ronald reagan

Chris Knight's avatar

Visiting the Reagan Presidential Library over a year ago impressed upon me the Gipper’s charm and cordiality toward Gorbachev.  Yet Reagan was also fiercely resolute in his conviction that people desire to forge their own destinies.  It was the two Cold War leaders riding horses together as much as it was Reagan’s defiance at the Brandenburg Gate that ended the threat of communism in Europe.

It was a fine example of the “neo-noblesse oblige” that had been the template since World War II.  Countless perished in that conflict due in no small amount to the failure of “gentleman diplomacy” on the part of the upper crust.  But for its time, that was sanity.  And then a new sanity dawned with the rising of a false sun over Hiroshima.

Yet Ronald Reagan… was insane.  Or so we were told by pundits and academics.

Speaking of peace while drastically building up the ...

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The greatest president of the past half-century – at least – and he kept a sidearm during his time in the Oval Office.

I don’t care what your political persuasion, you gotta admit: that is severely hardcore.

The New York Daily News has an eye-opening story revealing something that until now only members of the Secret Service were aware of: that Ronald Reagan not only believed in the Second Amendment, he actively practiced it.  Specifically, he had a .38 pistol nearby as a personal firearm during his time as President of the United States.  He especially hid it in a briefcase as he traveled on Air Force One.

The article by Brad Meltzer goes into detail about what other presidents have carried with them.  George H.W. Bush toted his driver’s license around, and Clinton had a photo of Hillary and Chelsea (no comment).  Obama carries a Blackberry but no wallet ...

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SDI, Strategic Defense Initiative, Star Wars, missiles, nuclear weapons, antiballistic

It was thirty years ago this week that President Ronald Reagan gave a historic speech proposing, for the first time, a space-based anti-ballistic missile system for the United States.  The plan, once developed, would utilize ground and space-based weaponry to blast apart incoming nuclear missiles.  The basic premise was an array of missile-launching satellites around the Earth.  A far more radical design called for the deployment of platforms in orbit: either carrying anti-missile lasers or particle beams, or as part of an adaptive-optics system which would focus a surface-generated laser onto a moving target anywhere around the world (see illustration).

The official name for the concept was Strategic Defense Initiative, or SDI.  But for reasons apparent to everyone it was quickly labeled “Star Wars” by the mainstream press and the name stuck.

SDI gained notoriety overnight, as much from many people in the United States as from the government ...

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Ignoring the obvious – that soon thereafter he began his downward spiral into cosmetic catastrophe and overall instability – it will forever be acknowledged that once upon a time, Michael Jackson was a musical genius. As well as a masterful performer on stage and in his music videos. It was not without reason that he was dubbed the “King of Pop”. How long he maintained that title is debatable… but Jackson did earn it.

Thriller, Michael Jackson’s masterpiece album, was released thirty years ago today, on November 30th 1982. It remains by a significant margin the best-selling music album in history.

So in honor of Thriller‘s thirtieth anniversary, here is a photo of the artist behind it. Along with two other celebrated figures from a far, far better era…

...

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Chris Knight's avatar

…of the last real President that the United States has had, and probably will have for a very long time to come (if ever again).

During the past week I’ve read a lot of “analysis” about the life and career of Ronald Reagan. Much of it done in the name of “demythologizing” the man: looking for the “true” Reagan, as it were. Most of it having to do with his actual record on taxes and the size of government (something that he was famously on record for wanting to dramatically reduce).

Ronald Reagan wasn’t perfect. I don’t know of any President that was (even George Washington gets demerits in my book for how he handled the Whiskey Rebellion). But, there is one thing, if nothing else, that will always make me consider Reagan to be the greatest President during my lifetime…

President Ronald Reagan destroyed the Soviet Union without ...

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…in a different time and a better reality…

The Eighties. What a time to have been alive.

Personally, I think America hit its high water mark as a culture around 1994. There was a kind of dynamic that seems to have vanished about the time that O.J. Simpson went for that ride in the Ford Bronco.

I don’t know if we’ll ever see days like those again.

But just as King Arthur came to cherish at the end: It was a fair time that will live on in memory. And so long as the memory of that time endures, it may yet come again....

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In the past hour George W. Bush gave his last speech to the American people as President of the United States. I thought it was much like his final press conference last week: whiny, and defensive.

And not for the first time, I found myself wondering how it is that we have fallen so much as a country, from the way things used to be.

Twenty years ago, another President – that many people have said was the greatest President of the modern age – gave another farewell address to the people he had served for eight years. It was heartfelt, humble, reflective… and genuine. That President spoke of a “shining city upon a hill”. Twenty years later and the very weak man who succeeded him, actually displayed proud arrogance at how he has turned that city in a prison for its people via the Department of Homeland Security.

(Does ...

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Something I came up with after the idea hit me on the drive back from Atlanta last week.

It could also be argued that Ronald Reagan won the Cold War without really firing a single shot, or inflicting any fatalities. He defeated the Soviet Union in the only way that it could be beaten: by forcing it to bankrupt itself to death.

Not even twenty years later, his legacy is becoming undone before our very eyes. And millions of people who have never had to know such things may soon be hearing quite a bit about bomb shelters and air raid sirens....

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