Tag: ronald reagan

Reagan’s place… at Brandenburg Gate then, and in the party now.

There has been a certain amount of …well, the usual invocation of Ronald Reagan’s memory in order to justify other people’s positions on issues, particularly the ones where they’re not majority positions in the Republican party.  Latest offender – and it’s a shame that I have to use the word, in this case: I like the guy – is former Florida governor Jeb Bush, who wondered yesterday whether Reagan would be able to get Tea Party/conservative support these days.  Well, it’s interesting that today is the 25th Anniversary of Reagan’s Brandenburg Gate speech*.

So let’s check: Continue reading Reagan’s place… at Brandenburg Gate then, and in the party now.

Gorbachev discusses Reagan.

Alternate title: gnat discusses lion.

I suppose that I am supposed to be upset about this, for some reason.

Offering an historical footnote Saturday to one of the most memorable lines of the Cold War, former Soviet Union President Mikhail Gorbachev confessed Saturday that he was underwhelmed when President Ronald Reagan demanded in 1987 that he “..tear down this wall.”

“Well, I’ll tell you the truth,” Gorbachev said through a Russian interpreter, in response to a question about Reagan’s Berlin Wall speech, after addressing an audience at Judson University in Elgin. “Don’t be surprised but we really were not impressed. We knew that Mr. Reagan’s original profession was actor.”

And Mr. Gorbachev’s was “bootlicking lackey for one of the most disgusting, vicious tyrannies in human history.” Gorbachev went on to be the one wearing the biggest boots, while Reagan of course staked down Soviet Communism and ripped its black, suppurating heart out of its chest, all the while merrily laughing with the mirth of the just as the thing that he was executing died like a coward* – so I will leave it to my readers to decide who got the most out of Career Day.

Via @TomBevanRCP.

Moe Lane

PS: I wonder if Mikhail Gorbachev really gets it – in his bones – that by all rights he should have ended his life being strung up on a lamppost?

*I certainly hope that this image offends and disgusts any Marxist reading it.  It’s meant to.

Paul Krugman channels his inner Reagan.

Is it cruel to point out that when Paul Krugman says that an alien invasion would save Keynesianism…

…he’s pretty much cribbing off of Reagan’s observation that an alien invasion would unite humanity and war among us?

Or is it just sad that Krugman comes across as profoundly intellectually stunted, in comparison?  I mean, if we’re going to have an alien invasion serve a higher purpose then I’d personally prefer a more meaningful one than salvaging a somewhat dunderheaded liberal economic theory.

Moe Lane (crosspost)

#rsrh Friends don’t let friends invoke Reagan badly.

Gotta love* these kids and their crazy Reagan talk.  It’s the usual classic cargo-cult thinking, coupled with an equally-classic why-won’t-these-conservatives-in-real-life-act-like-the-conservatives-living-in-my-head?  For the slow of brain (which is to say, the online progressive movement), let me deign to explain why invoking the Gipper should only be done by experts. Continue reading #rsrh Friends don’t let friends invoke Reagan badly.

John Lennon: Reagan Republican?

You know, I don’t know if I WANT to check this one out:  the mere fact that there’s a credible source out there claiming that John “Imagine” Lennon* was secretly fond of the Gipper (and couldn’t stand Jimmy Carter – but then, what sane person can?) is enough, in some ways.  The source is Fred Seaman, one of Lennon’s assistants during the last years of the singer’s life, and Seaman essentially said that Lennon’s change of heart was because Lennon grew up:

“He was a very different person back in 1979 and 80 than he’d been when he wrote Imagine. By 1979 he looked back on that guy and was embarrassed by that guy’s naivete.”

Mind you, a 95% marginal tax rate can have a way of clarifying one’s mind when it comes to working out one’s political philosophy.  There’s a reason why so many British bands moved here in the Sixties and Seventies; well, a reason beside the obvious one…

Moe Lane (crosspost)

*No, that’s George “Taxman” Harrison that you’re thinking of.

Trying to erase ‘tear down this wall.’

It is my first instinct to treat this report of Ronald Reagan Jr’s… commentary… by simply letting it pass by without a response.  For those not wishing to click through, the boy (use of term deliberate) is indulging elderly liberal fetishists everywhere by making the claim that his father was suffering from Alzheimer’s as far back as the 1984 debates*, as well as ‘details’ regarding a supposed operation in 1989 that had even the US News & World Report doing some fancy footwork in order to avoid having to declare it a lie.  It’s the Left; it’s pornography; it’s Left-porn.  Outside of that particular niche market, its utility is… low.

So why even bother addressing it?  Simple: because Ron Reagan Jr picked his dates carefully.  1984 and 1986 are before 1987, which the boy made a point of explicitly referencing as being the year that his father should have resigned.  1987 is the year that the boy wants people to decide was a year where his father’s illness was clearly and obviously advanced.  1987 is the year where the boy wants his father to be dead inside.

The only problem is, 1987 is the year of the Brandenburg Speech.  You know: ‘tear down this wall.’

Continue reading Trying to erase ‘tear down this wall.’

#rsrh HAHAHAOh, never mind.

I was laughing hysterically at the title of this article – “Mondale on Obama, and how he could’ve beat Reagan” – because the very idea that President Obama could have had the chops to knock down the Gipper is hysterical.  Then I actually read the article, and it was actually all about how Mondale thinks that he could have knocked down the Gipper.  So I stopped laughing.

Why?  Because Walter Mondale is 82 years old.  When I am 82, if I am saying things like this it is my fond hope that others will show me the same forbearance that I am showing now.

#rsrh Tear down this wall.

AoSHQ (and Sarah Palin) reminds me of this:

Not the event itself: but the details behind it. It’s a little jarring to realize that there are people who can vote (and soon, drink legally) in this country who don’t have personal memories of the Berlin Wall; or what it represented.  I was seventeen when this speech took place; and like the AoSHQ writer I considered Ronnie Raygun to be a fool.  Because, you know, maybe the Commies weren’t as powerful as we thought in 1980, but they weren’t going anywhere.  Right?

Yeah, seventeen and stupid. Continue reading #rsrh Tear down this wall.

It was twenty years ago today that the Berlin Wall fell.

Or, as I like to think of it, the day where the Forces of Good and Light hammered the first stake through the rotten black heart of Soviet Communism, pausing only to savor the screams and sobs as the monster futilely begged, with ever-decreasing volume, for its very life.

AND THEN WE USED THE EVENT TO SELL SOFT DRINKS.

WHO BURIED WHO, NIKITA?

Moe Lane

PS: Just for added schadenfreude towards the Commies, HEEEEEEEEEERRRRRRREEEEEE’S RONNIE!