Welcome to DouglasDeBono.Com, the Cyberspace Home of author Douglas De Bono

Welcome to DouglasDeBono.Com, the Cyberspace Home of
author Douglas De Bono.

Reagan!

Ronald Reagan passed away last month. The fortieth president was eulogized by friend and foe alike. Conservatives praised him for his vision. Liberals breathed a sigh of relief that the moment came and went.

People older than I recount that John Kennedy’s funeral last generated the kind of bereavement that gripped the nation in early June. I find it an interesting comparison, for Kennedy was cut down in office, where as, Reagan left office nearly sixteen years ago and has been silent for almost a decade. We still remember or sense that a giant in American history has left us.

People claim the current vilification of President Bush is unprecedented, but they forget how many people pilloried Reagan and his policies.

Reagan fired the air traffic controllers during a period where we seemed to have a national union striking every other week. The experts warned that planes would start falling out of the sky—they were wrong.

Reagan cut taxes. The experts warned that this would usher in a debt crisis; instead, the country enjoyed a peace time expansion that survived into Clinton’s second term.

Reagan rebuilt the military, concentrating on our nuclear deterrent and building a fleet of almost 600 ships. The experts warned that these were provocative measures destined to bring us face-to-face with the Russian Bear. We already were face-to-face and the Soviets were winning.

Reagan embraced High Frontier, which came to be known as Star Wars. The experts warned this would give the United States a first strike capability. In reality, we already had that capability.

Reagan had a simple solution to the Cold War: We win; they lose. The experts claimed we had a trigger happy cowboy with his finger on the button. America won the Cold War, freed Eastern Europe and removed the single greatest threat to freedom in the Post War era.

Where have all the experts gone? Most of them have migrated to the far left of the Democratic Party—still spouting their gloom and doom message.

We tend to forget that the Cold War lasted forty years, consumed trillions of dollars, and cost thousands of lives. The world lived under the specter of nuclear annihilation. Half of Europe lay behind the Iron Curtain. Terrorist groups (e.g. Red Brigade, Japanese Red Army, Baader-Meinhof Gang) found funding and support in Moscow.

Reagan changed the world, because Reagan led the Western democracies (usually kicking and screaming) to victory. We forget the Soviet sponsored nuclear freeze movement and the games played at the United Nations. Those same tactics assail America today, although the puppeteers have changed.

Finally, Reagan believed in America—in the shining city on the hill. The best example of this relates to the medical students arriving back on American soil after the liberation of Grenada. Grenada had been in the grips of a Cuban backed government, and Cuban engineers (the ones with Kalashinkov rifles) were building a 10,000 foot runway capable of servicing Soviet nuclear capable bombers. Reagan order the island liberated.

Part of the operation involved the rescue of American citizens. Naturally, Reagan’s advisors were panicked at the thought of these returning students blasting the President’s decision. Reagan knew better and told his advisors to trust the inherent goodness of the American people. The first thing these people did when they came off the plane was to kiss American soil. Reagan was right again, because Reagan believed in the people.

The American spirit is still there. All we have to do it let it run free.