Why the Left needs to talk about Reagan

[echochamberlain]

It is routine for Conservative commentators and candidates to talk of Ronald Reagan in the most rhapsodic and sentimental terms, recalling the Eighties as a time when the long-suppressed American entrepreneurial spirit was once again let loose, ushering in a new gilded age of prosperity. The Republican capsule-guide to the eighties goes something like this: Faced with a stagnant economy burdened by heavy taxation, President Reagan, upon taking office, slashed the top marginal tax rate from 70% to %28, which, together with non-inflationary monetary policy and deregulation, precipitated a sustained economic expansion with extremely high G.D.P growth figures through the middle part of the decade.

The problem with this widely accepted summary, though, is that it severely glosses over things when it comes to tax...
This article looks beyond the myths the Right have created about Reagan, and will galvanize Progressives to think differently.
http://sheppardpost.com/why-the-left-needs-to-talk-about-reagan-2/

[merrily]

1. Let's talk about Reagan, but let's talk honestly.

Those on the right are not the only ones who have created myths about Reagan.

In 2008, Hillary and Obama both put Reagan on their respective lists of Top Ten U.S. Presidents in the entire history of the US.

If that weren't enough, while a Democratic President, Obama described himself as someone who would have been seen as a moderate Republican in the 1980s. For whom would a moderate Republican have voted in the 1980s?

[deutsey]

2. +1

[fasttense]

3. He was just another illegitimate Repub president

Negotiating with Terrorists behind the backs of the American people to win an election never seems to come up. Nor do they bring up his severe loss of cognitive functions. The man everyone talks about never existed.

[Chan790]

4. What's there to say about Ronald Reagan?

Reagan was a sociopath who was easily swayed by his wife's charlatans and whose harm upon the American public would justify disinterring the SOB to allow the mentally-ill and homeless to use his skull as a urinal for the harm he personally did and continues to do to them.

From GRID* to Iran-Contra to "welfare queens", Ronald Reagan's Presidency was a pox upon America. He spoke of a bright shining city on the hill then spent his entire Presidency smearing his shit all over the public commons of that city.

May his name and legacy be lost to history like that of Ozymandias.


Edit: For those too young or who didn't know or don't remember...GRID (Gay-Related Immuno-Deficiency) is AIDS...you see, it was easier for the Reagan Administration (and the GOP) to ignore it, not research it, not fund researching it as long as they continued to consider it merely a disease of homosexuals, perverts, poor-people and reprobates...God's just desserts upon the wicked. For that alone, Ronald Reagan was a monster worthy of mention only in the context of the other monsters of the 20^th century: Pol Pot, Josef Stalin, Mao, the perpetrators of the Armenian genocide, Milosevic. When you look at the Global AIDS crisis, the one thing that must never be forgotten is Ronald Reagan could probably have prevented this...and chose not to.

[kcass1954]

5. I do. To anyone who will listen: Ronald Reagan is the reason I left the Republican Party.

Even though I was registered as a Republican, I voted for Carter in 76 and 80. In 1980, I was 26, about to get married, and working a nice union job. When Reagan was elected, I registered as a Democrat. I realized that as a working woman who hoped to have a family one day, and as a compassionate and caring human being, the Republican Party offered me nothing.

Edit because I have no clue how old I am. Doh!