- everyone knew that Japanese were human beings- and the belief that they would be traitors because they happend to be from Japanese origin was ignorant even for that time. If you read the Supreme Court’s decisions, you can see that they knew better as well- but just did not have the guts to stand up to the president in a time of war. FDR knew better, Warren knew better. They acted out of fear and cowardice- the same things that propel Bush to hold someone like Padilla without giving him any sort of court hearing. Except FDR did it to thousands of american citizens, not just 2 (I would argue that post-9/11 the feelings toward arabs were about the same as the feelings toward Japanese post pearl harbor- so would you have gone as lighly on bush if he had taken even harsher measures and interned arab-amaricans?i highly highly doubt it). Histoy has been too kind of FDR on many fronts, and this one major example.

The year Ronald Reagan was elected was the first time I was eligible to vote - and I did not vote for him.
I personally never considered Reagan’s manner to be “presidential” - from day one he seemed like a doddering old fool trying to “act” like a president. But how important is that anyway? What good comes from a “presidential manner” when there is not a strong intellect combined with the motivation of goodwill toward the American people and the people of the World?
As a president Reagan was obsessed with Communism and because of this, was far too cozy with a lot of horrible dictators. Right after he entered the White House he tried to establish relations with Pinochet, the dictator of Chile (responsible for overthrowing a democratically elected, but socialist govt.), he was friendly with the fascist, anti-Semitic Junta of Argentina (who tortured and killed his political opponents), and with Saddam Hussein through Donald Rumsfeld (though they were aware that Hussein had used chemical weapons), and with Ferdinand Marcos (remember VP Bush Senior going to the Philippines and toasting him for his “adherence to democratic principals”?), then there are the horrible massacres in El Salvador, and the whole Iran/Contra affair where he used the CIA (who later admitted that they had worked with drug runners and traffickers to support that effort - I wonder why they didn’t “just say no”?) and illegal arms deals and lied about it, though later he just couldn’t seem to remember a thing.
Reagan sent money (our tax dollars) to repressive, murderous regimes causing many people to suffer, lose their freedom or die. And he did not support the fight for freedom and democracy in South Africa - even when the Republicans and Democrats actually joined together with the aim of imposing economic sanctions on the Apartheid govt - which he vetoed. Instead, he defended those racists and even went so far as to claim that they had eliminated the segregation that we once had in America!
And here’s few other things that made him an extremely bad president:
Silence regarding Aids - we could call him a mass murder for this.
Voodoo Economics, Budget Deficits and and tax cuts for the rich.
The S & L scandal.
James Watt and “trees that cause pollution”.
“Winnable Nuclear War”, The MX missile and red-baiting of the Nuclear Freeze Movement
Public Housing cutbacks, Education cuts, Food Stamp reduction, people who are “homeless by choice” and ketchup as a vegetable for the Head Start kids.
Firing the air traffic controllers and attacks on OSHA regarding workplace safety.

All those things make me think that it is extremely foolish to make an icon of president like Reagan.

> Reagan activity participated in giving Japanese
> Americans reperations for the terrible
> injustice they suffered

As did Ford and Carter and Bush and Clinton. Reagan merely signed a bill that was almost universally acknowledged to be long overdue - while commendable, it was hardly an act of particularly bold leadership on his part. It was part of an ongoing process of change that our nation was going through.

My unfounded assertion was obviously pure speculation on my part, but do you find it even remotely plausible that a man like Reagan - a vigorous proponent of (and participant in) the excesses of the 1940s-50’s “red scare”, a man who named names to Joe McCarthy - would not have supported the Japanese-American interments when he was a younger man during WWII? If so, I think you’re fooling yourself.

I am simply saying that, like America itself, Reagan probably made a similar transformation during his lifetime.

> I would argue that post-9/11 the feelings
> toward arabs were about the same as the
> feelings toward Japanese post pearl harbor

I don’t think so. I don’t want to diminish the extent of America’s current prejudice against Muslims, nor do I want to diminish FDR’s crimes towards Japanese Americans. But similarities between the situation in 1941 and 2001 are scarce and thin:

* Racism is generally thought of as a terrible thing today, something to be ashamed of. It wasn’t even considered remotely embarassing by most Americans in 1941.

* In 1941, the term “concentration camp” didn’t yet have the stigma of unforgivable atrocity it does today.

* There are 7+ million Muslims in the USA (3% of all Americans!). There were maybe a couple of hundred thousand Japanese here in 1941. Which is to say that they were an isolated minority that few Americans knew anything about - and whose absence would not be noticed by most Americans.

* The rest of the Muslim world is not in a declared war on America, and they are not considered to be a threat to our very existence, as Japan most obviously was. On December 7, 1941, Japan destroyed our entire Pacific fleet in a matter of hours. Soon, there were Japanese subs off the coast of California. There were spies in the State Department. American forces were being humiliated and routed in the Philippines. The Japanese were allied with Hitler, who was similarly threatening to enslave the world. In short, the threat from Japan was a thousand times that of the threat from Al Qaeda, and a thousand times more frightening to the average American. So to say that the feelings after 9/11/01 were similar to those after 12/7/41 seems like quite a stretch to me.

I do, however, appreciate your civil-liberties fervor, Misha. And I applaud your refusal to accept history simply glossing over FDR’s crimes. I really do - in fact, your civil liberties focused argument has caused me to drop FDR down a notch in my book. I just find it strange that somehow one can condemn FDR for those crimes without condemning America itself (which I do - like everyone else, Americans have an interesting and checkered history), and I seriously object to the idea that FDR’s personal morals and/or ethics were somehow beneath those of Ronald Reagan or, God help us, beneath those of George W. Bush.

-Cf

Reagan won the cold war. If you don’t believe that, you are not dealing with reality. The fate of every soul on the earth literally hung on the strategies chosen and used during that time. Never has the entire planet faced destruction of that magnitude. We are talking about zero survivors in this war, not a winner and loser. To have ended such a conflict without firing a shot is certainly quite an achievement. He did all of it while facing criticism for being too brash and too bold.

If this alone isn’t enough for people to see him as one of the greatest presidents of all time, then they don’t fully understand the magnitude of the conflict.

Many are also critical of his policies on the economy. What he did is pretty easy to understand. When you give poor people entitlements so that they can spend more money, you boost the economy. The problem is that you are subsidising the economy with taxpayer money. This is not real economic growth, it keeps poor people poor because they now have no incentive to work harder. If you wonder whether Reagan’s tax cuts were the right thing to do or not, ask yourself this question. Have you ever gotten a job from a poor person? Creating better jobs and more jobs is a real way to stimulate the economy and empower lower income people to improve their lives themselves. It also does this without stealing money from other taxpayers.

Mark,
Accusing someone of not being in touch with reality because they disagree with your interpretation of events is not debate.

Reagan did not singlehandedly whip the Soviet Empire. The Cold War ended because Communism failed the basic test of economic systems, it was incapable of being self sustaining over a number of generations. It led to such a profound corruption of the work ethic that the Soviet economy failed completely. That Reagan had an impact is inarguable. That he did it all himself is ridiculous.

The idea that taxation is theft is by the way rather extreme and blatantly ignores the needs of our government. Taxes taken for defense are good but taxes taken for welfare are evil? Don’t take the philosophy of anti-taxation too seriously. Without taxes the wilderness we found here when the White Man started to steal this continent from the Indians might have survived. We would certainly not live in this rich and prosperous society without taxation. Taxation was and is an invention of civilization.

By the way it is interesting that our prior committments to nuclear disarmament are still being taken lightly by the current Administration. Funny but a few billion spent wisely might do more good than all of the hysterical military spending during the cold war.

Personally I think Reagan was a real leader but, like all leaders he was wrong much of the time. Part of why this nation is so great is that we can dispute these things without any threat that the government will take action against us. If you want to live in an America that discourages such things vote for Bush, Ashcroft will help you attain it. As for me I prefer the largely constitutional America of a Reagan to that of a Bush who is placing himself above the law. That does not mean I am blind to Reagan’s flaws, just that I think he was a far better man than the current buffoon occupying the White House.
Henri

Mark wrote:
“Reagan won the cold war.”

Nobody wins when you make more and more nuclear weapons. And now that Russia is selling off their nukes to anyone with the cash, I ask you, who will be the “winner”?

“If you don’t believe that, you are not dealing with reality.”

The reality is that Mikhail Gorbachev’s policy of perestroika and restructuring opened a whole host of separatist and devolutionary movements in the Soviety Union.
People on the Right have distorted this issue knowing that Americans love to buy into the delusion that good things happen only because we make them so. But the truth is, Reagan did not win the Cold War - although I will concede that he may have speeded up the process that was already taking place in the Soviet Union at that time.
Aleksandr Yakovlev, a close advisor to Gorbachev said when asked whether the Reagan administration’s higher military spending and “Evil Empire” rhetoric forced the Soviet Union into a conciliatory position:
“It played no role. None. I can tell you that with the fullest responsibility. Gorbachev and I were ready for changes in our policy regardless of whether the American president was Reagan, or Kennedy, or someone even more liberal. It was clear that our military spending was enormous and we had to reduce it.”

Mark:
“The fate of every soul on the earth literally hung on the strategies chosen and used during that time.”

The strategy was nuclear build-up. We never disarmed. Our fate still hangs in the balance -and all because of a pissing contest.

“Never has the entire planet faced destruction of that magnitude. “

The whole concept of nuclear war is INSANE. Applauding Reagan because he made enough bombs to destroy the earth three times over is not exactly rational either.

“Many are also critical of his policies on the economy. What he did is pretty easy to understand.”

He helped the rich, that’s pretty easy to see - but not to understand, since the rich aren’t the ones who have ever needed to be helped.

“When you give poor people entitlements so that they can spend more money, you boost the economy. The problem is that you are subsidising the economy with taxpayer money.”

Reagan’s father received public aid. Ronnie grew up poor, but forgot where he came from.
His administration put us into a recession while he cut taxes for the rich - widening the gap between rich and poor more than at any other time since the 1920s. During that time, the federal deficit increased from $73 billion to $155 billion, the national debt went from $711 billion to $2 trillion and domestic social programs declined from 4.5 percent of the economy to 3.2 percent. His economic policies were about as sensible as the nuclear arms race he perpetrated.

“This is not real economic growth, it keeps poor people poor because they now have no incentive to work harder.”

Public assistance merely keeps poor people alive, but just barely and rather miserably, too. Lack of public assistance makes poor people desperate - leading to theft, drug and alcohol abuse, and violence. Either way we all have to pay, because without public assistance you need increased police presence on the streets, increased security measures everywhere and a whole lot more jails to lock people up in.
As for an incentive for poor people to work harder, it doesn’t come from treating people without kindness or mercy - that only makes them feel either angry or more despondent over their situation - neither of which will motivate them.
The Reagan years are when I really began to see street people - lots of them - but when you take a look at how he slashed funds for public housing, food stamps, veteran assistance and whole bunch of education and training programs, it isn’t surprising at all.

“Creating better jobs and more jobs is a real way to stimulate the economy and empower lower income people to improve their lives themselves. “

During Reagan’s years in office we saw a sharp rise in unemployment rates. And you can’t empower people by cutting off the social programs that were designed to help them.

“It also does this without stealing money from other taxpayers.”

The taxpayers who were stolen from were the middle class (much like today with Dubya) and that came because the top quit paying their fair share of taxes. Welfare was a drop in the bucket by comparison - in fact , that was why Clinton found it so easy to do away with welfare - because it never really was the big drain on our economy the way conservatives always claimed.

I believe what really yanks the conservative right wing chain about public assistance is the very IDEA of it - most likely because most of them have never needed it themselves.
I was raised in a middle class conservative household and have heard all the arguments against public assistance ad nauseum, but it took my own work with homeless people to begin to understand the awful reality of their situation.

I (seriously) wonder why it is that when talking about FDR’s legacy people tend to bracket and gloss over that terrible incident (far worse than iran-contra in my book), but tend to focus so centrally on Iran/Contra when looking at Reagan’s.

There are several good reasons: FDR’s internment policy didn’t involve death squads and assassinating priests, it wasn’t illegal and done under a cloak of secrecy, it didn’t involve planting mines in Japanese neighborhoods like Reagan mined Nicaraguan harbors.

I find the internment of innocent American citizens abhorrent no matter who does it, but at least with FDR it was done in the open. American citizens of Japanese descent weren’t made to “disappear” like GW is arguing that the executive branch should have the power to do.