THIS IS SAD.
Back before Reagan became President, he said all the things Republicans love to hear. Too bad his 2 terms were run completely opposite.
The biggest lie is that Reagan drastically cut taxes. HA! Tax revenues INCREASED. Yeah, he cut the rates...yet he simultaneously presided over the largest deficit spending during peacetime in the nation's history. This caused unprecedented price inflation, leading to higher wages. Basically, after 4 years of Reagan, earning the exact same REAL wage would likely have a higher rate of taxation. Furthermore, "closing the tax loopholes" were little more than arbitrarily-imposed back taxes. What were these "loopholes"? To the naive, ways for the elite rich to avoid income taxes. To Reagan and co, a politically-acceptable means to arbitrarily steal people's wealth - that's all a tax is.
Reagan also stressed smaller government. So, did the government become less expensive and intrusive under Reagan? Hell no! He escalated the drug war and its large-scale contribution to organized crime, police corruption, and destroying the right to privacy. He cut no government programs, even after campaigning on the abolishment of the federal dept of education. He was eerily complacent with the status-quo of violating the Constitution, despite campaigning against such, even when a congressional committee investigated this very issue 2 years before his presidency, concluding that the constitution has not been valid since FDR's declaration of emergency under the War Powers Act of the early 1900's.
Third, he always stressed peace. Such irony. While he was flapping his mouth about how militancy and authoritarianism were wrong, he was busy spreading a world empire in Central America and the middle-east. He was involved in the Iran Contra scandal (whose only conviction was of a reporter who spilled something classified - the actual perps were slapped on the wrist or pardoned). In fact, one of them is now associated with a "right-leaning" news network with no public disgrace.
Of course, some bum will post about how the arms race bankrupted the soviet union. This is shameful. First of all, it isn't true. We didn't bankrupt them. The Soviet government "bankrupted" themselves through their militaristic foreign expenditures and faulty system of trade. An arms race sped-up the inevitable, but at our expense. Plus, there was no definitive victory. The Russian power structure didn't fall apart. The KGB is still the highest "class" in Russian society. They didn't sell off all their 35,000+ nukes during their "bankruptcy"; they are still controlled by the KGB and Putin. And they are a poor example of capitalism. This is just another example of how the people will so easily put faith in shallow victories, like the tearing down of the Berlin Wall. Communism, the economic system, was never a threat, but Russia's nuclear arsenal was and still is.
Moreover, we should never want to bankrupt a nation and its people. That is not peace. Embargo is not peace. Attempting to overthrow every socialist nation on the face of the planet besides the ones who can actually fight back is not peaceful. CIA actions to militarize Muslims are not peaceful. Building thousands of nuclear bombs is not peaceful. Preparing for war is not peaceful. War itself is not peaceful. That's why it should only be used in self-defense. Using it to defend "capitalism" worldwide is aggressive and counter-productive. This practice has only made us imperialistic, mercantilistic, and corporatist. In other words, Reagan basically paved the way for the notion that capitalism creates value by using violent power to influence others. I happen to believe that wealth is created through free production and trade.
And people say Reagan was a hard-core capitalist, who saved our economy. Well, if borrowing or printing money to stimulate the economy through government spending is your flavor of capitalism...maybe so. But if you believe that true capitalism requires free markets and sound money, with little to no government interference, Reagan was better-termed as a fascist or a corporatist. Reagan was the first neo-conservative, whether he wanted to be or not. His complacency for Keynesian policies makes him little different from FDR. In fact, FDR was better in this regard, because at least FDR's central planning planned to make things that were useful to society, unlike Reagan's arms race, leaving us with many thousands of nuclear bombs, which we spend billions today on cleaning up (not get rid of, simply maintain!).
If you want a taste of what I'm talking about, compare the official Republican Party platforms of the 1960's to the late 80's or to today's. Reagan was the real Bush, a war-hawk, deficit-spending, power-increasing tyrant, who had no intention of following his own rhetoric he sold to the people. This is why modern Republicans simply look to new ground to expand state power, like persecuting gays, trying to solve the abortion debate, and expanding government largess. They have given up on reducing government spending, a non-interventionist foreign policy, and following the limitations of the constitution.
If you'd like to read more about the congressional investigation into the validity of the constitution and the war powers act, start here: http://www.sourcewatch.org
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