I'm confused why do people hate Ronald Reagan?

[yeliw]

"In 1998 the CIA admitted to allowing cocaine trafficking to take place by Contras who were being supported by the CIA, using facilities and resources supplied by the US government, and preventing investigation into these activities by other agencies."

I'd say as far as hypocrisy goes, while bandying on about a war on drugs yet secretly conducting a war by selling drugs (in some cases to U.S. citizens) is pretty high up there. Reagan was a great politician. But he was a pretty bad person in general.

Also, why is it that every post in favor of Reagan fails to cite any criticism that has been lobbied? Most seem to simply disregard any possible criticism as "angry liberals." Moderates are on the internet too you know.

 

[nomadic_chad]

My favorite move of his was firing all the Air Traffic Controllers when they went on strike, and replacing them with the military ATC's until new ones could be hired and trained. Good business!

So you're all for federal government stepping in and resolving union issues in a way that is most detrimental for the workers? (not very republican)

As an aside, don't you think those air traffic controllers were just trying to become rich like you intend, and live the American dream? Reagan shat all over that...then wiped his ass with whatever was left.

Adressing this issue first, Air Traffic Controllers are government employees, so I don't think it was out of bounds for the pres to step in there. As for the union, there is a risk you take when you strike... your employer could realize he's better off without you...

Problem is, it's the only issue you addressed and you only did it halfheartedly. Sure, they might've been government employees, but they were still a union and whether or not their cause of striking was legitimate to us, they felt there was good reason and were axed for it. For a president to step in personally on an issue like that still goes against the republican value of small government.

I also agree that there is always a chance of termination when you strike, but a reasonable person also realizes that the majority of the reasons people strike are because they're facing hardship or they believe they're being inadequately compensated. A politician would recognize that and make attempts to reconcile instead of axing the whole lot of them. He didn't, which lends towards the "bad politician" argument.

 

[TheSentinel]

all the cool MTV kids are talking about.

I'm sorry, but your post (and this part in particular) make me want to find and burn down your house.

OT: Because he turned the Republican Party into a party of (mostly) raving lunatics. Yes, I know there are outliers.

Liberals want someone to blame other than themselves.
So they call Reagan crazy.
Even though several of their own party as well as others caused what is occurring right now

The Liberal Party? When did Australian politics come into this?

 

[Gammaj4]

Because of his dangerous economic policies.

Yes because the Idea that the government should have a BALANCED BUDGET, and not spend MORE money than it actually HAS is very dangerous.

but he didnt do that, he raised the deficiet by 186%, he spent way more then he had, increased our debt to records that would not be beated untill Bush. Unless you thought we were talking about Bill Clinton

As I said in a later post, Congress was not very cooperative.

 

[Leodiensian]

Reaganomics was like the Atkins diet. In the short term, you get good results. Keeping it up the long term, your kidneys pack up. (Or, in the economic sense, you experience a recession)

Also, a lot of sources talk about Reagan being absolutely insane. He would talk to schoolchildren about how they were living in the End of Days and he'd have that same middle-distance gaze and half-smile on his face that he always did. Which is absolutely terrifying. Part of the reason America was a formidable Cold War opponent was that Reagan genuinely didn't care if the world ended.

 

[Rawker]

He was a puppet-president. With the Iran-Contra affair, her claimed to not know anything about it. Which means he's lying, or it makes you wonder then if he was telling the truth what else he didn't know about. The man was an actor before a president. He was a pretty face posted by the system.

 

[ImSkeletor]

no he really effed up the economy and we are currently suffering the results of it, essentualy under his presidency we got the whole greed is good mentality and its been fucking with us since, not to mention he really killed spending on infistructure (yeah yeah spelling whatever) and we havent really started spending enough on it since then. But I think the biggest reason ppl dont like him is that ever since him republicans have essentualy treated him like jesus, in that they all want to be the disciples of reagan and its really annoying

All I can say is WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT. Reagan was a great american. also I feel like im one of the only conservatives/republicans/christians on these kind of things.

 

[AceDiamond]

All I can say is WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT. Reagan was a great american.

Anyway I don't really hate Reagan the man. sure he did some reprehensible things that he could've been impeached for (Iran-Contra being the big one), and considering what Republicans consider an impeachable offense when a Democrat is in office he probably should have been. But at the same time he also did make strides into ending the Cold War, but then again so did every President from Truman all the way to Bush Sr., granted some things did more than others. But I digress.

What I do hate is the idealized Reagan that the far-right elements of the GOP love to ram down the throats of the general public. The idea that Reagan was a flawless individual and all his ideas were awesome, and he would've been able to make America poverty-free and perfect if not for those meddling Congressmen. Let's get one thing straight right off the bat: Reaganomics did not work for anybody but the rich. The rich are not the majority of the population, therefore it was never in the best interest of the country at large. The GOP knows this, and as such they resort to lying whenever they can because they love to use Reaganomics as the jumping off point for saving us from crippling debt. One particular egregious example of lying comes from (who else?) Rush Limbaugh, who created a chart that measured tax rates and savings from 1980 to 1992, while at the same time saying Reaganomics died in 1990 due to a tax hike by George H.W. Bush. The reason he included that tax hike, however, and went all the way to 1992, was so he could conceal just how big Reagan's tax cut to the rich really was. Even better, he left payroll taxes out of the equation. Payroll taxes being the majority of taxes Americans pay, and the most burdensome on the lower classes because they only applied to the first $61,000 during the Reagan years. Due to these cooked numbers, Rush claims that the poorest 20% of Americans received a whopping 540% tax cut under Reagan. The reality is that they in fact had a 15% tax increase. And I thought the Enron guys did some bad book-cooking. My point being that Rush Limbaugh was viewed in the post-2008 Election world as a leader of the GOP, or at least the most conservative elements of it. So it's easy to see the kind of crap they will try (and unfortunately succeed) at making people believe in order to make Reagan out to be better than he was as President.

On another note, it's funny to me how a lot of right-wingers will complain about TARP and the Bailout despite the fact that Reagan had to do the exact same thing...to cover up his own fuckup. See, Reagan deregulated the Savings & Loan in 1982 [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Savings_and_loan_crisis]. This was ostensibly done to revitalize the housing industry. This led to a lot of imprudent lending for real estate purposes (hmm, sounds familiar). I will spare the boring details but the point is that a lot of bankruptcies and loan defaults ensued, a good number of banks closed down, and something to the tune of $124 Billion in taxpayer dollars were lost to this crisis. Ironically, when signing the "Garn-St. Germain Depository Institutions Act" [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garn%E2%80%93St._Germain_Depository_Institutions_Act] that deregulated the S&L, Reagan said "I think we hit the jackpot". Well I guess somebody did, but it wasn't us.

So yeah, Reagan's not perfect, Reaganomics didn't work, and I wish the GOP would stop trying to convince people otherwise.

 

[tommy123456789]

However I will just leave you with one conclusion that I have reached. It is often said that America's worse president was Jimmy Carter or Buchanan or perhaps it was Nixon or Johnson. Some even contend it was W Bush. Nixon and Johnson however had their good points, Nixon's foreign policy achievements, for example China and Johnson's great civil rights achievement.


However my conclusion is a president's legacy is the most important facet to determine greatness, or failure, not just his time in office but the ramifications for the country if his policies and philosophy are continued by his followers in successive administrations.


Thus based on this rationale, I have come to the conclusion that Ronald Reagan was America's worse president, by far. His policies and philosophy have destroyed the Middle class, destroyed the Union movement that protected worker's conditions. Reaganomics has led to the lost of the GREAT industrial base, which America was famous for, to China. SUPPLY SIDE POLICES have led to a a massive reallocation of wealth from the poor and the middle class to the wealthy. Estimated by some, due to the social security swindle to be around 3 trillion dollars, and this was just in the REAGAN years. His policies have turned the once greatest economic power in the world, the worlds largest exporter, the highest standard of living, into a shadow of it's former self. Bankrupt and with a massive trade deficit and no industry to counterbalance or redeem the situation.

This man and his legacy have done more damage to your country than any other person or state in history.

This will be the final summation of this man, by balanced historians I believe.

Oh yes during Clinton wealth polarization increased greatly too, but I will give Clinton the benefit of the doubt, because he was fiscally responsible and was handcuffed by a conservative dominated Congress. I wonder if Clinton would have pushed for welfare reform if there was not a Republican controlled congress operating under REAGAN principles?

Supporting Info:


http://www.truth-out.org/032009R


http://www.blogster.com/southwesterngrad/how-reagan-destroyed-america-the-middle-class

 

[TeeBs]

There is no proven right way that the government should take as far as economics are concerned, yes the economy was great during Reagans administration but arguably it put us where we are at now. Key word being arguably. To me though, being a democrat, I don't hate Reagan or like Reagan, I feel that he gets way to much credit for the end of the Soviet Union.

Also FYI if Reagan ended the Soviet Union I can say JFK saved the world.

 

[floppylobster]

I can understand if you dislike the man, but from what I learned about him he did a pretty good job as president. I will admite mabey it was just propagada they were teaching at school, but I don't really see anything he did bad. His fixed the ecomey in the 80's "During Jimmy Carter's last year in office (1980), inflation averaged 12.5%, compared to 4.4% during Reagan's last year in office (1988).Over those eight years, the unemployment rate declined from 7.5% to 5.3%, hitting highs of 9.7% (1982) and 9.6% (1983) and averaging 7.5% during Reagan's administration."
Persued personaly freedom for the people and try to make us less rreliant on the goverment. Quiltys I both like, nowif people can give a vaild reason for why he did a bad job then I will reconsider my take on him.

With the distance of time anything can start to look better, even impressive (see Genghis Kahn).

I was a high school and Reagan was in power. I have good reason to dislike him. People disliked him so much that someone tried to assassinate him. But after he survived people felt sympathy for him and his popularity soared. The world was a fearful place when he was in power, AIDS, Iran contra, interfering in world politics, nuclear weapons everywhere, destabilizing regions that are causing problems for the US today. Like G. W. Bush, he ruled by using fear of the 'unknown' world outside of the US. Also, Gorbachev can take more credit for ending the cold war than Reagan. And if he didn't have dementia while in office then he did a damned good impression of it. Then again, he was an actor.

 

[octafish]

Pinochet, Papa Doc, Marcos, and Ollie North. Isn't that enough?

 

[octafish]

I was a high school and Reagan was in power. I have good reason to dislike him. People disliked him so much that someone tried to assassinate him. snip

Nah, Hinckley just wanted to impress Jodie Foster, he even planned to kill Carter, but was picked up on a firearms charge before he could put his plan into action. Don't watch Taxi Driver too many times kids, it's not good for you.

 

[vxicepickxv]

I don't hate Reagan. I think he was a wonderful actor. That said, I disagree with a large number of his policies, and those that believe that the policies he espoused were a great idea.

 

[Berethond]

Because after the Bush's Republicans aren't cool anymore so people hate him.

And honestly, Reagan is not to blame for the economic shit storm thats going on right now.

No, in fact it would be Keynesian economics responsible for that. What with its short-run focus and all.