http://www.yahoo.com/_ylh=X3oDMTB1c2...0YQ--/s/196325
i'm not sure why, but i feel sort of sad.
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http://www.yahoo.com/_ylh=X3oDMTB1c2...0YQ--/s/196325
i'm not sure why, but i feel sort of sad.
Uggg, just so not in the mood to hear about this man. I buried him a long time ago. Basschick, that doesn't mean this is not a worthy topic, but the media is going to make him out as some kind of saint and I think he was an evil person.
I've kinda gotta agree with that. Reagan fought tooth and nail against any research into HIV for years, he refused to say "gay" or "AIDS" in public. He decided that it would be better to cowtow to Christian groups than to try to keep gay people alive. The only good thing that really came out of all of that was the the gay community had to come together and come out in huge numbers so we could take our battle to the streets.
I don't know I'd go as fat as to say he was "Evil" but I was certainly not a fan in any way.
What kinda pisses me off is that you know that Dubya and his gang (I have no problem calling the Bush family evil at all) are gonna try to use this to their advantage.
It's a toss-up in my mind...
who was/is the most evil and ignorant, Lil' Bush or Reagan.
Burn in hell, Ronny! (not that I believe in hell)
I'm saddened by his death and believe him to have been a good man.
I think that it's definitely a luxury to be able to look back on the past and criticize others with the benefit of hindsight.
I don't agree with everything he'd done and every aspect of his legacy but I do feel he was a good man and did a great many things for this country and its people.
Further, I can't help but feel sad for Nancy and the Reagan family and all they went through in the last 10 years of his life... namely having lost the man they loved so many years before he actually died. It's a heartbreaking thing, Alzheimer's, and let's hope that while George W. Bush goes about glorifying and praising Reagan's legacy, he acknowledges that Nancy is an outspoken proponent of stem cell research and the promise it holds in alleviating other families from the kind of suffering her own went through.
Huh?! Do you really think that?Quote:
I don't agree with everything he'd done and every aspect of his legacy but I do feel he was a good man and did a great many things for this country and its people.
Yes, I really do.
Despite accusations to the contrary, I don' the least bit feel he was an uncompassionate, uncaring man. I think he was genuine and sincere to a degree we almost don't even expect presidents to be anymore.
Further, the statement that he refused to even say the word "AIDS" in public is wrong. In fact, he said it 5 times in his State of the Union address in 1986.
The federal government spent nearly 6 billion dollars on AIDS research while Reagan was president. Could he have done more? Sure. But I don't think that in the context of the times any president or public figure would have acted in a way we'd be able to look back on and say was "enough". They didn't even have anti-viral medication back then. AIDS wasn't identified until 1982. I don't think it the least bit unreasonable to suggest that any president would have been caught off guard by the epidemic, and I think it's unfair that he's been accused - through things such as that Showtime TV show or rhetoric in years since - of saying and doing (or not saying or doing) things that have since been made up.
When someone is president - so public a figure faced with such a wide array of decisions and the focus of so much attention and criticism - it's very easy to confuse who they are as a man and who they are as a president. I don't believe those two things are one in the same. I don't believe that every decision a president makes comes down to where its sits on a moral compass. Anyone in a leadership position confronts that - the difference between what they believe to be best for the nation and what they personally feel is best. But the world's not so black and white and I don't much care to paint presidents black and white either.
He may very well have made some decisions as a president that people here disagree with or that, ultimately, we can look back on and say were wrong or less than best.
But I don't feel that makes him any less human or a bad man.
Very well spoken... er... written BD. But I don't understand why you have such personal compassion for this man.
Sure, he may have been a good father and husband, but that does not make him a great president... the same goes for Li'l Bush. Imo, they are very similar; tax cuts for the rich, a political agenda ruled by christianity, arrogance and aggression towards the rest of the word (cloaked as patriotism), HATRED of gays, a secretive and conspiratorial cabinet, etc.
Both men, imo, were merely pawns of their party. Both are/were "as dumb as a box of rocks"... Reagan - senile while in office, Bush - just plain ol' redneck dumb, and a manipulated puppet-like, by the real powers of the republlican party.
I will NOT miss the man, just as I will not miss Bush when he is voted out of office this November, and he rides off into the Crawford sunset.
amen.
a lot of people are saying they feel reagan was "a good man". a lot of them seem to be people who have/had someone dealing with alzheimers in their family, so the feel a connection as if he were a relative.
i personally have NO idea if ronald reagan was a good man. i didn't know him. all we know is what we were told.
Just as you don't understand my personal compassion for him, nor do I understand your personal hatred of him, XStr8.
I don't treat any policy of a president or politician as an attack on me personally and I see everything they do in light of the political system within which they work. That system breeds the people who perform in it, not the other way around.
Personally, I'm not of the belief that Reagan was a clueless marionette of the Republican Party. I don't think that the image many have of him as going about his life with a vacant grin, unaware of how he was being manipulated to perform for others is an accurate one.
I think he was highly intelligent, creative, clever, and yes - passionate. And that he used those talents and traits to do some great things. Did he also use them to push a conservative agenda? Of course he did, but I don't feel conservatism in itself makes someone a bad person. It just makes some of their opinions oftentimes different than my own.
I despise George W. Bush as much as the next man, but think it far too convenient to say they're similar to one another. I won't go in to what I feel to be the glaring differences between the two and how Reagan and Bush Jr. were nothing alike, and will instead let Ron Reagan Jr. do the talking on that point.
That was a great read.
I don't think there's even comparison between Bush Jr. and Reagan.
Even people in Bulgaria who despise American foreign policy, particularly as of late say Reagan was the best.
When I was growing up, my grandfather used to say how I'd learn English and become a diplomat, and be so good to sit on one table with Reagan.
That comes from a guy who held his communist party passport and made sure he paid all his dues.
True, former soviet republics and communist countries like mine don't have it too well, but that's in part of our own doing. But there's no dening the fact if it wasn't for Ronnie I wouldn't be soaking in the Florida sun
God bless him at least for that
jIGg... thank you for bringing up that part of his legacy.
In another gay chat board I post on, there's a debate going on about who Reagan was and whether or not he should be mourned. People blaming him for the AIDs epidemic on one hand and lauding him for returning optimimism to this country.
The most poignant statement on that argument was made by a young man from Poland who stated simply and eloquently,
Rest in peace Mr Reagan.
You were one of those who made my country free.
he was a fellow human who suffered for ten years and died. that is sad. he was a public figure for many years before he was a politician, so he left a legacy beyond his conversative political actions - or any other political actions.
i didn't find reagan a great president, but he wasn't the worst. he was the man who took away a lot of funding for college students, and our economy took a turn for the worse, while unemployment rose during his terms. but i didn't see him as simply a political puppet nor as a person with his own financial axe to grind. that's always a plus. even if i didn't agree with what he did, at least i felt a person was responsible for some of what he said and did - as much as can be true of any politician. and that is a big plus.
Well since the ball is rolling, I'll throw in my personal bit - I am deeply saddened by Ronald Reagan's passing. For me, he was President when I was in junior high and high school - and for me much of his Presidency was inspiring.
I happen to deeply appreciate life after the Cold War.
I think that one of the great untold stories of recent years is the recent awakening of life in Eastern European countries. Interestingly - many of us adult webmasters make a good amount of money on adult porn coming from the Czech Republic, Hungary and other surrounding countries. These are now free countries, which can now legally produce pornography. That is definately an indicator of freedom --- never allowed under the confines of Communist government.
Before the fall of the iron curtain in East Germany (DDR) - if you were *pegged* as gay, you went to prison. That was the law. Today, I promote Cazzo films, which are filmed in now East Berlin. Things are now very different. Those countries over there were like dreary cemetaries. The entire world map was changed, and clearly for the better. And that's why many feel Reagan was important -- at least for me.
As a conclusion, I'll say that one of the negative legacies of the Reagan administration is the refusal to deal with the then-newly emerged AIDS issue. Okay - the man did not walk on water. Did you know any other men in their mid-70s during 1985 or 1986 which had difficulty dealing with the gay issue? He should of handled it better. History will record that. But keep it in perspective. Furthermore, don't forget how Reagan publically opposed the anti-gay Briggs Ballot Initiative in California back in 1978.
Anyway, there - I guess now you all know a little more about me. :-)
Steve
I don't see how 10 and 12 year old's could possible feel the volume of hate that occured to gays in the 80's during his administration. You got the text book version of Ronald Reagan. If you are 35 or older, you probably felt the same way alot of us felt, scared out of our wits about HIV and scared about being a gay person because to the Reaganites, every gay person was infected.
You really had to be an adult in those days to feel what I'm saying. If you were gay in 1986, you knew where you stood with Ronald Reagan. He just simply hated gay people. He didn't want to deal with us and that was that.
There seems to be a big difference in the feelings of members that posted here who actually were gay adults living in the Reagan Era and those who read about it in books or soundbites.
I think this is a worthwhile read to refute many of the mistruths presented about Reagan's stance towards gays
Could he have done more about AIDS? Sure. Should he have? Probably.
But at the time, what would have been expected of him? I don't see historical evidence of this rabid hatred of homosexuals many accuse him of having had. I'm not sure of what any president would have done at that time. When AIDS wasn't even identified. When no antivirals existed. When people were expecting a cure within a few years. It's as if he's, over time, been blamed for AIDS itself.
Whether or not every gay adult alive in the early to mid 80s feels he hated them could either be an accurate indication of his sentiment towards gays or a politicized mob mentality built upon emotion amidst the trying events of the time.
I think the mistruths about Reagan's actions - refusing to fund AIDS research and refusing to even say the the word "AIDS", both things that are not true but have taken root in the minds of many as truth - have contributed to a passionate dislike of him that has gone on to obscure the fact they're not necessarily based on what really happened.
I'll never understand what it must have been like in those days with the AIDS epidemic emerging and the kinds of emotions that involved, the fear and insecurity and uncertainty and anxiety. I'll assign that disclaimer to the things I say here.
But I think that just as it's a fair assumption someone actually having gone through the events of the time would know quite alot about them in relation to someone who wasn't old enough to experience it then, so to is it a fair assumption to say someone who wasn't old enough to remember the events would have a bit more of an objective and untainted view looking back on them 20 years later.
Americans do love their revisionist history. Synthesizing history to meld nicely with their own ideology. Give me real life experience over objective opinion anyday.
Nothing like a little circumstantial ad hominem to wrap up one's argument, eh?
Who's to say you haven't just been... wrong for the last 20 years?
But really, dictating someone's argument must be wrong because:
1. They don't agree with you.
2. They weren't there at the time.
And then trying to cover your tail with the added condition that because history is revisionist there's absolutely no way anyone who wasn't there could be right because their entire position would be borne from misinformation?
That's the cheap way out of an argument. Unless and until logical fallacy makes a worthy statement, you might want to put a bit more effort in to what you're saying.
There are indeed unique incites afforded to someone who was an adult at the time Reagan was President.
But it does not automatically grant validity to the statement that he was "evil" or didn't care about AIDS. It could make the statement that you felt he was that way at the time. But simply by having been a voter at the time didn't put you in his head.
Revisionist history? I'd say the revisionist history that's come about on Reagan amongst the gay community is the misleading one. We've seen it in this thread and hear it all the time. The assertion that he never even spoke the word "AIDS". People truly believe that because that's what they've been told and it's fashioned itself in to an accepted truth. But is it right? No. We know for a fact that he spoke it in public - including a state of the union address - at least half a dozen times.
So what other mistruths have sprung from that? Watch Showtime's The Reagans if you want revisionist history.
Or are you suggesting that I'm some conservative idologue and thus convince myself to adore Reagan? hah.
It very well may be the case that he was despised by the gay community in the 1980s and that there was little tangible evidence of a concerted effort - or even caring - on his part to mobilize the federal government to confront the AIDS epidemic. But logic dictates that does not translate in to irrefutable evidence that he despised gays and maliciously encouraged the spread of the virus.
When AIDS itself wasn't even identified until midway through his first term? When no anti-virals existed until midway through his second? When everyone expected a cure to come about shortly? How long did it take the gay community itself - the adult community... us... in particular - to universally adopt condom usage and safer sex practices? Where were we as a nation in regard to AIDS?
It's convenient to demonize the man who was leading the country at the time - armed with years of growing animosity towards him within our community - and decide that he's at fault for what happened or that it symbolizes who he was.
But both your having been an adult at that time and my not having been an adult at that time make neither of us able to do anymore than present our impressions of who he was. And no more.
my $.02
Reagan did nothing about AIDS until it spread widely among hemophiliacs and straight people. Ryan White contracted AIDS in 1984. I'm sorry - but saying AIDS 5 times in a SOU address 2 years after the epidemic came into light several years prior does not make you an advocate for AIDS. It proves your ignorance and bigotry. Where was Reagan's compassion then?
That's why Ryan White had a hard time going back to public school. He was called Fag and was told he deserved to die because people believed it was a gay disease. Sure, tons of money into research would have been nice. But where Reagan fell dramatically short was the education and prevention of HIV/AIDS. I do believe he was content that people considered the virus to be gay cancer and as long as too many 'innocent' (no-gay) people didn't contract it, they were basically casualties of war as god let loose his wrath on the fags.
I will give Reagan is foriegn policy. The man did great things around the world for democracy. Noone can take that away. That is how he will always be remembered by the large population. How he wanted to be remembered is someone that "tried and did his best." Despite my reluctance, I will give him that too.
I was gonna put together one of my meticulously worded posts on this subject once I got all my thougts together... but here's a link which pretty much sums up what many of us thought about Reagan.
http://www.gregpalast.com/detail.cfm?artid=336&row=0
You know, I don't have to like someone's actions to feel bad that they have passed away. No matter where their soul goes, if they have one.
Life is a precious thing, no matter what someone does with it. I honestly do not remember much about his terms in office. I was too young. (I think I was like 6-7 when he was in office.)
Jasun, I couldn't get to the link, would like to read it. BDBionic, you speak of the gay community and you were 8 years old when Reagan was sworn in. You're assessment of Reagan is based on someone else's opinion and your own pre pubescent view of the world at the time.
Ronald Reagan had no compassion. Wow, he mentioned aids in his speech. So what. He never went to an aids hospice and dealt with the real life difficulties surrounding this disease. He didn't fight for aids patients to keep their insurance. He didn't fight for aids patience to be treated in a dignified manner. He destroyed the lives of tens of thousands of farmers. He created a whole new social strata of homeless people throughout the country with his failed trickle down economic policy.
Where is the compassion ? And, you have to audacity to point the finger at the gay community. Most of these men got infected in the late seventees. I'm not here to win an argument. I just couldn't believe what I was reading when I read your assessment of Ronald Reagan. As it turns out, you're assessment is based on other people perceptions and if you want to hold on to that, go right ahead.
Indeed the collapse of the Berlin Wall im sure we would agree was a good thing and it definately strengthened the US' European presence.Quote:
Originally posted by djdez
I will give Reagan is foriegn policy. The man did great things around the world for democracy. Noone can take that away. That is how he will always be remembered by the large population. How he wanted to be remembered is someone that "tried and did his best." Despite my reluctance, I will give him that too.
Regards,
Lee
Wow! I thought I was harsh. Thanks for the link Jasun.Quote:
Originally posted by Jasun
I was gonna put together one of my meticulously worded posts on this subject once I got all my thougts together... but here's a link which pretty much sums up what many of us thought about Reagan.
http://www.gregpalast.com/detail.cfm?artid=336&row=0
I don't think we can give Reagan credit for the end of the Cold War. Communism impolded on it's own... don't ya think? Reagan did all he could to keep the Cold War fantasy alive, but regardless of his efforts, it would have failed anyway.
Jasun thanks for the great link. I was reading this thinking, there are many reasons to despise this man other then his treatment of gay poeple. Heres another reason. He was an informer:
1947 -The Senate's 'House of Un-American Activities Committee' (HUAAC) investigated communist infiltration in all walks of life, especially Hollywood. Many actors were 'blacklisted', making it almost impossible for them to find work. They were informed upon by other actors (among them future president Ronald Reagan) who were keen to make sure that they were not accused of being a communist.
I think that more or less the same people who hated him then, still hate him now.Quote:
Originally posted by BDBionic
[B]It very well may be the case that he was despised by the gay community in the 1980s and that there was little tangible evidence of a concerted effort - or even caring - on his part to mobilize the federal government to confront the AIDS epidemic. But logic dictates that does not translate in to irrefutable evidence that he despised gays and maliciously encouraged the spread of the virus.{/B}
You know - a lot of people - including Reagan Administration folks who were around in 1985 - have learned a lot and modified their opinions about gays and homosexuality. Everyone has.
LOTS has chnged for us for the better. The general knowledge and awaremenss of gay people is much more mature then in 1985.
It's interesting that people in the gay community have not changed their opinions at all. Holding grudges for 20+ years is silly.
Steve
PS: Gay revisionism has always been alive and well regardng Reagan. It is routinely omitted that Reagan came out publically against the Briggs Initiative in 1978, which was California's first public referendum on gay tolerence. If you watch "The Life & Times of Harvey Milk" for example... Anyhoo --- good rule in life - don't hold grudges.
Yeah silly silly people who lost loved ones and friends durring that time. Who lived in fear because they didn't know if they were next. How dare you hold a silly grudge.Quote:
It's interesting that people in the gay community have not changed their opinions at all. Holding grudges for 20+ years is silly.
Again, HuskyHunks, with the ad hominen. Seriously now, is it all you can do to fall back on the argument that because of age, it's simply impossible for a young person to have an informed, unbiased and thorough opinion of the man?
Don't try and substitute the circumstantial ad hominem for any real argument. It's a cheap and useless logical fallacy used to try and avoid making any real points. You'll sit there and not argue the points themselves but try and define the argument in a context that leaves no other alternative but for you to be right.
Does my having been an elementary school student at the time change the fact that 6 billion dollars were spent by the federal government expressly for AIDS research while he was president? Does it change the fact that Reagan did in fact mention AIDS publicly on numerous occasions? I didn't try and say that talking about AIDS in the State of the Union address automatically meant compassion. I brought it up to refute the commonly held assertion that he never once throughout his presidency uttered the world "AIDS". And you and I both know just how commonly held a belief that is among a great many people when in fact it's not the least bit true.
You wave the banner of early-80's adulthood as proof in and of itself that your argument is the only valid one and yet you choose to wholly ignore the context of the times you lay claim to as validation of your points.
90% of America had a view towards AIDS that Reagan had - caught off guard, not fully understanding of, not familiar with, believing a cure would be found soon, believing it wasn't a threat to the entire population.
The reality of presidential action within the political system and with political concerns in mind has to be considered whenever you look at anything a president does. Do we condemn Bill Clinton for promised he didn't keep in the fight against HIV and AIDS? We we assail him for his missteps? When he signed in to law a bill that would discharge asymptomatic HIV+ military personnel? What about when he forced Jocelyn Elders to resign in the face of political pressure? Or scrapped his promised needle-sharing initiative? Eliminated mandatory AIDS education programs for federal employees?
Politics. When, in the mid to late 90's with HIV and AIDS understood and a global community mobilized to fight them, we could have a Democratic president bow to conservative political pressure and back away from promised initiatives to combat the spread of AIDS, it's plainly apparent that it's politics and the context of the times needs to be considered whenever you look back on these things. You're living in a dreamworld if you think presidential policies were carried out to spite you personally.
Desslock mentioned the Briggs Initiative. It seems odd that a man with a deep-seeded, personal loathing of homosexuals would publicly oppose - in the 70s no less and while fashioning himself the champion of modern conservatives - an effort to ban them from public classrooms.
Did Reagan wipe out the AIDS virus as president? Of course not. But nor did he go about spreading it. 20 years of hindsight backed by seething and festering animosity against him make it far too easy to pin blame on him for the AIDS epidemic. Not to sound harsh but friends and loved ones who died of AIDS in the early 80s would have died had there been no action from the federal government or had it pumped a hundred billion dollars in to the fight. And it wasn't Ronald Reagan who kept Ryan White out of school. It was fear, misunderstanding, anxiety and ignorance about AIDS that did. We sit here in 2004 without a cure and yet assign Reagan the burden that he should have created on in 1981.
For every statistic someone points to as evidence of his callousness towards AIDS patients, I can point to another that's testament to a concerted effort to combat the epidemic. Again, it's how we interpret things and the impressions we have of them.
BTW, the link worked earlier but the site itself appears to be down now. Keep checkin' back on it and it'll probably be up later on.Quote:
Originally posted by Huskyhunks
Jasun, I couldn't get to the link, would like to read it.
Textbook analogy does not equal real life.
How fortunate you were an adult back in the 80s, eh? Otherwise you might be forced to present an actual argument.
Brian, I don't know where you're getting your numbers from...but they seem about right. That's because every viral disease that the government sunk money into was considered money gone to AIDS research by the Reagan administration. So $10 million towards research on the common cold was considered AIDS research.Quote:
Originally posted by BDBionic
Does my having been an elementary school student at the time change the fact that 6 billion dollars were spent by the federal government expressly for AIDS research while he was president? Does it change the fact that Reagan did in fact mention AIDS publicly on numerous occasions?
And it wasn't Ronald Reagan who kept Ryan White out of school. It was fear, misunderstanding, anxiety and ignorance about AIDS that did. We sit here in 2004 without a cure and yet assign Reagan the burden that he should have created on in 1981.
For every statistic someone points to as evidence of his callousness towards AIDS patients, I can point to another that's testament to a concerted effort to combat the epidemic. Again, it's how we interpret things and the impressions we have of them.
My biggest gripe about Reagan is the lack of public awareness. Dude he refused to bring up the topic in public for 4 years!!! We look to our leaders for direction. He had an obligation to America and he shirked it. Agreed, it wasn't Reagan that kept White out of school. It was Reagan's right-wing backed agenda of ignorance and intolerance at all costs that kept poor Ryan out of school. However, they did finally realized that the actual cost of their ignorance was too great to pay. Call me harsh - but for the past 10 years Reagan paid his price for his actions. Karma came back and collected and I do feel his debt is now paid.
Joe,
Those numbers come from the CRS report for Congress and address specifically funds earmarked towards AIDS research, not viral infections or disease research on the whole, but research, treatment and prevention of AIDS specifically and in particular.
I should point out that I'm not attempting to sit here and say Reagan was a white knight leading the charge against AIDS in the early days of the pandemic.
What I'm saying is that there wasn't a complete and total lack of action - an impression that's taken root in the minds of a lot of people.
And that it's a question of contextual relativism. The convenience afforded by 20+ years of hindsight, our own political and social prejudices and circumstances, our personal beliefs and experiences and how those affect what we see and how we interpret them. I'd not expect a gay man that lived through the early days of the AIDS epidemic to love or even not despise Reagan as it would only make sense through their particular experience that they end up there.
But I hardly find it all too unbelievable or even impossible to understand the reactions of his administration at the time. The degree to which AIDS was not understood, how it was perceived by an entire world and nation and not just Ronald Reagan.
If you see in Ronald Reagan in the early days of the AIDS epidemic indifference, ignorance, anxiety and a failure to act, I think it's a reflection of the attitudes and stance of a nation as a whole at that time. He shared the nation's response to and perception of the epidemic. He didn't cause it.
I think it's clear that Reagan's response to AIDS was tepid at best, and probably grossly negligent or even worse; people can argue ad nauseum about the details on this for either side but I think the jury is in with most fair-minded people, and the verdict is clear: Reagan failed BIG TIME on AIDS. I think it's a mistake for those of us who are warm and fuzzy about ol' Dutch (as few as there may be in our midst, that is) to try to dress up a very glaring failure just because it doesn't fit with out general feelings about the man.
However, I think it's a mistake to leap from criticizing Reagan for not doing enough on AIDS to characterizing him as "evil". It's easy to one-dimensionalize and demonize someone with whom we have a particular quarrel, and it might be therapeutic, but it's neither intellectually honest nor helpful; bashing a popular president (and that's an indisputable fact that he was popular, given his landslide electoral victories) will not win us new allies in the continuing struggle against AIDS.
Besides, now is the time to respect our nation by respecting a leader whom many of our fellow citizens admire. I won't argue about who SHOULD get the credit for it, but the fact is Reagan was at the helm at a critical time, and it was on his watch that the Soviet Union -- a state that was hardly kind to our community -- underwent tremendous reform and eventually dissolved altogether (under Bush 41, of course, but really a process that started with Reagan). It was also under his watch that our economy experienced tremendous growth -- bigger than even the good Clinton economical revival -- and our "general malaise" also lifted. In short, he revived America, economically, militarily, and restored pride in America. His failings were stark (race relations, the failed War on Drugs, other aspects of social policy), but I challenge anyone to find the Perfect President.
I say, all in all, not bad -- not bad at all.
Oh brother. Now I'm really not understanding things. Reagan's recovery was charged to the American people and we are still paying for that debt. Hello, out there. America went from a country of huge surpluses to a country of astronomical debt.
Russian's weren't killing Americans. Aids was the killer in full crisis mode. Only a tiny fraction of money allocated by Congress actually went to fight Aids. 6 billion was a drop in the bucket to the projects like the supercollider (remember that!) and shit like that costs billions of dollars and never did anything but sit there and collect dust.
Reagan is famous for one reason - his conservative ideology. That will be his legacy. He demonized the word "liberal" every chance he could. He was an extremely devisive person and actually made very little public policy.
Huskyhunks,
I can assure you that if Reagan had had it ENITRELY his way, there would have been even more spending cuts than he was able to get through the Democrat-controlled Congress (well, the House, at least, where budget bills are born), and we might not have the huge deficits we had during the Reagan years and the resultant national debt. However, he deemed (as I do) that his tax cuts to stimulate the economy, and the military buildup, were even a higher priority than deficit spending in the short-term (which thank goodness, turned into surpluses in the Clinton Economy).
Russians weren't killing Americans, perhaps, but they were killing and oppressing Russians and others; and it is unfortunate, but true, that we tend to think of other people's problems as "their" problem and not our concern. Does this sound familiar? It should, it's how the rest of America viewed the AIDS problem as "their" problem.
I'm sorry, but whenever there is oppression on a grand-scale, it DOES affect us. I'm an American, but I'm a human, first, and an American second. The oppression of other people -- whether against our own community at home or abroad, or against anyone -- is a concern of mine. It would be small-minded of me to think that *my* problems are supreme, and everyone else can eat cake.
It isn't an "either/or" thing: Reagan didn't have to choose between fighting AIDS *or* standing up to menace of state-imposed "communism" (which was anything but in my opinion). He could have -- and should have -- done both.
Incidentally, I do agree with you on how he demonized the word "liberal" and made it the evil "L" word -- an unfortunate thing, since I happen to proudly think of myself as an Alan Colmes liberal. I hope that we can reclaim the "L" word and clean up its tattered image, but I don't think the best way to do it is to trash the "C" word, either. I disdain the notion that liberals are the only ones who are compassionate or that conservatives are the only ones who are "responsible" or "tough on crime". That is outmoded, unsophisticated thinking, in my humble opinion. :)
I agree 100%. Though I do think right-wingers (religious fundies)are demon spawn :mad:Quote:
Originally posted by trellus
Incidentally, I do agree with you on how he demonized the word "liberal" and made it the evil "L" word -- an unfortunate thing, since I happen to proudly think of myself as an Alan Colmes liberal. I hope that we can reclaim the "L" word and clean up its tattered image, but I don't think the best way to do it is to trash the "C" word, either. I disdain the notion that liberals are the only ones who are compassionate or that conservatives are the only ones who are "responsible" or "tough on crime". That is outmoded, unsophisticated thinking, in my humble opinion. :)
Goodness, well, I might agree with you, except that my parents are part of that labeled group, which would make me... demon spawns' spawn? ;-)
No, seriously -- I understand FULLY -- perhaps more than you might imagine -- why you feel that way, having grown up with in a fundamentalist Christian environment that was very oppressive to gays. However, my personal experience was that you can't treat everyone in this group, even, as a single, monolothic fount of evil. There were definitely some very virulently anti-gay folks among my own little world, but most were indifferent, and my parents in particular are very supportive of me, if not my "lifestyle choice".
I firmly believe that as more and more of us are out and we put a face to the, er, "filthy fag of face evil", as the lovely Fred Phelps likes to call us with all the Godly Love he can muster, even the majority of fundamentalist Christians will not tolerate the strident anti-gay agenda of the closet cases amongst them. Color me naive, but I am that goofy optimist that likes to think few people are beyond "salvation", so to speak.
I think we need to have a more mature understanding of the religious right, which is to realize that many of the Bible-carrying Christian Army that vote actually espouse, to a large degree, the same values that most Americans cherish, and that they don't know who WE are, REALLY -- through ignorance and misinformation by their Generals like Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell, we've been mischaracterized.
I had to look up "ad hominem" on dictionary.com :blush: