The Gipper's Pen
Bandow, Doug
BOOKS IN REVIEW wrote that sentence after he had been away from the men awhile, after his identification with them had dissipated. The civilian world has a fog of its own. Another odd note is...
...The Soviet Union was a Communist colossus on the march...
...Most—at least two-thirds of the radio commentaries, for instance—drafted by Reagan in his own hand...
...comes over the hill with another zany," he observed...
...Thy Sha Ronald Reagan pingo!' '''Pnis March 2005 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR 63 BOOKS IN REVIEW also spoke up for Taiwan as it was threatened and bullied by the Communist mainland...
...In 1996 Skinner was reviewing Reagan's private papers while studying the end of the Cold War...
...Reagan opponents...
...It was "based on common sense & backed by a record 64 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR March 2005 of proven success," he wrote...
...will go to become involved with totally unimportant trivia...
...Mind-numbingly stupid rules coming out of Washington served as another target of Reagan's ire...
...One of his frequent targets was Fidel Castro...
...Reagan opposed normalization of relations with Cuba until Castro adopted "some of the simple humanitarian customs we consider normal...
...It offers Reagan's radio commentaries from 1975 to 1979, during which he launched his narrowly unsuccessful presidential bid against Republican President Gerald Ford and after which he defeated Democratic President Jimmy Carter...
...And that legacy lives on, including in his own words in Reagan's Path to Victory...
...What a tragedy his affliction with Alzheimer's was to his family and the rest of us...
...The threat was regulation as well as outright takings...
...Even though these essays are almost three decades old, they still sparkle, reflecting philosophical commitment leavened by strong argument mixed with persuasive rhetoric...
...For this knowledge we can be thankful to researcher Kiron Skinner and former Reagan aides Annelise and Martin Anderson...
...One of the cases he detailed involved a penalty of $19 million levied against Greyhound by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission for discrimination based on its minimum height requirement...
...Yet most of us did not know how deeply he laid the intellectual foundation for his presidential agenda in the 1970s...
...Reagan abhorred state paternalism, denouncing the federal government's airbag mandate: "Isn't this whole idea another thing that should be left to us & the free mkt...
...It's nice to learn that you can fight city hall," Reagan celebrated...
...He wrote of a case where the city of Fullerton, California, sought to seize an old home that a young couple had painstakingly refurbished...
...His Christian faith animated sevral columns...
...The federal government's hostility towards business was no surprise to Reagan since he had already seen it in academia...
...He never hesitated to proclaim it...
...In 1977 he noted that legislation to turn federal forest land into wilderness "does not increase govt's...
...He noted how musicians routinely defected from touring Soviet artistic groups: "the Kremlin can never understand," he said, those "yearning to breathe free...
...To read Reagan's Path to Victory is to revisit America under siege, an America groaning under an energy crisis and stagflation, stifling taxes and crime, and reeling from a Watergate scandal that nearly destroyed the GOP...
...govt...
...Thousands waited hours to pass by his coffin...
...Sometimes maybe you think I'm too critical of govt.," he wrote in May 1975, "But then govt...
...Edmund Brown in 1966 and President Jimmy Carter in 1980 assumed Reagan would prove the easiest opponent to defeat and paid for their obtuseness...
...Both California Gov...
...In this, and fortunately only in this, the book is reminiscent of the worst tendencies of the Vietnam literature...
...Iran was falling to the mullahs...
...Yet underneath their updated slang and hip irony, the voices of these Marines are familiar...
...was its estimate of back pay due these unknown people," he wrote with asperity...
...What an asset Ronald Reagan was to the conservative movement and, more important, to America...
...REEAGAN CARED ABOUT MORE than just politics nd policy...
...govt...
...But even more important, he pushed tax cuts and tax reform...
...On another occasion he observed "how far and at what administrative cost the swollen forces of Fed...
...With reluctance they acknowledged that Reagan was telegenic and avuncular...
...land holdings but it takes land presently available for multiple use, grazing, lumbering, mining & recreational and limits it strictly to preservation with roads, trails & vehicles banned...
...In 1977 he was writing on behalf of the famed Kemp-Roth across-the-board income tax rate cuts which became the cornerstone of his 1980 presidential campaign...
...It really is none of their darn business...
...By what right does a govt...
...will go to become involved with totally unimportant trivia...
...His scripts are filled with facts and practical arguments, but his philosophical commitment to freedom is their most striking mark...
...On another occasion he observed "how far and at what administrative cost the swollen forces of Fed...
...One of the debacles that he covered was the swine flu vaccine program, a well-intentioned attempt by Washington to provide flu coverage in 1976 that went terribly awry...
...In talk after talk he advanced the message of self-reliance, free enterprise, and unapologetic antiCommunism...
...Reagan also worried about broader assaults on property rights spurred by the environmental movement...
...He served Ronald Reagan in his 1980 presidential campaign and was a special assistant to the president in the White House...
...Jesus Christ "had a greater effect on the entire world than all the Rulers, Kings & Emperors, all the conquerors, the generals & admirals, all the scholars, scientists and philosophers who ever lived—put together," Reagan noted...
...How do we explain that?—Unless he really was what he said he was...
...Washington's long struggle to preserve South Vietnam was shamefully over...
...So did Reagan's defeated Doug Bandow is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute...
...Long before Hillary Care, Reagan rigorously opposed efforts to nationalize the medical system...
...But what resonates again and again in Generation Kill is that the Marines are not so different from the men who have preceded them: more cynical, perhaps, more attuned to the impersonal machinations of governments, as Wright notes...
...And Third World governments were gravitating to collectivism...
...Everyone around Reagan knew that he thought seriously about philosophy and read widely...
...But Reagan's ideological advocacy and optimistic leadership left us a better country and world...
...Property rights became another Reagan theme...
...Generation Kill sets a high standard for the growing Iraq literature, but like any worthwhile account it speaks beyond its moment to the larger theme of men in war—any men, any war...
...She discovered a treasure-trove of Reagan manuscripts: columns, radio commentaries, speeches, letters...
...But they still saw him as an old movie actor, ignorant of substance and reliant on cue cards...
...agency force us to buy something for our own protection at considerable cost...
...If any of us would like to install such a device in the family car shouldn't that be our decision to make...
...Among "students the approval rate for business & industry is about as high as it is for pickpockets & childmolesters," he complained...
...Reagan was the antithesis of an amiable dunce, as those of us who had the honor of working for him knew well...
...Many more issues are covered in Reagan's Path to Victory...
...It took much effort, significant organizing, and neighborhood protests, but the owners won...
...1/4 The Gipper's Pen Reagan's Path to Victory: The Shaping of Ronald Reagan's Vision: Selected Writings edited by Kiron K. Skinner, Annelise Anderson, and Martin Anderson (Free Press, 560 pages, $35) Reviewed by Doug Bandow THE DEATH OF RONALD REAGAN last June sparked an explosion of public emotion...
...Reagan railed against government waste and overregulation...
...Another odd note is Wright's title, which seems to promise a book about a group of Americans unlike any other, fighting a war unlike any that preceded it...
...Victims of this discrimination were unknown: "The govt' said the $19 mil...
...Into this world of fearful uncertainty jumped candidate Ronald Reagan...
...Skinner and the Andersons produced five compilations, of which Reagan's Path to Victory: The Shaping ofRonald Reagan's Vision: Selected Writings, is the latest...
...He dispatched both in landslides...
...The left never came to terms with his power to move Americans...
Vol. 38 • March 2005 • No. 2
