The Great Communicator

Today marks the 100th anniversary of the birth of Ronald Reagan, the 40th president of the United States. Earlier today a stirring memorial of the President was held on the grounds of the Reagan Presidential Library in California. Throughout the next 12 months there will be various commemorations of the Reagan Presidency.

It may be difficult for anyone under the age of 35 to understand what President Reagan meant to the United States and to the world. Much of what we know about the President, and what we find in history books has been filtered through the prism of a media industry and education establishment that were largely unfriendly, if not downright dismissive, of Ronald Reagan during his lifetime.

If you would like a short course on what type of president and what type of person Ronald Reagan was, I recommend the Feb. 5 op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal by Peggy Noonan, who worked for the President in the mid-1980s.

If you would like to know what he meant to those who knew him up close, you could do no better than to click over to a recent syndicated column by Linda Chavez, who worked for the President at the Civil Rights Commission in the 1980s.

But I have my own reminiscence of what President Reagan meant to this country.

Ronald Reagan took office at what was arguably one of the worst periods in American history. The economy was in shambles, a mixture of high unemployment, inflation and double digit interest rates. Abroad, the U.S. had been humiliated by revolutionaries in Iran, who had held a large group of Americans hostage in Tehran for over a year. The Soviet Union was in an expansionist mode, fomenting with impunity international communism by proxy in several African countries and invading neighboring Afghanistan with the Red Army. Bleak, perhaps, understates the American outlook in 1981.

During the transition from the feckless Jimmy Carter to Ronald Reagan I was unemployed--not once, but twice. With little hope of finding a job. It was a scary, depressing, time. And bleak. Finally, in 1986 I was able to land a job. Not just a job, but a career -  the same career I enjoy today, 26 years later.

It took me some time to connect the dots between President Reagan, his economic program, and my landing a good job. It didn't hit me till the following year when I was driving to work one morning and I passed a Burger King. Outside the fast food store was a sign that read "Help Wanted." It was then that I realized that was the first "Help Wanted" sign I had seen since I was in my early years in high school. The Reagan economy was creating more jobs than there were people to fill them. And my job was part of that creation. Twenty-six years later that's what Ronald Reagan means to me.

President Reagan was a believer in freedom--economic freedom and political freedom. He believed that a government that over-reaches does so at the expense of its citizens' liberty. He also believed that America's unique ability to champion liberty and show by example made it exceptional. The source of this exceptionalism? Our Constitution. As he put it so well in his 1989 farewell address:

Almost all the world's constitutions are documents in which governments tell the people what their privileges are. Our Constitution is a document in which We the People tell the government what it is allowed to do.

If you have 20 minutes I ask that you watch President Reagan's Farewell Address, provided below. The President knew that he couldn't count on the media to represent his words to the American people. So he often spoke directly - and candidly - to them. This was the last of those speeches. Somewhat derisively, the media nicknamed him "The Great Communicator" - a name this common-sense, modest man didn't necessarily agree with. For Ronald Reagan gave credit for his ideas to others and for their execution to the American people:

...I never thought it was my style or the words I used that made a difference. It was the content. I wasn't a great communicator. But I communicated great things. And they didn't spring full boom from my brow. They came from the heart of a great Nation.

Just thought you might like to know.

I Want Your Money

There is supposed to be a new movie hitting theaters this fall. The timing places it in advance of the Congressional mid-term elections in November. It's called I Want Your Money and it's by film maker Ray Griggs. That is if Griggs can come up with the cash to finish production.

This movie depicts the national debt crisis through a combination of documentary interviews and animation. In it an animated Ronald Reagan tries to teach Barack Obama about economics and budgeting. The animation, as well as the logo, were done by an artist from Mad Magazine. Among those appearing in the movie are Newt Gingrich, Mike Huckabee and John Stoessel.

One little problem: It is inconceivable that a conservative look at the last two years like I Want Your Money could ever be produced and then screened in any multiplex controlled by the left-leaning entertainment industry. Just remember the difficulty that conservative comic Ben Stein had getting Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed made. Conservatives who long for the days of Thirty Seconds over Tokyo and Medal of Honor: The Audie Murphy Story know the drill. No liberal bent, no investors. No investors, no screens. No screens, no movie.

Nevertheless, take a look at the trailer below. Share it with a friend. It's almost as good as a movie. And it's cheaper than ten bucks and a bucket of popcorn. If by some quirk this thing gets made and screened, so much the better.

Just thought you might like to know.

The Bear in the Woods Returns

   Lost in the swirl of events over the past few days was a story out of Central Asia, where a coup d'etat has driven the recognized leaders of Kyrgyzstan from office. The new leaders of the former Soviet republic are decidedly pro-Russia.

While the leader of the Free World was staging his Kumbaya photo op in the U.S. this week, Russia continued its recent practice of re-establishing its former cordon sanitaire around the motherland.


   The revolutionary blitzkrieg and flawless execution of the coup could not have been engineered by the rabble that had been protesting the former government. Stratfor calls it a "pre-arranged revolution." Clearly the Kyrgyz rebels had a helping hand. And that hand was Moscow. According to Stratfor:

• Revolutionary leaders visited Moscow in the days prior to the coup and had a sit down with Russian strongman Vladimir Putin
• Spooks from the Russian spy service were seen snooping around Kyrgyzstan in the weeks prior to the revolution
• Russia had 150 elite paratroopers staged and ready to go to give assistance to its new ally

Russia is unique among world powers in that it lacks natural borders such as mountains, rivers or oceans to protect it from countries that would do it harm. Historically it has relied on its dense forests or its devastating winters to repel invaders. Look in the encyclopedia under Hitler or Napoleon. So a succession of Russian leaders, such as the czars, the Communists or now Vlad "the Impaler" Putin have made human fences out of neighboring countries.

   But this invasion-by-proxy is different. Moscow is nearly 2,000 miles from the Kyrgyz capital. Simply put, Russia is moving the goalposts to its advantage.

   Readers of this blog know that it often advocates connecting the dots to see the whole picture in any issue. So connect the dots on Russian expansion:

• In January Russia finalized an EU-type reintegration of the economies of former Soviet republics Kazakhstan and Belarus into Mother Russia
• A pro-Russian government was installed in Ukraine
• Russia, through its incursion into Georgia, has already proclaimed its own "Monroe Doctrine," establishing its own sphere of influence in Central Asia
• Russia engineers a regime change in the sovereign country of Kyrgyzstan

  In 1984, President Ronald Reagan was pilloried by the left for challenging the Democrat Party's realpolitik approach to dealing with the Soviet Union. Pres. Reagan believed that appeasing dictators like the Soviet bosses wasn't a real defense at all, but lunacy. History has proven his "peace through strength" stance towards the Soviet bear to have been correct. That stance was summed up in his "Bear in the Woods" TV commercial during the 1984 presidential race.

   Today we have a president who is serving out the second term of Jimmy Carter. His answers to Georgia and now Kyrgyzstan has been to stage a charade of a nuclear summit, the single accomplishment of which was an agreement by world powers Ukraine and Chile to get rid of their enriched uranium. A president who keeps drawing lines in the sand which the Iranian nuclear wannabes keep crossing.

   Meanwhile the Russian Bear in loose in the woods again.

   Just thought you might like to know.

  

The Evil Empire vs. the Apologist-in-Chief

   Tomorrow, March 8, marks the anniversary of one of the defining speeches of our time: Pres. Ronald Reagan's "Evil Empire" speech. Like Winston Churchill's "Iron Curtain" speech 38 years before, and Pres. Reagan's own speech 15 days later, outlining a vision of a "strategic defense initiative," the Evil Empire speech set the tone for the Reagan foreign policy for the remainder of his presidency.

   Speaking to a group of evangelicals, Pres. Reagan pulled no punches in comparing the expansionist Soviet Union to an evil empire, complete with its gulag and its constellation of satellite nations.

   By speaking more openly and freely about the Soviet Union than any other American president had, Mr. Reagan for the first time challenged the very moral underpinnings of the USSR.

   Fifteen days later, Mr. Reagan followed up his Evil Empire speech with a speech that described his vision of a virtual nuclear shield that could be deployed over and shared with peace loving democracies across the globe.

   The mainstream media and the liberal intelligencia ridiculed both speeches. Mr. Reagan was accused of oversimplifying the Cold War, fear mongering, chest thumping, and pushing the world closer to nuclear war.

   But it was Ronald Reagan's clear vision that triumphed. His willingness to say what other world leaders knew but were afraid to say--that the Soviet Union was a morally bankrupt state bent on world domination--and his willingness to raise the military stakes with the Soviets that consigned the evil empire to the "ash heap of history," as the president had predicted.

    Within seven years the USSR collapsed, a victim of its own immorality and inability to match the American economy, ingenuity, values, strength, and a president who refused to compromise on the evil he saw.

   In his Evil Empire speech he challenged his audience to ignore the temptation of labeling both the United States and the Soviet Union equally "at fault" in the nuclear arms race. He reminded them that there is no moral equivalence between defending freedom and enslaving whole populations.

   Ronald Reagan stands in clear contrast to Barack Obama. Mr. Obama's foreign policy relies on wanting people to like America, rather than on the values of truth and liberty for which the world has come to rely on America. So instead of the moral clarity of "evil empires," and "ash heap of history," we get apologies to the Muslim world for defending freedom and welcoming its sons and daughters. Instead of the "shining city on a hill" we get repeated bows to foreign leaders.

   When Ronald Reagan spoke in 1983 his words were exhilarating to Americans sick of the Soviet quest for dominance, and to captive nations behind the Iron Curtain. When Barack Obama has spoken,  we have ambiguity and weakening of the traditional role that America has played in the world, and which, if truth be told, most people want us to continue playing.

Just thought you might like to know.
 

The Real Peacemakers

Here's a trivia question to start off your week: What do John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama all have in common?

There are 3 answers to this:

1. They were or are all Democrats
2. They all came to office on a pledge to reduce nuclear weapons with the Russians
3. All failed

What do Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, and George W. Bush all have in common?

Again, 3 answers to the question:

1. They were all Republicans
2. They were all pilloried by the mainstream media for being warmongers or bellicose arm chair warriors who refused to make peace with our adversaries
3. All successfully concluded treaties with Moscow:

• Nixon concluded the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT) and the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) treaty
• Reagan successfully concluded the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (IMF) treaty
• George H.W. Bush gets credit for the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START)
• George W. Bush signed off on the Strategic Offensive Reduction Treaty (SORT)

By contrast, the Democrats, who talked the most about nuclear arms reduction, have the least to show for it. Jimmy Carter did negotiate the SALT II treaty, but was forced to withdraw it from Senate consideration after the Soviets big-footed their way into Afghanistan at an inopportune moment. At the same time President Carter was trumpeting his successes at lowering tensions in the world, Soviet panzer divisions were moving out to the Afghan border.

Similarly, Bill Clinton talked a good game when it came to arms reduction, but even his considerable political skill and personal magnetism failed to stop the Senate from rejecting the 1999 Nuclear Test Ban Treaty.

Stephen Rademaker, an arms negotiator under George W. Bush, noted in a recent Wall Street Journal opinion piece that Democrats fail at the hard work of making peace, as opposed to talking about peace, because by making disarmament the tall pole in their tent they encourage the Russians to overplay their hands at the bargaining table.

"This was a problem for Messrs. Carter and Clinton," writes Mr. Rademaker, "(a)nd it promises to be an even bigger one for Mr. Obama, who comes to office with an arms-control agenda-the abolition of nuclear weapons-far more ambitious than that of any previous administration."

The verification procedures for the START treaty expire in 60 days. President Obama's tactical focus should be getting them renewed. It should not be on using the deadline as an excuse to reopen the treaty to weigh it down with strategic objective that, while laudable, will bog down negotiations and put his administration under the gun for getting a deal done. So says Sen. Richard Lugar (R-Indiana).

Mr. Obama has already agreed to a Russian demand to include not only warheads but delivery systems in the negotiations. That decisions harms the U.S. more than it does the Russians. Right now all the pressure, much of it self-inflicted, is on Pres. Obama-not the Russians-to conclude a deal by the December deadine.

In a little over a week an event that is important in the history of disarmament relations will probably pass without notice in the mainstream media. But it is worth remembering how Ronald Reagan negotiated 23 years with his Soviet counterparts. Rather than be stampeded into a bad deal he walked away from the table, knowing that no deal was better than what the Soviets were offering:

History shows that Pres. Reagan was right to walk away from a bad deal. In doing so he set the stage for several disarmament treaties that benefited both countries.

The clock is ticking. It remains to be seen whether Mr. Obama has the fortitude to walk away from a bad deal, as Ronald Reagan once did, or whether he will capitulate to the left wing of his party and the Russians.

Somehow I think I know the answer.

Just thought you might like to know.

Free by Divine Right

In the face of the mounting unrest in Iran--the pent-up frustration of thirty years of medieval feudal rule--I was struck today by the President's unequivocal words about government and men:

"The struggle in the world today for the hearts and minds of mankind is based on one simple question: Is man born to be free, or slave? In country after country, people have long known the answer to that question. We are free by divine right."

Unfortunately, those were not the words of President Barack Obama, but of Ronald Reagan, quoted by Andrew Klavan. President Reagan spoke those words 30 years ago about the Soviet Union. Within ten years the USSR had been consigned to what the President called the "ash heap of history," in a final, ironic riposte to the original author of those words, Leon Trotsky.

President Reagan believed in the moral absolutism that freedom always trumped tyranny, and that the historical role of America was as a constantly evolving model and supporter of freedom--from Bunker Hill to Gettysburg to Flanders fields to Omaha Beach and beyond. 

President Obama, enamored of the Thinking Class, believes in the moral relativism of the I'm-okay-you're okay school of Realpolitik. He believes that the historic role of America is talk your way out of problems, racking up Nobel Peace Prizes along the way like 5th grade spelling bee ribbons,  a la Jimmy Carter. We contract out our foreign policy to the feckless United Nations, while the world goes to hell in a bucket. Pres. Obama's answer to Iran has been to show no comfort to the rebels, but to apologize for what he perceives as historic American slights to Islam.

As Iran's feudal lords slowly crush that country's mounting rebellion, and North Korea continues to cross line after line in the sand, we'll see who's approach is more effective in the long run: the moral absolutism of Ronald Reagan or the equivocation of Barack Obama.

My money's on The Gipper. 

Just thought you might like to know.