Reagan vs. Trump - interesting take

Thus, on one hand, it is reasonable for serious Republican conservatives to harbor concern about aspects of the President’s personal demeanor. Yet he has proven himself to be a truly great President, one of our country’s ten best in more than two centuries. His policies are consistently better and more truly conservative than those of Ronald Reagan, the Republican Gold Standard, whether on border issues, the economy, staring down the enemy in the financial and trade sector, seeing the flaws of weakly negotiated free trade agreements, avoiding entangling Americans in areas overseas where we should not be (like 241 Marines blown up by Arab Muslim terrorists in Southern Lebanon), even on issues like social conservatism at home.

Reagan condemned Israel’s bombing and eradication of Saddam Hussein’s nuclear reactor in Iraq; by contrast, Trump has recognized the Golan Heights as part of Israel, Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, and has moved the American embassy there, something that Reagan promised to do but did not.

Reagan extended amnesty to Illegals, setting in motion the border disaster that has unfolded over the next two generations and that has politically destroyed California and New Mexico, while politically imperiling Colorado, Nevada, Arizona, and Texas.

Reagan advanced the Free Trade Agreements that drove so much manufacturing out of America and almost ended our steel and aluminum industries that are essential to our national security.

Reagan used the most important opportunity a President gets — the chance to fill Supreme Court openings — to name Sandra O’Connor and thereafter to name Anthony Kennedy. Yes, Antonin Scalia was a great pick, but one out of three does not compare to Trump’s selections of Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh.

Reagan, then, was Mount Rushmore material, but Donald Trump’s still-emerging legacy is even greater.

Read the whole thing.

We Over-Honor Our Presidents

I feel the same way as I told my wife.

Today the stock market will be closed, the federal government shut down, the mail will not be delivered and classes will be suspended. Why? George H.W. Bush died.

Irrespective of whether he was a great man or a poor one, George H. W. Bush was a public employee. He was not a king. He was not a pope. He did not found or save or design the republic. To shut down our civil society for a day in order to mark his peaceful passing is to invert the appropriate relationship between the citizen and the state, and to take yet another step toward the fetishization of an executive branch whose role is supposed to be more bureaucratic than spiritual, but that has come of late to resemble Caesar more than to resemble Coolidge.

In life they derided him and called him an elitist, clueless about real people and a Nazi (a title they give all Republicans).  Now that he's dead his political enemies on the Left call him a good guy. 

But he was a one term president and was elected to be Ronald Reagan's third term.  He had the good fortune to preside over the global successes of the Sainted Reagan. 

He did OK and lived a good, long life. 

RIP.

Remember when the Left ridiculed Reagan for wanting to have a missile to shoot down an ICBM?

They called it "Star Wars" and ridiculed Reagan for starting this program.  Wasn't one of the biggest doubters the guy who killed Mary Jo Kopechne?    Why yes! That was Ted Kennedy.  Who also wanted the assistance of the USSR to obstruct Reagan. 

Israel deploys 'Star Wars' missile killer system

 

Israel's upgraded ballistic missile shield became operational on Wednesday, in a "Star Wars"-like extension of its capabilities to outer space where incoming missiles can be safely destroyed.

The Defence Ministry said the U.S.-funded Arrow 3 system, jointly developed by state-owned Israel Aerospace Industries and U.S. firm Boeing Co. , was handed over the Israeli Air Force.

The Arrow 3, together with the Arrow 2, which has been operational since 2000, would "significantly reduce the possibilities of ballistic missiles" hitting Israel, the ministry said in a statement.

The Arrow 2 is designed to intercept projectiles high and low within the atmosphere. Arrow 3 missiles will fly into space, where their warheads detach to become "kamikaze" satellites that track and slam into their targets.

Remember when Democrats - in and out of the press - ridiculed  Reagan for proposing such a system?

When you see and hear them attacking Trump, remember this.  They were dead wrong then and they are dead wrong now.

Reagan and fate

However, as Ronald Reagan famously said, “I do not believe in a fate that will fall on us no matter what we do. I do believe in a fate that will fall on us if we do nothing.” 

1980 Presidential Acceptance Speech Ronald Reagan accepted his party’s presidential nomination at the 1980 Republican National Convention in Detroit, Michigan

 Ace of Spades notes that Reagan gave a "dark" speech when he was nominated in 1980.

Last night I observed of the #SmartSet's (and CNN's) finding that the speech was "too dark:" "I congratulate those of you living in comfortable circumstances that many Americans do not."

Various geniuses -- geniuses because they had the acumen to open a Twitter account -- pronounced that a good convention speech should have "uplift" in it. Many -- including the dummies at CNN -- contrasted Trump's speech unfavorably with Reagan's "Morning in America" theme.

Here's the problem with that: It's fucking stupid. "Morning in America" was Reagan's 1984 election theme. That was the happy, uplifting campaign, because the country was doing well and Reagan already had the job as presidency.

OF course he's going to paint an uplifting picture! If he painted a "dark" picture, he'd be criticizing himself.

But what was his 1980 theme, when he was the insurgent, trying to kick Jimmy Carter out of office?

Well: It was a searing indictment of America under Carter. It was, in fact, dark.

Go HERE for speech.

EVERY REPUBLICAN PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE IS HITLER

 

In the Iran-Contra trial, Oliver North was accused of “following Adolf Hitler’s official strategy”. What did one have to do with the other? Nothing. But this sort of lazy accusation had become typical and routine. William Shirer, who had also compared Nixon’s bombing of Hanoi to the Holocaust and called Nixon an “apt pupil” of Hitler (Pentagon spokesman Jerry Friedheim was Goebbels), compared Reagan to Hitler for intervening in Grenada. Then Shirer compared Bush I to Hitler for trying to outlaw flag burning.

By the Reagan years, the left had achieved a banality of Hitler analogies. Everything Reagan did was just like Hitler. All of Reagan’s associates were just like Hitler. It was Hitlers all the way down.

President George W. Bush inherited this banality of Hitlers. To left-wing Truthers, open and covert, 9/11 was the Reichstag fire, the Patriot Act was the beginning of a national dictatorship and Bush was a dictator. As Kurt Vonnegut quipped, “The only difference between Bush and Hitler is that Hitler was elected.” Hitler wasn’t elected, Bush was, but you can’t expect a left-wing loudmouth to know history.

Congressman Charles Rangel compared the Iraq War to the Holocaust. “This is just as bad as the 6 million Jews being killed." (Rangel had also claimed that the Contract with America was worse than Hitler.) Senator Durbin compared Gitmo to Nazi concentration camps. Senator John Glenn compared Republican arguments to Nazi propaganda. “It’s the old Hitler business… if you hear something repeated, repeated, you start to believe it.” Like repeatedly accusing Republicans of Nazism.

What do we know for sure?

And so the only thing we can truly be certain of is that any Republican nominee will be Hitler. It doesn’t matter what he believes. It doesn’t matter if Democrats considered him a moderate 5 minutes ago. Accusations of Nazism remain the default argument for a Democratic Party turned far to the left.

Republicans aren’t progressive. Therefore they’re Hitler. It’s really that simple.

Optimists thought that the Democrats had reached “Peak Hitler” under Bush. But for the left there is no Peak Hitler. The same tired line of attack has been trotted out for fifty years. It will go on limping around the liberal corral for another fifty years or a hundred years. The Big Lie will continue being repeated to indoctrinate each new politically active progressive with the conviction that anyone to the right is Hitler and that every election is a brand new battle to stop Hitler 2.0 from taking over America.

Goldwater was Hitler. Nixon was Hitler. Reagan was Hitler. Bush was Hitler. None of the latter three men declared the Fourth Reich, made themselves dictators for life and ran concentration camps. But the Big Lie retroactively rewrites the past by claiming that last decade’s Hitler was a decent moderate while the latest Republican Hitler is a terrifying monster. Goldwater, Nixon and Reagan were all resurrected as moderate contrasts to each other and then to Bush. The process of recreating Bush as a moderate has already begun. And so each Republican makes the electoral journey from Hitler to a political moderate whom a latter generation of liberals mourns while complaining that this latest Republican really is Hitler.

Read the whole thing.

How President Reagan dealt with Berkeley protesters in 1969

How to Win the White House and Save the World: Don't Talk of Reagan. Talk Like Reagan.

I've been reading some of Reagan's old speeches to confirm something to myself. At the Trump-less debate, Rand Paul finished his closing statement by saying something like, "And I'm the only Republican who'll balance the budget."

This provoked a reaction from me, because I thought -- would Reagan have just made the promise that he would balance the budget? In a closing statement, in which he could chose his own words as he liked?

Looking back at Reagan's speeches, I don't see him just promising some government action. I see him promising a government action and then immediately telling you how this will directly and tangibly benefit you.

He didn't leave you to wonder how cutting taxes might help you. He would say something elegant and magical like, "Just as free speech encourages good journalism, so do low tax rates and low regularity burdens on the farmer or businessman produce prosperity."

By the way, that's another thing Trump gets right, though he says it crudely. When did Republicans stop talking about prosperity, like it's the dirty thing the Democrats say it is? Trump gets a lot wrong -- a lot -- but he does keep telling people, "We're gonna get rich."

I hear a lot of people talking about "getting the economy back on track." What the hell does that mean? The economy is an abstraction. Money in your pocket, that's tangible. That's real. And "prosperity" is an elegant, wonderful word to describe having money and getting rich.

So I have to say, for those not understanding what other people hear in Trump's (admittedly) poorly thought out and boastful words, those are two key things people are hearing: I'm on your side, I understand your pain.

And: I'll make you rich.

Why aren't other people talking about this more?

No one should talk about reducing regulatory burdens ever again without then completing the thought and saying, "Allowing our businessmen to make things, and our farmer to grow things, without spending so much time keeping the federal government fat and happy with make-work, makes them richer, makes more products on the shelves at lower prices, and makes you richer, too."

Reagan was a teacher. He didn't just talk about policy preferences or ideology. In simple (and yet gorgeously elegant) language, he explained how each of his policies would do one of the following:

* This will make you freer.

* This will make you safer.

* This will make you richer.

* This will make you happier.

* This will make a better world for your children.

This is critically important.  Don't tell people your policy proposal, tell them how your policy proposal will benefit them.

Mark Steyn Disses National Review

Since the NR issue opposing Donald Trump came out, there has been a sharpening of the lines within the Republican party.  Steyn chooses his sides and NR doesn't come out well.

~National Review's initial reaction to Donald Trump's entry into the presidential race appeared a few hours after he launched his campaign under the headline "Witless Ape Rides Escalator". Their condescension has got a little subtler since then, and it's now gone long-form with an entire issue dedicated to the singular proposition: "Against Trump".

I've received a ton of emails today asking me what I make of the National Review hit. I used to contribute to NR, and I generally make it a rule not to comment on publications for which I once wrote. Just move on with your life, that's my advice. In this case, we parted on not terribly pleasant terms, and we remain co-defendants on the unending Mann vs Steyn et al law suit, which means I have to get on well enough with Rich Lowry so that he doesn't want to punch my lights out when we're sitting in the dock together - or, if things go really badly, sharing a cell.

Nevertheless, notwithstanding some contributors I admire, the whole feels like a rather obvious trolling exercise. As I explained yesterday, I don't think Trump supporters care that he's not a fully paid-up member in good standing of "the conservative movement" - in part because, as they see it, the conservative movement barely moves anything. If you want the gist of NR's argument, here it is:

I think we can say that this is a Republican campaign that would have appalled Buckley, Goldwater, and Reagan...

A real conservative walks with us. Ronald Reagan read National Review and Human Events for intellectual sustenance...

My old boss, Ronald Reagan, once said...

Ronald Reagan was famous for...

When Reagan first ran for governor of California...

Reagan showed respect for...

Reagan kept the Eleventh Commandment...

Far cry from Ronald Reagan's "I am paying for this microphone" line...

Trump is Dan Quayle, and everyone and his auntie are Lloyd Bentsen: "I knew Ronald Reagan, I worked for Ronald Reagan, I filled in Ronald Reagan's subscription-renewal form for National Review. And you, sir, are no Ronald Reagan."

You have to be over 50 to have voted for Reagan, and a supposed "movement" can't dine out on one guy forever, can it? What else you got?

Well, there are two references to Bush, both of them following the words "Reagan and". But no mention of Dole, one psephological citation of Romney, and one passing sneer at McCain as a "cynical charlatan" - and that's it for the last three decades of presidential candidates approved by National Review, at least to the extent that they never ran entire issues trashing them.

Will the more or less official disdain of "the conservative movement" make any difference to Trump's supporters? Matt Welch in Reason:

Many or even most of the people who make a living working in politics and political commentary—even those who think of themselves as outsiders, such as nonpartisan libertarians—inevitably begin to view their field as one dedicated primarily to ideas, ideology, philosophy, policy, and so forth, and NOT to the emotional, ideologically unmoored cultural passions of a given (and perhaps fleeting) moment.

I'd put that contrast slightly differently. The movement conservatives at National Review make a pretty nice living out of "ideas, ideology, philosophy, policy, and so forth". The voters can't afford that luxury: They live in a world where, in large part due to the incompetence of the national Republican Party post-Reagan, Democrat ideas are in the ascendant. And they feel that this is maybe the last chance to change that.

Go back to that line "When Reagan first ran for governor of California..." Gosh, those were the days, weren't they? But Reagan couldn't get elected Governor of California now, could he? Because the Golden State has been demographically transformed. From my book The [Un]documented Mark Steyn:

According to the Census, in 1970 the 'Non-Hispanic White' population of California was 78 per cent. By the 2010 Census, it was 40 per cent. Over the same period, the 10-per cent Hispanic population quadrupled and caught up with whites.

That doesn't sound terribly 'natural', does it? If one were informed that, say, the population of Nigeria had gone from 80 per cent black in 1970 to 40 per cent black today, one would suspect something rather odd and profoundly unnatural had been going on.

The past is another country, and the Chamber of Commerce Republicans gave it away. Reagan's California no longer exists. And, if America as a whole takes on the demographics of California, then "the conservative movement" will no longer exist. That's why, for many voters, re-asserting America's borders is the first, necessary condition for anything else - and it took Trump to put that on the table.

Remember this? The Republican Establishment hated Reagan before he became President.

Thanks to Matthew Ung, we need to remind ourselves how desperately the Republican establishment wanted Ronald Reagan to just go away in the 1970s.  keep this in mind as the Republican establishment works to marginalize the Tea party and conservatives like Ted Cruz today.

Former Republican Senator Chuck Percy of Illinois in 1975 to the New York Times: “A Reagan nomination and the crushing defeat likely to follow could signal the beginning of the end of our party as an effective force in American life.”

Translation: (Like Cruz) Reagan is stopping us from addressing the topics we say we totally want to address, but never did before he came on the scene. Because he interrupted us. Now I’ve gone and lost my train of thought.

Representative John Rhodes, Republican of Arizona, who became leader of the Republicans in the House, in 1975 said, “As soon as Reagan gets away from his clichés and his campaign slogans, he’s in trouble.”

Translation: He’s an amateur. He’s not a scholar even though he’s read more books than us, and he’s uneducated even though he’s studied more than us. He’s not qualified to bring up any case to the American people, because we haven’t been able to do it already. Reminds me of all the people accusing Ted Cruz of utter ignorance about the Supreme Court’s Heller decision on gun control. Frothy-mouthed opponents demand he read the Heller decision, totally ignorant of the fact that HE WAS THE ATTORNEY WHO ARGUED HELLER AND WON. Sorry for raising my voice, I just hate it when we don’t do our homework before attacking each other. That would have made an awesome political commercial on the idiocy of his opponents, but I’m sure the GOP decided to make a commercial about how well they will run liberal programs when they win.

Republican Vice President Nelson Rockefeller warned Republicans governors in 1975: “No major American party can long endure by directing its appeal to a narrow minority. It will not serve the nation to have our major parties polarized at ideological extremes.”

Translation: Reagan can’t win, because he’s going to run in a primary. Running against an incumbent is unpatriotic, and if there are differences with the incumbent, it is the challenger who is to blame for the differences. Our party can’t handle differences, so our country clearly cannot either.

Republican Representative Pete McCloskey of California in 1976: “A Reagan win would be a disaster for the GOP.”

Republican Representative James Cleveland of New Hampshire predicted another Goldwater debacle if Reagan is the GOP nominee.

Translation: Reagan is not a good Republican, and yet he runs under the Republican Party. I’m jealous of such audacity, so I declare him a future disaster. Because change is hard.

In 1976, Reagan was publicly told by two Republican governors to get out of the race against Ford: Virginia Governor Mills Godwin and North Carolina Governor James Holshouser. On the eve of the North Carolina primary, the Ford White House prepared a telegram signed by a DOZEN Republican governors, telling Reagan to get out of the race. The dastardly Reagan ended up winning North Carolina, the little rascal. Later, Ford lost to Carter, and then the establishment Republicans blamed Reagan.

Translation: Reagan, you are weak, so you should get out. Also Reagan, you are strong, so you should get out. Just get out. If you stay in, we will blame you for our loses.

Remind anyone of the Tea Party? The Tea Party is both trodden underfoot and utterly defeated, but also the taskmaster and cutthroat ruler of the Republican Party, holding hostage the other Republicans. PICK ONE! Cruz, Reagan, the Tea Party… are they pathetic losers, or are they masterfully strong winners?

George Will called Ronald Reagan and his supporters "kamikaze conservatives."

George Will is assumed to be a Conservative columnist.  In panel discussions on TV, he's always assumed to be on the Right.  George Will is firmly planted in the Washington establishment.  And he likes it that way.  He's a good Republican, whatever that may mean at any time.  

But if there is anyone who threatens to upset the go-along-to-get-along apple-cart you can be sure that George Will will be there defending the status quo.  

In the Washington Post (Nov. 12, 1974) he wrote: “But Reagan is 63, and looks it. His hair is still remarkably free of gray, but around the mouth and neck he looks like an old man. He’s never demonstrated substantial national appeal. His hardcore support today consists primarily of the kamikaze conservatives who thought the 1964 Goldwater campaign was jolly fun. And there’s a reason to doubt that Reagan is well suited to appeal to the electorate that just produced a democratic landslide. If a Reagan third party would just lead the “Nixon was lynched” crowd away from the Republican party, and into outer darkness where there is a wailing and gnashing of teeth, it might be at worst a mixed course for the Republican party. It would cost the party some support, but it would make the party seem cleansed.”

This man - George Will - despite his mean-spirited and very personal attack on Ronald Reagan is still considered by many on the Right to be on their side.  They could not be more wrong.   He is the Establishment's hatchet man.    He is a very comfortable member of the Ruling Class and he likes it that way. 

It didn’t take long for the Smart Diplomacy crowd to throw away Ronald Reagan’s victory in the Cold War.

All anyone can hope for now is that they don’t go all the way back and throw away FDR’s victory in World War 2.

A repeat of Jimmy Carter's failures would now be a major victory for Team Obama.

The pace of catastrophe has been so rapid that rather than taking decades, history is returning a verdict on the Obama administration in just months. Things aren’t working out as planned. As Obama’s biographer pithily put it “the world seems to disappoint him”. All that is left to the former van drivers and pitchmen turned national security wonks now is denial. “The Obama administration and House Democrats said Monday they were undecided about whether to take part in or boycott an election-year investigation by Republicans into the Benghazi attack that killed four Americans.”

...

But the Hope and Change brigade put altogether too much store in spin and PR to overcome hard reality — and reality won.

The fact that he famously chicken-hearted risk-adverse Speaker has actually appointed a special committee should tell you that the Beltway boys know a lot more than has so far been revealed and that Benghazi is a bigger effing deal, and that the MSM has not been able to bury this pile of manure.

The Eighties Called: Do We Want Their Foreign Policy Back?

What did Reagan do?

Putin is reviving the Brezhnev Doctrine, in which the Soviet Union declared that it could invade any country that tried to escape its domination. The Brezhnev Doctrine was summed up as “once you go Communist, you never go back.” Putin’s version is a bit cruder. The Putin Doctrine is: once you become a kleptocratic dictatorship subservient to Moscow, you never go back.

So what do we do? How can we roll back Soviet—er, Russian—aggression?

The 1980s are calling. They want to know if we want their foreign policy back.

Why should we look to the 1980s? Because that was the decade when we broke the Brezhnev Doctrine. By the end of the 80s, as Eastern European countries began to throw off the Communist yoke, the Brezhnev Doctrine yielded to the Sinatra Doctrine: Russia would let the countries of Eastern Europe do it their way.

What lessons can we learn for a new age of Russian imperialism?

First, when the aggression comes, it’s too late. President Reagan was mortified, when the Soviets demanded a crackdown on the Solidarity movement in 1981, that there was so little America could do about it, given the decline of our military power in the backlash against the Vietnam War. Barack Obama finds himself in in the same situation, given the decline of American military power that he has presided over in the backlash against the Iraq War.

But Reagan found plenty to do in Poland without using our military power. We imposed sanctions against the Polish regime and the Soviet Union, and throughout the 80s we gave Solidarity everything from moral support, to money, equipment, and training.

What's Obama doing? Cutting the defense budget and the army to pre-World War 2 levels.

Robert Tracinski notes that Reagan took a number of steps, none of them having to do with community organizing.

Please note, as a lesson to anti-interventionists on both the left and the right, that all of these actions were indirect and comparatively small in scale. This is the real truth of “peace through strength”: the stronger and more vigorous our policy, the less we actually have to do.

In fact, the biggest direct military intervention of the Reagan era was a US invasion of the tiny island of Grenada. This action was small but important, putting a quick end to Cuba’s attempt to militarize the Caribbean.

If we don't act fast, the 1970s will be calling.

Ronald Reagan's Farewell Address

When the economy is struggling, people are jobless, government programs are failing, war clouds are rising on foreign shores and the American government is widely despised and feared,  it is good to remember how we got out of the problems that Reagan's predecessor left behind.  

Ronald Reagan reminds us how he came to be so successful.




What's this address particularly prescient is that Reagan warned us against losing the culture.  Without a culture that believes in the goodness of the country, the country is lost.

Paul and the CPAC Straw Poll

The CPAC straw poll is a poor prognosticator of who will win the Presidency. In fact it’s even a poor prognosticator of who will become the Republican candidate. Since 1976 it has only chosen two Presidents (Reagan and Bush) and three candidates (Reagan, Bush and Romney).

Per Wikipedia:

Year Straw Poll Winner

1976 Ronald Reagan

1980 Ronald Reagan

1984 Ronald Reagan

1986 Jack Kemp

1987 Jack Kemp

1993 Jack Kemp

1995 Phil Gramm

1998 Steve Forbes

1999 Gary Bauer

2000 George W. Bush

2005 Rudy Giuliani

2006 George Allen

2007 Mitt Romney

2008 Mitt Romney

2009 Mitt Romney

2010 Ron Paul

2011 Ron Paul

2012 Mitt Romney

2013 Rand Paul

2014 Rand Paul

Are straw polls meaningless? Well, yes and no. Straw polls are small samples and can be rigged by loading the sample with your followers. Ron and Rand Paul, father and son, are known for this. It also may explain Romney winning the straw poll four times, standing accused of running an “intensive ground operation at CPAC, flooding the convention with college-aged campaign workers — paying many of their registration fees and even busing some of them in and paying for their hotel rooms, according to a report in The New York Times.”

But the convention itself is an opportunity for the people who want to run to show their stuff, to make their arguments and demonstrate their style. It is also an opportunity to activate the base, to recruit volunteers and to gain publicity.

It is a serious mistake on the part of Republicans, whoever the candidate is, to appeal to the base to get the nomination and then to veer sharply to the Left in a vain attempt to try to capture the middle. The “middle” are often no more than apathetic Democrats. Reagan never deviated from his Conservative message and won two overwhelming electoral victories. Yet Republican political “professionals” always, always try to pull their candidates away from their base, to blur their message, and to pander to a media that lives to eviscerate them.

Were I to run for public office, I would ignore my Democrat opponent and run against the media. The media are more hated than lawyers or used car salesmen. You can get better applause lines by exposing the lies, the bias and the arrogance of the media. Of course the media will be promoting your opponent.  So the beauty of this strategy is that you never have to denigrate your opponent or call into question those who may be inclined to vote for him. Instead, you’ll get people agreeing with you and deciding to vote for you because you think like they do. And the beauty of this strategy is that it will not only win elections but leave the corpse of the media on the election room floor.

David Stockman: the Next Ron Paul

 

David Stockman has a lot of credibility with many people on the Right, gained primarily as a member of the Reagan administration, from which he was fired and which he proceeded to savage.

He has a new book out which says we are doomed. that is, we are doomed unless we adopt his prescriptions. These include:

Put the dollar back on the gold standard. Move to a form of “narrow banking.” Amend the Constitution to provide for single six-year terms for all members of Congress and the president; outlaw most private political spending; forbid former holders of federal office from lobbying; and balance the federal budget on a two- year cycle.

Oh, and no more macroeconomic management. Abolish subsidies. Abolish Medicare and Medicaid. Abolish the income tax, replacing it with a tax on spending. Eliminate “much of the federal government.” Slash the defense budget and stop policing the world. Impose -- get this -- a one-time wealth tax of 30 percent to pay down the national debt once and for all.

OK. How many people think that his is either good policy or politically possible? Please raise your hands. And for those who would like to return to the gold standard, please read a little history and don't skip  the part about financial crises and panics when the whole world was on the gold standard.

It really doesn’t do this view justice to call it utopian. It’s so flamboyantly impossible, it’s unhinged. Like Paul, Stockman is self-sufficient in his pessimism. Yes, he smiles, we’re doomed - - and if you should ever doubt it, here’s what it would take to save us.

This is the sort of things that happen when there's a revolution. No, I mean a real revolution with guns and firing squads and the violent take-over of Congress, the White House and shuttering the Supreme Court.

The scope of the critique, while crazy, is undeniably impressive. It has a kind of logical integrity. Everything is worked out and all the connections explained. Stockman has been reading his economic history and his Austrian economics. Crucially, a lot of what he says really does make sense. In understanding the crash, for instance, the Austrian school’s emphasis on the role of the credit cycle looks right. Most of Stockman’s observations about Washington’s self-replicating morbidity are accurate.

Frustration arises mainly from the way this mode of analysis resists reform at the margin -- the only kind of reform that can actually happen. This relieves Stockman, just as it relieves Paul, of the need to engage in government as we know it. Instead, they can contentedly contemplate our destruction from a great height....

I find the moralizing off-putting, too. Personally, I don’t feel I deserve a conflagration to cleanse me of all the over- borrowing you have done. The punitive dimension found in many all-encompassing social theories is much to the fore in Stockman’s worldview. At this point, a lesser reviewer would refer to the author’s time at Harvard’s divinity school -- another stage in his intellectual evolution. It’s tempting, but I’m honor-bound to mention that he says he was just hiding from the draft.

 

I haven't read Stockman's book because I'm not paid to review it and I don't read books about theories that are impossible to implement unless someone gets killed and we end America's experiment in freedom.  But I have heard enough about it to put it in the same category with articles, videos newsletters and other books that tell you how to survive either the economic or the zombie apocalypse.  They are out there because panic sells, and sells big.  It's possible, but at my age I suspect that I'll just have to make the best of it.

Spinning the ‘Pile of Manure’ Economy

Jonah Goldberg recalls Ronald Reagan's famous joke ...

It was arguably Ronald Reagan’s favorite joke. In one version, two kids — one an optimist, the other a pessimist — rush downstairs on Christmas morning. The pessimistic kid gets a new bike and weeps that he’ll probably break it soon. The optimistic kid is presented with an enormous pile of manure and squeals with delight: “There’s got to be a pony in here somewhere!”

Here's Obama's version ...

Barack Obama, who always wanted to be a liberal version of Ronald Reagan, has his own version of the joke. It’s not particularly funny, alas. In Obama’s telling, the kid runs downstairs, sees a huge pile of manure and yells, “Yay! Manure! Who needs a pony!”

Obama, having reduced the economy to a pile of manure, a crowing about how great the manure is. Read the whole thing.

Ronald Reagan on Christianity

I suspect that we will not see as good or great a man as Ronald Reason in my lifetime.

Glenn Reynolds remembers how some people cheered when Reagan was shot.

Instapundit

I was at the time a doctoral student at Rutgers Medical School, and my mother called me at the lab to tell me that Reagan had been shot. Knowing that there was a TV in the medical students' lounge, I walked over to the other building to watch. A group of black medical students were also watching, and cheered and clapped at early (and thankfully erroneous) reports that Reagan was not expected to survive.

But the media tell us that the hatred is only on the Right.