Happy Birthday, Ronnie

The Gipper would have been 98.

He won the Cold War and vanquished the "Evil Empire" without firing a shot, revived a stagnant U.S Economy and lead it into the modern age, restructured our tax code for the better, and made the United States, once again, the Greatest and most Free Nation on Earth.

He was the Greatest President of the 20th Century.

One can only imagine what he would have thought of the horrific "stimulus" packages the current President and Congress are trying to pass. And while those folks continue to try and hash out the final details of how, exactly, to spend the next few generations of American taxpayers' dollars, all for the stated goal of helping us "Ordinary Americans" in this time of recession, I think it appropriate to remember some of the wisdom of Ronald Reagan:

"The 9 most terrifying words in the English language are: I'm from the Government, and I'm here to help."

"The Government's view of the economy can be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves; tax it. If it keeps moving; regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it."

"Government doesn't solve problems - it subsidizes them."

Indeed.

We miss you, Mr. President - and we sure could use some of your principled leadership these days.

And Reagan Smiled...

With Governor Sarah Palin's acceptance speech now behind us, I think we can all have full confidence in the fact that John McCain made the right pick for VP. Indeed, with one hell of a speech, her arrival on the National political scene has truly been announced, much to the (very apparent) chagrin of the liberal media.

Now this grocer's daughter and devoted mother who is despised by the press, has risen to become, more-or-less, the standard bearer for her Party.....er, no, wait, sorry. That grocer's daughter part belongs in Margaret Thatcher's life story, not Sarah Palin's; although I suppose you can probably understand why I might have gotten a little bit confused, eh? Yes folks, with what could only be described as an 'iron' resolve and assured sense of self that must have surely made the Iron Lady, herself, proud, Mrs. Palin not only stood up to her detractors in the media and in the Obama campaign in her speech last night; but coolly mocked them - and practically dared them to pick more fights with her.

They had derided her experience as a small-town Mayor, so she gave them a quick lesson in what Mrs. Thatcher must have meant when she commented on how interesting it was "that the things that [she] learned in a small town, in a very modest home, [were] just the things that," in her mind, "[had] won the election" for her Conservative Party.

They have harpooned her family, and the perfectly normal ups and downs it has been through recently, so she stood up for them, proudly; perhaps with a little bit better understanding of what Maggie meant by stating that a "woman who understands the problems of running a home [would] be nearer to understanding the problems of running a country."

Furthermore, and to get away from the Margaret Thatcher quote references for a second, she got in several great shots at Barack Obama, laying into his inexperience, a man who, having already been pulverized by Palin warm-up act Rudy Gulliani, must have been feeling pretty beat up after last night.

But let's get back to those Thatcher comparisons for a second, shall we? The comparisons work for several reasons. First, Palin's got a willingness to take on the establishment for the sake of reform that resembles the one Prime Minister Thatcher had when she brought down Great Britain's crippling Union beauracracy. She also has this unique ability to frighten her opponents in much the same way Margaret Thatcher scared the living daylights out of people like (former French President) Francois Mitterrand. Moreover, Governor Palin also seems to posses the confidence that comes from knowing ones political actions are rooted firmly in sound political principle. Finally, and most importantly, she's got a toughness that perhaps even Ronald Reagan lacked - that being, I suppose, the toughness that comes from being a woman playing what has, historically, been very much a man's game.

Put simply, Mrs. Palin has served notice that she is here to stay, that she will not be done away with easily, and the she will be a force for conservatism in American politics. However, to be fair, much as I love Mrs. Palin, she has a long way to go before she actually becomes the second coming of Margaret Thatcher. That, as the Iron Lady would certainly point out, can only come when she has consistently delivered, on a national level, the results that she has so far managed to produce on both the local and State levels. Nevertheless, as we saw last night and have seen throughout the last week, the tools, drive and stubborn will necessary to accomplish the, undoubtedly difficult, tasks she has set herself are all there. The conservative movement in America may have just found what it has been looking for in recent years - although we will have to find a new metal to start her nickname with, since Iron is already taken.

Maybe gold will do; afterall, that's what Americans went to Alaska to find in the first place, right? And her speech last night certainly stood out, much they way gold always has, to the 30 million-some-odd 37.2 million (!) people who watched it. But then, the 'Golden Lady' just doesn't seem to me like it will strike fear in the hearts of media-idiots all across America quite the way it should. And given their collective level of intellectual prowess, perhaps it really is only fair that they receive an appropriate warning for someone like Governor Palin.

Although, you know, come to think of it, even those in the media should have been able to pick up on the signs that came out of her speech last night. Indeed, I think it's safe to say that, after last night, Sarah Palin's critics in the Media, and those on both the Left and even on the Right, have been sufficiently warned: this Lady, is definitely not for turning.

Blinded By Love Of Bipartisanship

Earlier this month, I authored a nice little post on how Bill Richardson was smoking something strong when he said that Barack Obama's foreign policy would be a return to the bipartisan, universal-love-fest, audaciously hopeful, unifying foreign policy of a bygone era; and now it seems its time to write a quick follow up to that since, as of this past weekend, that bullshit line is now being parroted by the candidate himself. Yes folks, Mr. AudacityOfHopeMan has claimed that his foreign policy platform is:

"...actually a return to the traditional bipartisan realistic policy of George Bush's father, of John F. Kennedy, [and] of, in some ways, Ronald Reagan." [emphasis added]

Yea, right.

I think the Gipper will forgive me for paraphrasing one of his old lines when I say: Senator Obama, you're telling people that you've got a foreign policy that's like Ronald Reagan's. Well let me tell you something, Senator. I knew Ronald Reagan. He was a friend of mine. And Senator, you're no Ronald Reagan!

Seriously, as I've said before, Reagan's foreign policy was not the kind of bipartisan yuck-fest that Senator Obama is trying to make it out to be.

As I noted while raking Governor Richardson over the coals, President Reagan's foreign policy was laughed at by most Democrats - that is, until it worked, and the Soviet Union fell, and Communism was reduced to the "ash heap of history," just like Reagan said it would be. Causing the Democrats to do a little 'revisionist' history and pretend like they were on board all along.

Thankfully, most of us know better.

Furthermore, in this little speech, Senator Obama praises H.W. Bush's handling of the First Gulf War; but, as no less an authority than Margaret Thatcher has noted, it was H.W's failure to remove Saddam the first time, when he had the chance, that created the set of circumstances which led to the Second Gulf War. If Pops had finished the job - and not stopped halfway - then W never has to invade Iraq in 2003. But hey, Obama-rama's got an agenda to push, so why bother to think things through, right?

The next point to be made about these remarks is to, again, reiterate that there was nothing warm, fuzzy, and bipartisan about a great deal of Cold War policy. It, too, was a product of politics (hence the word: policy); and thus, while the personalities may not have been as memorable, it was still every bit as partisan as the foreign policy we have today.

Finally, I want to note one last thing about Obama's statements and point out why, aside from the matter of partisanship, his 'return to a traditional foreign policy' is an incredibly stupid idea. And that is simply this: The Cold War is over, as is the lovefest of 90's idealism. The world is a different place now than it was then, and while 9/11 certainly has made this especially so, this fact would be true even if 9/11 had never happened. Interacting with Nations, IGOs and NGOs on an International level means being flexible and, while learning from your past, living, thinking, and, most importantly, acting in the present (with the future in mind). Using the 1960's foreign policy to respond to the 2000's problems would be the height of both ignorance and arrogance; primarily because, and you would think this would be obvious; the 2000's are not the 1960's. The times change, and thus American Foreign Policy should too.

It's too bad Senator Obama is to naive to understand something as basic as that.

The Success of Partisanship

Not to long ago, before the Democratic Presidential contest had become the Hilldabeast-Obamarama dogfight that it is now, I used to tune in and watch some of those old Democratic Debates, with all umpteen of the candidates, to give myself a good laugh. When I did that, no one was able to provide bigger laughs than New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson, whose wildly (and in some cases, disturbingly) idealistic view of the world made him a ready source. The Governor was back on TV today, giving his endorsement to Barack Obama, and while watching him speak, I was given a nice chuckle or two and again reminded of his general, all-around stupidity.

At one point during this speech the Governor was talking about foreign policy, and he went into the standard Barack Obama talking point about how, after 8 years of W, the country needs someone who is a "uniter" and who can "repair America's image" in the rest of the world. Then, in order to prove his point, he harkened back to the Cold War, and talked about how, back then, we had this policy of Containment which, in his words, was not "Democrat or Republican, but American." In other words, in Gov. Richardson's mind, the Cold War was a time when the country never, ever, but never had partisan disagreements about foreign policy.

Right.

First of all, lets just get one simple thing straight - Containment was a Partisan policy, as it was created and first used by President Harry S Truman, a Democrat. Sure, it was later adopted by Republican Presidents Eisenhower and Nixon, but it was, originally, Truman's policy - something which shows you how stupid Richardson really is; as it would have been better, if he was going to praise Containment, to point out its roots in his own party.

Secondly, I find it incredibly ironic that Gov. Richardson, he of the 'I'll have us entirely out of Iraq in 30 days' (or whatever it was), would praise Containment. Afterall, it was fear of Communism spreading to the rest of Southeast Asia and LBJ's desire to contain it within North Vietnam that got us involved in the Vietnam War. And as we all know from the last 3+ years of Democratic talking points, Iraq is bad because it's Vietnam, and nothing in history was worse and more misguided, evil, stupid (etc., etc.) than American involvement in Vietnam. But hey, when you're Bill Richardson, why not come out and praise the policy that got us involved in a war which you feel is exactly like the 'misguided' one we're in now; it's not like the media is going to call you on it. Afterall, you're a minority and a Democrat - hell, you could probably join Eliot Spitzer in the prostitution scandal business and they would still try and avoid asking you questions that might be a bit too hard. But I digress...

The final point I'll make about the good Governor's dim-witted reference to Containment is the most important; and that is that, ultimately, for all the bi-partisan goodness that it may (or may not) have been, the policy of Containment failed. It was a failure because, in the end, the guy who won the Cold War, Ronald Reagan, won it not by sitting back and simply trying to 'contain' the Soviet Union but by calling it the "Evil Empire" and doing everything possible to defeat and destroy it. During the 1960's and 70's, something like 13 countries had become new Communist nations; but Reagan, with the Grenada invasion in 1983, began toppling Communist regimes. For decades we'd been told the Soviet Union was here to stay, Reagan told us it could be gone in our lifetimes.

Now, I could go on about how Reagan's foreign policy was different from Containment, but in doing so I (again) digress from my original point. You see, when Reagan was in office, implementing his new strategy for dealing with the U.S.S.R, the Democrats were kicking and screaming at every turn, and saying all sorts of nasty things about his intelligence along the way. Most importantly, however, they didn't believe what he was doing would work; meaning that they made Reagan's Cold War policy a partisan issue. And this brings us to the hillarity of Bill Richardson, who wants us to get excited about Containment, which didn't work, simply because it was 'non-partisan' and fully approved by the French - despite the fact that the evil, divisive partisan strategy was the one that ultimately won the War.

Makes for an ironic analogy to the present day - don't you think?

"You and I Have a Rendezvous With Destiny...."

Even back in the 1960's when Ronald Reagan made his 'A Time for Choosing' speech, he understood that it was the ultimate destiny of the West to defeat the "Evil Empire." In the aftermath of his presidency it has become clear to the rest of us that it was his ultimate destiny as our leader to be the man responsible for that victory. Well, okay, not all of us. Some of the friendly folks on the left, the ones who spewed (and continue to spew) venomous hatred for Ronald Reagan, have, for quite sometime now, loudly claimed that it was Mikhail Gorbachev who did this and that Reagan had nothing to do with the downfall of the Soviet Union.

This is an unusually common occurrence in college history courses, as leftist professors (such as mine) frequently have full-scale 'Gorbasms' when attempting to 'teach' the Cold War. The lecture goes something like this: 'The Soviet Union was falling apart, and was going to end at any moment, Gorbachev came along and tried to implement perestroika and make the USSR a Democracy, because he understood the dire situation and wanted to promote the well being of Russian citizens.' Well, at least, that's the jist of a typical liberal Gorbasm. But, as usual, these leftists are simply wrong.

First off, lets just go along with the whole rant and say that Gorbachev did want to end communism. That begs the question of 'how did he rise to power?' The answer is, in two words, Ronald Reagan. Immediately after he became President, Reagan took a new approach to foreign policy; he abandoned Detente and declared that he would be satisfied with nothing less than the destruction of the U.S.S.R. The new rhetoric and new direction that American foreign policy took were well noted within the Soviet Union. In response, the Soviets realized that they would need a new type of leader, someone from outside the old Stalin, Khrushchev and Brezhnev mold. The Party elite in Russia needed someone who could stand up to this 'Reagan' fellow on the International Stage, the man they choose, in 1984, was Mikhail Gorbachev. So you see, the only reason Gorbachev had the power to affect any change within the USSR was Ronald Reagan - without his election the Soviets would have chosen someone else to lead.

Of course, Gorbachev's intention was never to dismantle or 'Democratize' the Soviet Union, he was as much a believer in Communist dogma as Vladimir Lenin. Gorbachev had hoped his reforms would offer temporary relief and enable him to strengthen and re-build the communist regime, he never intended for the reforms to be permanent. Gorbachev never wanted communism to end. The only problem was he didn't realize what would happen when he implemented economic reform. Although someone did. Reagan knew the Soviets couldn't compete, so he forced them to do it. The military build-up of the 1980's, forced Gorbachev to enact changes and new economic policies; policies that Reagan realized would topple the Soviet system.

However, the fact that the Soviet system was weak and in abominable shape brings us to another question: 'Was the downfall of the Soviet Union inevitable?' The answer: yes. It may have been two or three hundred years later, but eventually it would have fallen. The Soviet system was weak, and near collapse, but it had always been that way. The Soviets had a terrible economy in the 1920's, the 1930's, the 1940's, the 1950's, the 1960's, the 1970's and, yes, the 1980's. The thing is, when you have an oppressive dictatorship running the country, you don't need economic success to continue on as a world superpower. All you need is a few nukes, the KGB and a couple of gulags. The point is, when liberals claim that the Soviet system would have collapsed in 1991 with or without Reagan's military build-up, they're lying; the Soviet Union had lived on the brink of collapse for over 60 years. In order for the Soviet system to collapse its economic equation needed to be catalyzed, and Ronald Reagan provided the catalyst.

Ultimately, the reason the left tries so hard to deny Reagan's importance in the destruction of the Soviet Union is because, as always, it puts them on the wrong side of history. When Reagan first said the Soviet Union was "evil" the left derided him, called him the dumbest man alive, said he was a dreamer, said he didn't understand the nature of foreign policy, and concluded that he had lost all perception of reality. Yet they were wrong - and Reagan was right. Within 10 years of the 'Evil Empire' speech, the Soviet Union was gone, just as Reagan said it would be. Exactly as Gorbachev said it wouldn't be. It hurts the left to give Reagan credit, because on the question of the Cold War, on the most important question of the 1980's, he proved them utterly wrong, and in the process, won his greatest victory.