-Caveat Lector-
WJPBR Email News List [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Peace at any cost is a Prelude to War!
January 11, 2001
The world of Reagan
Arnold Beichman
On Feb. 6, Ronald Reagan will get a wonderful 90th birthday present.
Tragically he will be unable to appreciate it because he is in the final
stages of Alzheimer's. The birthday gift is a book titled, "Reagan, In His
Own Hand" and is being published by one of the biggest publishing houses in
the United States in a first edition of 100,000.
The book is a collection of the originals of radio commentaries and
newspaper columns on major issues — labor policy, the future of Asia and
Africa, communist imperialism, arms limitation — composed in Mr. Reagan's own
handwriting (including his misspellings — the occasional "i'ts" for "it's"
and again "it's" for "its") long before he became, in 1980, the 40th
president of the United States. These several thousand pages, uncatalogued
until a few months ago at the Reagan presidential library in Simi Valley,
California, reveal a Reagan far different from the idiot savant phantasm
still current among American liberal intellectuals.
Hendrik Hertzberg, formerly a speech writer for President Jimmy Carter
and now a senior editor at the New Yorker, called Mr. Reagan just that — an
"idiot savant" in a 10-page essay in the New Republic Sept. 9, 1991. For
documentation he used Lou Cannon's biography, "President Reagan: The Role of
a Lifetime" — which quotes Clark Clifford as describing the president as "an
amiable dunce" at a fashionable Georgetown party. Mr. Cannon's source is the
Wall Street Journal, Oct. 8, 1981. One of Mr. Reagan's biographers titled a
chapter, "The Amiable Dunce."
This deceptive image was of course the creation of American liberalism —
mainstream intellectuals, academics and historians, journalists, TV anchors,
magazine editors who are mostly left-liberal Democrats. Strangely enough this
image received a good deal of its putative documentation from the treacherous
memoirs of Mr. Reagan's staff and even some Cabinet members, with notable
exceptions: Secretary of State George Shultz who has written the introduction
to the new Reagan book and Attorney General Edwin Meese III.
Robert C. McFarlane, Mr. Reagan's national security adviser, has been
quoted as saying in a tone of bewilderment: "Why is Ronald Reagan so
successful? He knows so little and accomplishes so much?" It turns out, as
"Reagan, In His Own Hand" clearly shows, that Mr. Reagan knew a lot more than
he let on.
Martin Anderson, the economist who worked for Mr. Reagan as domestic
policy adviser, described in "Revolution," his still unrivaled history of the
Reagan administration, this liberal fiction:
"Since 1986 a torrent of books and articles on his presidency has
painted a portrait of a dumb but likable man, a man who either deliberately
abdicated his responsibility to make major decisions or worse simply didn't
know what was going on most of the time."
It rarely occurred to these opinion makers to inquire as to how this
bumbler managed to get elected and re-elected governor of California, managed
decisively to oust an incumbent president, Jimmy Carter, in 1980, an event
which was followed by a second-term landslide victory. Mr. Reagan's
re-election in 1984 allowed him to initiate a foreign policy which allowed
him to preside over the beginning of the bloodless end of the Soviet empire
and the Cold War. And when he left office he was accorded in public opinion
polls one of the highest popularity ratings of any president in modern times.
What was not fully realized at the time was that he was one of the
best-prepared candidates for the presidency. Twice governor of California
(1966-1974) and a widely acclaimed public speaker, he had done an enormous
amount of reading and writing about domestic and foreign policy issues.
At the Reagan Library, dozens and dozens of once sealed cartons have
been found holding several thousand pages in Mr. Reagan's own very legible
handwriting, with the original editing. A young professor, Kiron K. Skinner,
of Carnegie Mellon University who was writing a book on Mr. Reagan's foreign
policy was given access by the Reagan library to these cartons and it was
then she made her breathtaking discovery. She took copies of the pages to
Martin and Annelise Anderson, both Hoover fellows, who with Ms. Skinner
realized their value as history and became the editors.
It is these writings which should compel the most rabid anti-Reagan
historians to rethink their failed scholarship. In doing so, they might
recall the words of Leopold von Ranke, the great 19th-century German
historian, who said it was the historian's duty to tell us wie es eigentlich
gewesen ist "what really happened." In the case of Mr. Reagan these
historians have clearly failed in their duty.
George Shultz in his introduction says that the book is important
because it "provides a key to unlocking the mystery of Reagan that has
baffled so many so long."
The question before American historians today is whether they will use
the key. The American people who chose Mr. Reagan twice as their president,
of course, didn't need a key.
Arnold Beichman, a research fellow at the Hoover Institution, is a Washington
Times columnist.
*COPYRIGHT NOTICE** In accordance with Title 17 U. S. C. Section 107,
any copyrighted work in this message is distributed under fair use
without profit or payment to those who have expressed a prior interest
in receiving the included information for nonprofit research and educational
purposes only.[Ref. http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml ]
Want to be on our lists? Write at [EMAIL PROTECTED] for a menu of our lists!
<A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/">www.ctrl.org</A>
DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER
==========
CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic
screeds are unwelcomed. Substance—not soap-boxing—please! These are
sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'—with its many half-truths, mis-
directions and outright frauds—is used politically by different groups with
major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought.
That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and
always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no
credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply.
Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector.
========================================================================
Archives Available at:
http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html
<A HREF="http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html">Archives of
[EMAIL PROTECTED]</A>
http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/
<A HREF="http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/">ctrl</A>
========================================================================
To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email:
SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email:
SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Om
