Ronald Reagan Started a War That Rages Today - WSJ's Henninger

[question everything]

June 11, 2004

WONDER LAND
By DANIEL HENNINGER


Next to Abraham Lincoln, Ronald Reagan was perhaps the most divisive president in the nation's history. Lincoln ended a way of life for the American South. Reagan said that he was ending a way of life for American liberalism. As with Lincoln, the challenge Reagan posed to his opposition was not merely political or economic. It was profoundly moral -- and so worth a death-struggle. The tensions and bitterness evident in the body politic today, and in the current presidential campaign, arrived in Washington in 1981 with the 40th president. This quiet week of remembrance is a temporary truce.

These are not cheerful thoughts at a time when all are calling to mind the grandest qualities in Ronald Wilson Reagan. But the bitterness of our politics now is a phenomenon admitted by all. People ask whence it arrived. The answer will not be found in George W. Bush's west Texas accent or in his decision to depose Saddam Hussein. Ronald Reagan himself fired the first volleys -- and hot lead it was -- in his first inaugural speech, in 1981:

"It is my intention to curb the size and influence of the Federal establishment and to demand recognition of the distinction between the powers granted to the Federal Government and those reserved to the States or to the people. All of us need to be reminded that the Federal Government did not create the States; the States created the Federal Government."

(snip)

Ronald Reagan was explicit in saying that his target was not the idea of government itself, as was often wrongly believed, but the Great Society. The Great Society was, and remains, a remarkable edifice. Consider the times in which it came to life. John Kennedy was assassinated in 1963, and the liberal promise he embodied erupted into a moral crusade, whose general was Lyndon Baines Johnson. Besides the burden of expectation left by a murdered and sanctified president, LBJ inherited two of the nation's most traumatic political crucibles -- the aborning civil rights movement and the Vietnam war. For liberals then and now, the former was the most morally compelling experience of their lives; the latter, the most immoral.

(snip)


The ethos of Ronald Reagan and LBJ represent the two great political ideologies of our lifetime. The substantive disagreements that put these factions in opposition is not that of the mundane contests between Ford and Carter or Clinton and Dole. It was more like a religious war and remains so to this day.

(snip)


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URL for this article:
http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB108691056739034676,00.html

[Darth_Kitten]

1. Interesting, thank you

:)

[bemildred]

2. What horseshit.

"The ethos of Ronald Reagan and LBJ represent the two great political ideologies of our lifetime."

Neither one of these political hacks would know an ethos if it walked up and smacked
them in the chops and said: "Hi, I'm an ethos".

[question everything]

3. Yet, I do agree that our "polarized" society started with Reagan

Until the 1980 the Republicans had no ideology. But the religious right decided then to take over the republican platform, to Buchanan "culture war" in the 1992 convention to Bush getting his marching orders from god...

When the issues were taxes and foreign policy and welfare, while some would be personally affected - there was always room for debate and compromise and negotiation. But when the Republicans decided that government should move from one's back to one's bedroom and doctor's office and children's hearts - that's when the polarization started.

Of course the WSJ would praise Reagan, but I was startled to read there that the editor, too, sees Reagan as the beginning of the divisiveness, though from a different POV.

[bemildred]

4. I was here in the 60s, and you are not correct.

What happened when Reagan came is was that the ruling elites
began a determined and successful campaign to move political
debate to the right and to curtail the then established rights
and protections of the public in favor of arbitrary government
power. It was plenty divisive well before Reagan.

[question everything]

5. Can you elaborate?

Which was the ruling elites? The Carter administration? After all, after the 60s we had the Nixon and the Ford administration?

[bemildred]

6. We were discussing what happened when Reagan came in.

The 60s were a secondary issue, brought in to point out that
things were more divisive before Raygun, contrary to your
statement. If anything, a lot of the "divisive" political
activity was shut down when Raygun came in, and the level
of whoreishness in the mainstream media went up.

In US politics, "divisiveness" is usually an excuse for doing
nothing about some issue or another (like health care) that the
public wants dealt with and the government does not.