If I were to write a birthday card to President Reagan on his 100th birthday what would it say?
Happy birthday, Mr. President!
The phony liberal media loves you (now that it is politically convenient). Your son, Ron, Jr., who you did not agree with in life, also loves you. In fact, Ron, Jr. loves you so much that he has written a book about you, and for the purposes of publicity, has continued to allow himself to be used by the MSM to condemn your Republican Party and the Tea Party Movement in the build-up to your centennial birthday celebration.
It is a sorry state of affairs when your own son would allow your legacy to be misstated and abused for political purposes.
In his book, My Father at 100, Ron Jr. writes, “I argued plenty with my father when he was alive; I have no intention of picking a fight with him now that he’s gone and can’t defend himself.”
However, Ron Jr. apparently sees no problem in helping to enable the MSM in its 2012 strategy to recast what it means to be a conservative – his father’s true legacy. This week, we witnessed more comedy masquerading as journalism and Ron Jr. aided and abetted the effort to undermine and misstate his father’s belief system, a belief system that was in full public view for eight crystallizing years.
One case in point was a story by AOL News’ Andrea Stone, with the headline, “Son Says Reagan Would See Today’s GOP as ‘Mean-Spirited and Stupid.'” In the piece, Ron Jr. says, “I feel comfortable saying he [Ronald Reagan] would be very, very disturbed by the vitriol, very disturbed by the ‘birther’ business, that (President Obama) is a ‘terrorist,'” Reagan said. “All of that kind of stuff he would think was way, way over the top and just mean-spirited and stupid.”
How interesting.
Ronnie, would your father have approved of you or the MSM generalizing about the vitriol in public discourse and attributing it all to the “mean-spirited” and “stupid” GOP?
The answer is no.
Ronnie, would your dad have approved of the MSM’s reckless and hateful attempts to link the murderous, crazed actions of an Arizona madman to Sarah Palin, Fox News, and the tea party movement? Would he have approved the Democrats’ false linkages that have increased death threats against former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin?
The answer is no.
Would Ronald Reagan have called the tea party movement terrorists like U.S. Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL) has in his fundraising letters? Would he have approved of liberal Democrat hate campaign against everyday Americans – moms and dads, grandmas and grandpas – who are merely defending, passionately, the principle of limited government?
The answer is no.
Would your dad, President Reagan, have ever used Nazi analogies to compare opponents to the socialized medicine that is Obamacare like Rep. Steve Cohen did on the House floor just a few weeks ago?
The answer is no.
To refresh your recollection, Cohen said: “They [Republicans] don’t like the truth so they summarily dismiss it. They say it’s a government takeover of health care, a big lie just like [Nazi propagandist Joseph] Goebbels.”
So, what exactly is a government mandate to force the purchase of national healthcare insurance or be penalized? What is a law that was forced through, bypassing normal constitutional procedures, without the support of the people (now 58 somewhat favor repeal of the healthcare law and 47% strongly favor repeal)? What – other than socialized medicine – do you a call a system that puts the U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services in charge of determining what medical services will be covered by all health plans?
Ronald Reagan despised socialized medicine. He once said:
One of the traditional methods of imposing statism or socialism on a people has been by way of medicine. It is very easy to disguise a medical program as a humanitarian project. People are very reluctant to oppose anything that suggests medical care for people who possibly can’t afford it.
In this same speech, Reagan talked about the evils of a bill introduced by then Rep. Forand and his proposal that all people of social security age should be brought under a program of national compulsory health insurance. Though the program was group-limited, Reagan noted Rep. Forand’s damning statement to supporters. “If we can only break through and get our foot inside the door, then we can expand the program after that,” said Forand at the time.
President Reagan was nobody’s fool. “By national health insurance, he meant socialized medicine for every American,” concluded Reagan.
So, Ronnie, what would Cohen have said about your, dad, Ronald Reagan? Would he have likened him to Joseph Goebbels too?
In his interview with AOL news, Ron Jr. stated further that Ronald Reagan “was a very civil man, a gentleman. I think he would find that rhetoric [of conservatives] beneath the dignity of the country.”
Ronnie, would you call what the language of liberal Democrats and the MSM the kind of genteel civil discourse in keeping with your father’s legacy? Moreover, in your rush to get publicity, have you forgotten the remarks made about your father during and since his presidency by the political left?
Statements like:
“As opposed to a man like Reagan, Nixon is, was, highly regarded as a genuine statesman with a first-class mind.” – Bryant Gumbel (1994).
“I predict historians are going to be totally baffled by how American people fell in love with this man and followed him the way we did.” — CBS’s Lesley Stahl (1989)
“The best evidence I can give that we do a lousy job covering politics is to look at the politicians: Ronald Reagan was President of us for eight years — Ronald Reagan! Reporters should have been writing for the entire eight years of his reign that this man was gone, out of it….He should have been covered as a clown.” –NBC’s Bob Herbert (1992)
“Good morning. The Gipper was an airhead!” — NBC’s Katie Couric (1999)
“In the plague years of the 1980s — that low decade of denial, indifference, hostility, opportunism, and idiocy — government fiddled, medicine diddled, and the media were silent or hysterical. A gerontocratic Ronald Reagan took this [AIDS] plague less seriously than Gerald Ford had taken swine flu. After all, he didn’t need the ghettos and he didn’t want the gays.” — CBS’ John Leonard (1993).
The MSM media have operated on Goebbels’ fundamental premise that if you repeat a lie often enough, it becomes truth. Since the 1980s, they’ve tried to rewrite Reagan’s legacy but their desperate attempts have soundly failed.
The American people have not forgotten Reagan’s strong, proud conservative hand in the fall of the Evil Empire, the crumbling of the Berlin Wall, and the unprecedented period of prosperity America experienced as a result. We have not forgotten, too, Reagan’s sunny smiling belief in all things America. Reagan was an unabashed fan of America and its remarkable place in the world. He never apologized for that. He never backed down.
Today’s political leaders still have much to learn from Reagan. Apparently, so does his son.