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Monday
May 23, 2005

Finding America’s Next Great President (Part Two) by James Kilbourne

I call myself a Republican not because I agree with all their positions, but rather because I understand that politics is not philosophy, although that does not mean that they are in conflict. It is important to understand that politics is the art of trying to advance your philosophy as quickly as you can in a non-coercive manner, and that often requires some strange bedfellows. (Read more...)
Discuss this Article (40 messages)

Tuesday, May 24, 2005 - 5:55pm

Calling Reagan a socialist monster is like calling Libertarians philosophical.

Reagan was an individualist. Read any of his speeches on liberty before 1980 (almost all of which he wrote) and afterward, and you'll see eloquence sometimes on par with our founding fathers. The 1964 convention speech for Goldwater is astonishing in its clarity and brilliance. He was not a simpleton. He was simple.

Remember that Reagan was saddled with a Democratic Congress that insisted upon having its entitlements. Reagan had to pick and choose his fights in a country that still believed in entitlements. He got his 1982 tax cut enacted, allowing folks like me making almost minimum wage at the time to see a few extra hundred dollars in my billfold every year. But more important, he got the point across that government was supposed to be smaller and the liberty of individuals bigger. Liberals vilified him. What better endorsement? He's the only man I've ever voted for.

But even more important, he REPRESENTED an almost ideal man: extraordinary sense of life, self-made (still shoeing his horses into his 70s despite having Secret Service agents begging him to let them do it), judgmental toward evil and good, courageous (standing tall against the world's intelligentsia and simpering media).

To call him anything other than great considering what he was up against and considering that he wasn't an objectivist, is, as Alec said, delusional -- at best.

Tuesday, May 24, 2005 - 6:30pm

Calling Reagan a socialist monster is like calling Libertarians philosophical.

Agreed. They are both truisms.

Reagan was an individualist.

No, he was a Unionist, a New Dealer, a military collectivist, and a president that expanded government faster than Bill Clinton did when he had his own party in Congress. That's what he was.

You can't blame this all on military spending or the Democrats. Five out of eight years in office, he asked for bigger budgets than the Democrats passed, and as governor of California—a state not involved in any arms race, mind you—he expanded entitlements and social spending far faster than Democratic governors Pat Brown or Jerry Brown. He was also a gun-grabber.

He got his 1982 tax cut enacted, allowing folks like me making almost minimum wage at the time to see a few extra hundred dollars in my billfold every year.

He also raised Social Security taxes. If you were making almost minimum wage that year, you almost certainly paid more, on balance, to the federal government—which he expanded by about 90%—because of Reagan.

Liberals vilified him. What better endorsement?

All too many Objectivists and libertarians think this way. Just because someone is a liberal's enemy does not mean he's a friend of liberty.

But even more important, he REPRESENTED an almost ideal man: extraordinary sense of life, self-made (still shoeing his horses into his 70s despite having Secret Service agents begging him to let them do it), judgmental toward evil and good, courageous (standing tall against the world's intelligentsia and simpering media).

Accelerating the war on drugs, sending weapons of mass destruction to Saddam Hussein to mass murder Kurds and assisting the Muhajadeen and al Qaeda ... oh, wait.

To call him anything other than great considering what he was up against and considering that he wasn't an objectivist, is, as Alec said, delusional -- at best.

So should we have higher standards for Objectivists?

Tuesday, May 24, 2005 - 6:41pm

Thank You David for finally mentioning that. Regan walked the walk when he moved the top tax rate from the 60's to the 30's. The only problem came when the Democtatic congress BETRAYED him after they promised to cut spending too. As a result we naturally moved into greater debt against Regan's wishes.

As for the Marine Barracks bombing, we did not just pull out. We moved the troops to ships in the harbor and stayed there another year. 58 frenchmen were also killed the same day and Regan decided that since they had more influence in the area (it all used to be French) they were the ones who should attack Hezbollah and the Iranian's who helped them, which they did. Now I disagree with that, we should have occupied all of Lebanon for that but I do agree with the principle that occasionally its better to rely on an ally to achieve certain aims. It was a judgement call that was wrong but had nothing to do with his principles.

Tuesday, May 24, 2005 - 7:56pm

For what it's worth, I think that along with continuing and expediting Carter's great deregulation initiatives, pulling out of Beirut was probably the best thing Reagan did.

Tuesday, May 24, 2005 - 8:03pm

David-

I'm surprised we actually agree on the assessment of 3 presidents (Washington, Lincoln and Coolidge). Jackson I've admired for opposing the bank, but it's combined with big downsides such as his oppression of Indians and eroding state's checks on the power of federal government concerning South Carolina and tariffs.

If Reagan brought down communism in the USSR I'd regard him much higher despite his major failings. However, I've not seen a coherent explanation of how he was the one to bring about such a change in a major foreign nation, one with which we'd already had an arms race and proxy wars for 50 years.

Many times arguing with liberals I have had to fight false impressions of terms, often left by them being co-opted by the Reagan administration. There is an all-too-common conception because of him that 'free trade' means what would rightly be regarded as mercantilism, or that 'capitalism' is a trickle-down Laffer creation rather than laissez-faire.

As for what he said, Reagan's rhetoric was often powerful and inspiring. He claimed conscription was based on the abhorrent idea that your life belonged to the State, and vowed to eliminate Selective Service. He claimed his major influences were Bastiat, Hayek and von Mises; this apparently showed in his promises to cut taxes and spending, eliminate the Dept of Education, Energy, Endowment for Arts and Humanities, support free trade, and return to a gold-backed currency.

In action, none of these were honored. The 1981 marginal tax rate cut was counteracted by the 1982 'saving Social Security' and 1986 'closing tax loopholes'. DOE, NEH, etc. still existed when he left office, and the Dept of Veteran Affairs had been added. Free trade suffered as more import restrictions or tariffs were introduced such as against Japanese cars or electronics. Return to gold standard was quickly ignored, as was the promise to eliminate Selective Service. Spending on defense obviously increased, but so did entitlement spending on Medicare, Social Security, farm subsidies, etc. To his credit, at least he wasn't betraying specific rhetoric that I'm aware of by escalating the War on Drugs, with mandatory minimum sentencing filling prisons with victimless criminals, or the use of civil forfeiture to seize citizens' property without due process.

Apologists may blame Democratic congress for some of these failings, but Reagan's own proposed budgets to Congress generally did not even propose cuts. Further, some changes would have been solely under his power - eg. Ford had ended SS registration in 1975 by presidential proclamation. If Reagan acted like he spoke I think he would have been a net positive for the country. He didn't, he wasn't, and his use of the language of freedom means that now when we debate some leftist about capitalism we have to clarify, "No, 'capitalism' like Rand or von Mises meant, not Reagan."

Tuesday, May 24, 2005 - 8:24pm

Nice post, Aaron. I agree about all the shortcomings you mentioned about Jackson and Reagan. But they're still great.

Concerning Jackson, I think he was brutal, obviously, in his treatment of the Indians, including actually going back on his word multiple times. But his abolition of the National Bank was such a resounding blow to the up-and-coming "progressives" that it took them 30 years to get their bearings straight again.

Reagan's eyes were bigger than his stomach. I think he truly believed he could do all the things he talked about, but the realities of Congress and the American people's mindset made them impossible. I think he didn't even mention many of the ideas again because he saw more clearly once in office that they simply wouldn't fly and that you don't change in the world in one or two administrations. His "war on drugs" was obviously a farce and probably linked to his devout Christianity, which he kept mostly hidden. One reason I mentioned Reagan's eloquent defense of liberty is that it has become obvious that it is his ideas that have taken hold in the intervening years for the Republican Party, making him a great force of history.

Tuesday, May 24, 2005 - 9:18pm

Quoth Alec Mouhibian:

"Aside from your apparent confusion over what an adjective is"

According to Webster, Merriam-Webster and WordNet, "loathsome" is an adjective. Every page on word structure which I consulted listed the "-some" suffix as a modifier which forms adjectives from the words prepended to it. If you have some kind of conflicting information, please feel free to say so.

"I already addressed what you considered my 'error' at the end of my post, where I noted that if you do not think the expansion and popularization of liberty was at all due to Reagan"

In other words, you're trying to retroactively change your claim instead of just admitting that you didn't know what you were talking about.

Clue: You're young. You're going to make mistakes, and that's okay. But when you dig yourself into a hole, the first step toward getting out of that hole is to stop digging. Once you learn that lesson, you will have begun the transition to adulthood. Pubic hair isn't enough.

"how much casuistry certain people will employ to dance around their all-or-nothing approach to the real world"

As opposed to how much evasion you will employ to arrive at a picture of reality which accords with your whims?

Tom Knapp

Tuesday, May 24, 2005 - 9:56pm

Well, sorry I stayed away so long. Jason told me he was publishing this, but somehow I missed it.
I believe that Alec has spoken to the main argument that I will present in part three. It is important for a philosophy to remain pure, and I do take seriously Reagan's and Bush's deviations. Philosophically, I take them seriously. Politically, a consistent libertarian position would mean crushing defeat at the polls. This is not to excuse some of their transgressions, but it explains many of their omissions.
You have all inspired me to get working on part three, so we can go on with "The Passion of Kilbourne's Critics Critics", or whatever.
(Edited by James Kilbourne
on 5/24, 9:59pm)

Tuesday, May 24, 2005 - 10:48pm

Thomas,

Now you're blabbering. You pretended that I didn't address a point that I clearly, explicitly did. My youth aside, it's silly for a grown man to try to justify such a basic failure in reading comprehension by starting to speak in nonsensical gibberish. The insanity defense won't work here.

And I don't know if you've ever had to consult a thesaurus to discover the word "loathsome," but I haven't.

Alec

Wednesday, May 25, 2005 - 5:58am

Quoth Alec Mouhibian:

"And I don't know if you've ever had to consult a thesaurus to discover the word 'loathsome," but I haven't."

Of course not -- you grew up in a home equipped with mirrors, right?

I've previously tried to give you the benefit of the doubt, and have therefore operated on the assumption that you're immature; speaking to a period during which you were not old enough to take careful note of what was going on around you and concerning which you've not subsequently educated yourself; and not used to having your fantasies challenged. As opposed to, say, just being a fucking idiot.

But it's one or the other. Which?

Tom Knapp

Wednesday, May 25, 2005 - 11:42am

James, is an underlying principle of your article that pragmatism is OK in politics?
(Edited by Pete on 5/25, 11:57am)

Wednesday, May 25, 2005 - 3:32pm

Pete- although I have disagreements with Ayn Rand's viewpoint of pragmatism, no, that is not my position. My argument is that politics is not philosophy. Its goal are different. What is achievable when you try to get 300 million people to embrace a position short of violence in promoting their view of social order is more general in nature and slower to be achieved.

Wednesday, May 25, 2005 - 11:59pm

Tom,

I'll take your abrupt digression into the matter of my deficiencies as a silent concession of my point about how deluded it is to deny any causation between Reagan and the advancement of libertarian ideas. I also appreciate your generosity in offering yourself as evidence of how easily ideologues can descend into myopic quackery.

As for the matter of my deficiencies: well, as they say, sticks and stones may break my bones, but turds will never hurt me. And you, sir, are a turd.

Alec

Thursday, May 26, 2005 - 2:02am

Quoth Alec Mouhibian:

"I'll take your abrupt digression into the matter of my deficiencies as a silent concession of my point about how deluded it is to deny any causation between Reagan and the advancement of libertarian ideas."

You might want to re-read the thread in order to properly discern who decided he wanted to play seven-card deficiency stud -- and who gave that person a couple of chances to fold before calling.

As for any causation between Reagan and "the advancement of libertarian ideas," you have yet to even try to make the case -- you simply blamed Rothbard for disputing your uninformed opinion, before you ever stated that opinion.

I'm not a Rothbardian. Any similarity of my ideas to his is either coincidental or due to the spread of his ideas via others, as I have yet to read his major works. Nonetheless, I can confidently state that Rothbard did more for liberty and for "libertarian ideas," or at least less against them, than Reagan, because Reagan terribly damaged both from the bully pulpit of the White House. I suspect that Rothbard was, on balance, good for liberty and for libertarian ideas -- but even if he was bad for them, he didn't have the White House to be bad for them from.

Tom Knapp

Thursday, May 26, 2005 - 2:53am

Tom,

This all actually began with your misunderstanding my very clearly stated point. I was blaming Rothbard for disputing the blatantly true fact -- which you acknowledged -- that liberty was in a better state after Reagan than before. And I already made my case for causation, which is so obvious given the circumstances that it behooved Rothbard to deny the correlation (!), since you couldn't easily accept one without the other.

As I stated: "Let's see. An immense expansion of the liberty movement occurred during the exact same time as the presidency of the most powerful politician in the world, who happened to wield the rhetoric of liberty incessantly and courageously, in unprecedented contexts [including a speech about the greatness of American capitalism delivered at the University of Moscow], and who also happened to be immensely popular."

I also referred to the heads of CATO, who have also attributed the institute's massive increase in size and influence in no small part to Reagan. Perhaps they would be slightly more informed about the roots of their success than you are, despite your sage-worthy middle-age.

Still, the point regarded Rothbard's denial of the correlation, and how that spoke volumes for itself.

Alec

Thursday, May 26, 2005 - 7:12am

Quoth Alec Mouhibian:

"This all actually began with your misunderstanding my very clearly stated point. I was blaming Rothbard for disputing the blatantly true fact -- which you acknowledged -- that liberty was in a better state after Reagan than before."

Where, pray tell, do you believe that I acknowledged any such thing?

Liberty arguably made some gains in certain areas while Reagan was president, and after. It arguably took some losses, and is now in worse shape -- in the US at least -- than it was in either 1980 or 1988.

Reagan was far more responsible for the losses than the gains -- and, specifically, not responsible in any significant respect in the area where he's usually given the lion's share of credit (the fall of the Soviet Union).

He and his ilk were confidently predicting an indefinite continuation of the Soviet menace even while Yeltsin was crawling on top of a tank in Red Square and Germans were hacking the wall to pieces. The only people who had predicted the fall of the USSR happening as it actually happened were libertarian theorists -- including Rothbard, who so predicted it in nineteen fifty-fucking six when Buckley and his neocon butt-buddies were already calling for a "totalitarian bureaucracy within our shores" and whining for the necessity of "accepting big government for the [infinite] duration."

The fact is that, while Reagan pushed through a cut in the marginal income tax rate, he did not even attempt to significantly cut government spending, either in real terms or as a percentage of GDP. As a matter of fact, his budget requests increased it in the former area and his spending policies were a mixed bag in the latter. His "tax cut" was in reality no such thing. It was merely a deferral of tax payments to subsequent generations. And yes, he was responsible, because ...

Contra the claims of those who whine that "it was the Democratic Congress which blew the roof off deficit spending," said Congress gave Reagan a SMALLER budget than he ASKED for, year after year. Had Reagan had his way versus the Democrats, government would have grown even faster than it did.

He did not abstain from rule by ukase -- in his 8 years in office, he issued more executive orders than Bill Clinton did over the same amount of time, and more on a pro rata basis than George Bush the Elder did.

Reagan built the conservative welfare state up, liked the way it looked, and built it up some more. He left government larger, more well-funded, more powerful and more abusive than it was when he took office. And he did it while slinging libertarian rhetoric, thus tarnishing that rhetoric. Talk is cheap. He cheapened talk of liberty with his actions. He set the example for the GOP congress and George W. Bush, both of whom have talked a mean "smaller government" line while expanding government faster than Bill Clinton ever imagined doing in his wildest wet dreams.

It is no accident that the largest building in Washington, DC -- the largest physical paean on the face of the earth to the primacy of the state -- is the Ronald Reagan Center.

Tom Knapp
(Edited by Thomas L. Knapp
on 5/26, 7:20am)

Thursday, May 26, 2005 - 10:39am

I think that perhaps Mr. Knapp could use some reminding about the Reagan years. Here are just a few of the highlights of Reagan's first term that refute incomprehensible anti-Reaganism. (This specific information was taken from the Heritage Foundation's site.)

1981

January 28. Decontrol of Oil. Reagan lifts controls on production and allocation of oil. Petroleum prices then were $37 a barrel. In September 1988 they were $17.

February 17. Reform of Regulatory Process. President Reagan's Executive Order No. 12291 requires regulatory agencies to prove that the benefits of each new rule exceed costs, that they had sufficient information on which to base their proposal, and that they had chosen the least costly way of regulating.

July 29. Reagan Tax Victory. With 48 Democrats defecting, House approves Reagan's 3-year 25 percent personal income tax cut. Package includes accelerated depreciation allowances and investment tax credits, indexation of personal income taxes beginning in 1984, and individual retirement accounts for all taxpayers, thus laying groundwork for a private sector alternative to Social Security. An extraordinary economic boom follows implementation of final tax cut on January 1, 1983. Tax cut also transforms political dynamics of Washington by demolishing prospects of major new spending initiatives.

July3l. Reagan Budget Victory. Congress approves reconciliation measure chopping $35 billion out of projected spending for fiscal year 1982. In only victory for federalism during Reagan administration, 57 categorical grant programs in health, education, and social services are consolidated into seven block grants. (FYI, Mr. Knapp, Reagan worked behind closed doors to reduce the deficit each year, and even addressed the public about it, but was unsuccessful with the ever-more recalcitrant Democrats. And I'm sure that Mr. Knapp will recall that Reagan's requests for budgetary increases were primarily military-based.)

1982

June 8. Westminster Address. Reagan, in address before British Parliament, calls for a National Endowment for Democracy and a world crusade for freedom. "The march of freedom and democracy," he prophesies, "will leave Marxism-Leninism on the ash heap of history as it has left other tyrannies which stifle the freedom and muzzle the self-expression of the people."

August. Reagan Boom. Beginning of most sustained economic expansion in modern U.S. history, totally unpredicted by Keynesian economists, leads to generation of 18 million new jobs before Reagan leaves office. (Couldn't have had much to do with his tax cut and optimism -- right, Mr. Knapp?)

1983

Taming of Inflation. Stagflation of 1970s disappears, as increase in consumer price index falls to 3.2 percent, down from 13.5 percent in 1980.

March 8. Evil Empire. Reagan calls Soviet Union an evil empire in speech before convention of National Association of Evangelicals. Also refers to American racism as "legacy of evil."

March 23. Strategic Defense Initiative. Reagan offers practical hope to the world that the miracles of modern electronics can lessen dangers of nuclear war. Bypassing Pentagon and State Department bureaucracies, his Strategic Defense Initiative forces major rethinking of the nature of deterrence and the best means of achieving arms control. SDI gives focus to previously uncoordinated research that may be able to protect America and its allies against Soviet nuclear arsenal without having to rely on mutual assured destruction and Soviet promises to comply with treaties. (Was this one of those ways that Mr. Reagan "cheapened talk of liberty" and was "tarnishing [libertarian] rhetoric," Mr. Knapp?)

October 25. Liberation of Grenada. United States liberates Grenada at request of eight neighboring Caribbean nations, preventing consolidation of Leninist government that would have become major Soviet base for destabilizing region. Three days later, rescued American medical students kiss U.S. soil. On December 3, 1984, Grenada holds free elections in which 90 percent of voters support candidates who approved of U.S. intervention. (Carter or Clinton would surely have done the same thing -- right, Mr. Knapp? And this invasion did nothing to ensure Reagan's resolve against communism, did it Mr. Knapp?)

1984

January 16. Grace Commission Report. Grace Commission releases 23,000-page report on government waste and inefficiency. Makes 2,478 recommendations that could save $424 billion over three years.

January 23. Soviet Treaty Violations Reported. First official report of Soviet violations of arms control treaties is presented to Congress by President Reagan. (Carter and Co. would've worked "behind the scenes" on such an issue to not piss off the Soviets.)

July 11. Conservative Environmental Policy. A report by the President's Council on Environmental Quality demonstrates ecological benefits that would result from privatization of many federal lands.

December 22. Support for SDI. Britain, later followed by West Germany, Japan, Israel, and Italy, announces it will cooperate with U.S. in strategic defense research.

1985

January 7. Soviet INF concessions. Reagan's refusal to panic when Soviets walk out of INF negotiations on November 23, 1983, leads to Soviet return to table to discuss the same U.S. proposal that triggered walkout. (All of us who were rational adults during this conference cannot forget the adrenaline rush we got when the Soviets caved to Reagan's stalwart insistence upon having his way. What a moment! The media that had blasted him were stymied and left grumbling in their yellow print.)

I won't go into the second term, unless Mr. Knapp needs more convincing of Reagan's greatness within the context of our times. In Reagan's second term, of course, he fostered the Gramm-Rudman bill to control congressional spending and aided fledgling democracies around the world (including aiding the rebels against the Sandinistas in Nicaragua.)

President Reagan was far from perfect, as we all know, but he had the grandest thoughts and the greatest respect for liberty in the 20th century. He acted on most of those thoughts as the leader of the free world -- even though he was highly unpopular to many. And he put the fucking fear of God into the Soviets -- so to speak.

And THOSE are the reasons why the largest building in D.C. is dedicated to him.

Thursday, May 26, 2005 - 11:34am

When you raise spending, you cannot cut taxes in any real sense. You are stealing that money, those resources, everything they are ultimately traded for on the market, from the private sector. If the government spends one trillion dollars, it is, in all reality, taxing one trillion dollars worth of goods and services from the economy. It's nonsensical to discuss Reagan's tax cuts, when he was in fact a tax increaser, both in these terms and in terms of tax revenues brought in after his constant increases in the tax code after his intial cuts, his payroll tax increases, and his euphemistic "loophole-closing."

A protectionist, a big-spender, a liar, a warmonger, a Constitution desecrator and a bad actor, Ronald Reagan was a horrible president. I know that most people on this board have an irrational fear of Murray Rothbard, but it's worth looking at his analyses of Reagan's legacy, considering that Rothbard actually understood a thing or two about economics.

http://www.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/rothbard60.html

http://www.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/rothbard57.html

http://www.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/rothbard55.html

http://www.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/rothbard50.html

Thursday, May 26, 2005 - 3:36pm

"January 7. Soviet INF concessions."

This alone (and related work toward START) is why I'd still consider Reagan one of the less-bad presidents in my lifetime. Most of the rest of your list I either don't agree with (eg. Nicaragua intervention) or were outweighed by other tax+spending increases, legislation and foreign policy blunders. The 'trust but verify' bilateral elimination of thousands of nuclear warheads from this planet is something I do give him a lot of credit for though.

Sunday, May 29, 2005 - 11:52pm

David - a great summary of Reagan's first term. Thanks. The amazing thing is, the second term was even greater.