Ronald Reagan: The Greatest President Ever

It is one of the most interesting things about the modern conservative movement that they are so brazenly anti-intellectual. First they demand sources; but they know full well that they will then dismiss such a source out of hand. This request for sources is a dishonest debating tactic as the source will then be dismissed as partisan and biased. The life achievements of those sources, whose arguments are often based on rigorous research and close argument that have been reviewed by others who quite often strongly disagree with them, will be dismissed out of hand. After all, are not all these titles and accreditations not merely some vast liberal conspiracy? Isn't this just a plot to accredit "*******" liars and cheats with academic honours that are fraudulent, as all such honours assuredly are? Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck please.

The rigour of academic achievement leaves many, if not nowadays most, conservatives cold: peer review, nuanced arguments, agreements across the political divide (Krugman has been cited as supporting some ideas of monetarist Milton Friedman and as a supporter of conservative black politicians who see the diminution of racism in America), none of these things is worth the candle. The guy's a *******. There is no more to say.

It is a familiar totalitarian form of debate for anyone who has ever debated with a Marxist Leninist - they tell us that our argument has no merit because of our bourgeois prejudice and that we act as paid lackeys of the ruling elite. The actual essence of the argument is put aside. Ad hominem attack is sufficient. The three brain cells in the conservative's head do not need to be activated. Just like a Stalinist denunciation, the person is attacked. Just as in Mao's cultural revolution where the teacher is airplaned. Thuggery requires stupidity and ignorance. Celebrating philitsinism is de rigeur for this argument and this totalitarian denunciation of teachers and knowledge.

It catches up other conservatives too in its poisonous web. The new "educated is a bad thing" Right in America will dismiss other rightists just as easily for their collaboration with academia. Niall Fergusson has been dismissed as a European Liberal because he posits that the USA is imperialist - even though he also argues that this is a very good thing. It seems the dumbkopfs can't get their heads past the first bit and the red mist descends just as the spittle appears at the corners of the mouth. The new lumpen thick-as-a-brick Right just cannot cope beyond the sloganizing and the simplistic Good vs Evil view of the world. Nuance does not compute.

This of course is deeply authoritarian. These conservatives believe that:

1. communists should be slowly executed and that
2. liberals are communists. And
3. Republicans they disagree with are liberals.

So most of us are for the ducking stool. And that if conservatives lose elections, then the USA is not a "democracy" but a "Republic" which, depending on their mood and the opinion polls, is not the same thing at all (relying on that simplistic drivel that a democracy is a tyranny of the majority by definition, which is only their definition, which they justify by twisting a joke by Jefferson). Then the dark mutterings of blood being needed to water the trees of freedom really shows what couner revolutionary Tories we are dealing with.

These guys are clear enemies of freedom and liberty. Just as real communists are. We should be clear about this as liberals. After all it was largely liberals who went to the gulags and the laogai (and still is). It is always liberals who lead the revolt against tyranny, from Tom Paine to my avatar Wael Ghonim. It is liberals that islamofascists hate so much, with our values which embrace gay rights, opportunity for women and our preference for secualr government. We know who the tyrants are because it is always us fighting them: in the USSR, the Czech Republic, the Trades Union movement in Poland, the streets of Cairo etc. We know what tyranny looks like and it looks very much like them.

When in Chile Pinochet's thugs tortured children to reveal the whereabouts of their liberal or socialist parents, these turds supported them. These are the people who made young idealists in Latin America disappear. These people are as guilty for the rape and murder of Jean Donovan, Dorothy Kazel, Maura Clarke and Ita Ford, as if they had done this themselves. Even now they deny, obfuscate and dishonour these Catholic martyrs with their hateful lies and prejudice. And their refusal to embrace the truth that these murders were a direct result of the USA's conscious and deliberate alliances with thugs, murderers and fascists. This refusal continues the desecrate the graves and memories of those brave and heroic victims.

Their continual preference to reject out of hand, with no argument, the detailed arguments of peer-reviewed academics, and their penchant for ignoring and blanking out the atrocities carried out by their own side, just underlines the intrinsic evil that festers on the conservative right today. They are the scum of the Earth. We as liberals should not confuse respect for their civil rights with respect for their moral persons.

 

A few of Paul Krugman's Greatest Hits


Paul Krugman Calls for Space Aliens to Attack Earth Requiring Massive Defense Buildup to Stimulate Economy

Read more: http://newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-s...-earth-requiring-massive-defens#ixzz1muu3R04W


Krugman: 'Those Demanding Spending Cuts Now Are Like Medieval Doctors Who Treated the Sick by Bleeding Them'

Read more: http://newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-s...now-are-medieval-doctors-who-tr#ixzz1muuIpkgF


Krugman: Conservative Views About Debt Ceiling Should Be Censored From News Reports

Read more: http://newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-s...oral-failure-destroying-america#ixzz1muuZEQT3


Paul Krugman is clearly a far left liberal kook

 

And the lies go on and on. Just click the link and read the substance.

Reading the source shows this to be a "for the sake of argument" position in favour of a looser fiscal policy. It is thoroughly intellectually dishonest and a brazen lie to say that "Paul Krugman calls for space aliens to attack the earth". But this is the kindergarten level of the Right nowadays. Lying is what it is all about as this newspaper article did. Taking words and arguments out of context to ridicule those who are employing serious arguments is what conservatives do now. Real debate is really beyond them.

And I am sick of saying 'some conservatives". Because "other conservatives" give these hate peddlers and idea haters a free pass. I read Commentary magazine, and I do find some criticism of conservative hypocrisy in there. But I find none on the forums where the conservative shock troops gather. There's a clear line between integrity in political debate and cheating and lying. Very, very few conservatives do not regularly cross this line. Intellectual integrity on the Right is a very rare commodity. The more lying links they post here, the clearer this becomes.

What Krugman argued was just classic Keynesianism, that paying people to dig and fill in holes (or something equally inane and useless like preparing for a mythical space invasion) would be better than cutting public expenditure. The form of the argument is conceptual (so tough for stupid people, to understand conceptual arguments, but not so tough for ordinary people who can grasp this type of reasoning quite easily). It uses these examples deliberately to isolate the main benefit that the hypothesis proposes - that fiscal stimulus alone, and not the benefits of the spending, is enough reason to employ a stimulus.

This is not a new argument and reflects that Keynesians want to balance the budget over the cycle and that when aggregate demand is down, you spend. Of course you don't dig and fill in holes, or prepare for a space invasion - that is a "for the sake of argument" point. What you do do is invest in infrastructure, or something useful so that you get the benefit of fiscal stimulus and something useful as well.

This is a perfectly respectable argument that any university economics student would be expected to follow. They would also be expected - in any half decent university anyway - to be able to critique such a Keynesian argument with a monetarist or "supply side" economic analysis. Whether they were conservatives or liberals, an academic training would require you to know how to justify both points of view. This is a discipline that is dismissed as worthless by today's Right.

The problem with articulating the arguments of the Austrian school (that's the right wing economists for the illiteratti here) and their critique of Keynesiansism isn't of course that it is liberal academia. Somewhere they know that Hayek is a conservative. They read his name on the team sheet somewhere. Well, most of them did anyway. Similarly they are not lining up to outline Friedman's critique of "naive Keynesianism" or his theory of monetarism either. Why? There is enough intellectual firepower in a conservative's arsenal. Why does he prefer to grunt so much and drag his knuckles? Why do conservatives avoid putting these arguments and prefer to dribble "*******", and "kook"?

The problem is that critiques of Keynesianism are hard. They have mathematics in them. They require intuition. You need to have read Keynes and to have evaluated the value in his theories before you - as Friedman did - compose a nuanced critique of the misapplication of Keynsian theory. And what's more you need to have read Hayek and Friedman as well and...if you hate ideas as much as most of these morons do...your brain starts to hurt just at the thought of it.

To argue as the professors and thinkers of the right argue, requires other conservatives to employ academic rigour and disciplined thinking. Quite simply, it's too hard for them. They are too thick. So "*******" and "kook" it is then, instead of a proper discussion of serious ideas.

As to the fact that Milton Friedman and Krugman agreed substantially that Japan had needed a sharp fiscal stimulus to avoid its lost decade of zero growth, well they just want to blur that one out with "not listening, not listening, naaaargggh!".

Milton Friedman, urging the Japanese to prepare for space invaders. Who would have thought it?

 

Unless you have evidence his analysis as stated earlier, is wrong, then all this is just ad hominem and I'm sorry to say, but just like all the other conservatives/liberals around, that's a logical fallacy that only idiots abide by.

 

Krugman was also an insider. He worked for Reagan. He was there. To dismiss a Nobel Prize winner economist's views on the economic record of tge Administration he worked for, on the basis of groundless ad hominem abuse and lies, is now the default standard of debate on the American Right.

 

On one hand you fail to provide evidence of your false revisionist history, and then claim others are making ad hominem attacks while in the same sentence calling everyone idiots. Are you even reading what you are writing?

 

More of Paul Krugman's Great Hits

Paul Krugman Blames Giffords Shooting on Palin, Limbaugh and Beck

Read more: http://newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-s...hooting-palin-limbaugh-and-beck#ixzz1n0OwLCJF



Krugman: Government Should Solve Unemployment By Hiring People To Repair Roads

By Noel Sheppard | May 30, 2011 | 12:49


Read more: http://newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-s...oyment-hiring-people-repair-roa#ixzz1n0P5XoJW



Paul Krugman: America's Not Broke - We Can Still Borrow Money

Read more: http://newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-s...broke-we-can-still-borrow-money#ixzz1n0PG5Goz



and this is the clown the left looks to for economic advice?

 

Of course I know you find this childishness amusing but this here is a very stupid comment from a supposed fan of Ronald Reagan. It would be nice if you showed us if you are capable or not of actually dealing with arguments rather than just smears and taunts. But it seems that even your smears of Krugman are inept.

This "clown" was someone whom Ronald Reagan turned to for economic advice. Krugman was an economic advisor to President Reagan in 1982/3. Reagan regarded him so much of a clown that he permitted him to write most of his 1983 economic report.

Can you hear that? I think that's the sound of the umpire saying something like "game, set and match".

From Krugman's memoirs:

In August of 1982 I flew home from a conference in Sweden to find a message to call Martin Feldstein. Two weeks later I had arranged for a leave from MIT and was on my way to Washington, to be the chief staffer for international economics at the Council of Economic Advisers.

It was, in a way, strange for me to be part of the Reagan Administration. I was then and still am an unabashed defender of the welfare state, which I regard as the most decent social arrangement yet devised. I am also unable to pretend to respect "policy entrepreneurs", the intellectually dishonest self-proclaimed experts who tell politicians what they want to hear. The Reagan Administration was, of course, full of people who hated the welfare state and had very little interest in the truth. But the summer of 1982 was a moment of near-panic among the Reaganauts, as the recession and the debt crisis seemed to threaten catastrophe. They not only hired Feldstein, they gave him the freedom to bring in a politically incorrect team of whiz-kids (which included Larry Summers and Greg Mankiw) in the hope that he could turn things around. By 1983, with a recovery well under way, the political types were back in charge and Feldstein was ostracized for worrying publically about the budget deficit; but that came later.

Washington was first thrilling, then disillusioning. It is the capital of the world, and for a young person it is wonderful to think that you can really have an effect on decisions of global importance. I can still recite from memory the long list of prohibitions on the front page of each classified document ("Secret/No foreign nationals/No contractors/Proprietary information/Origin controlled"). Some people get addicted to that thrill, and will do anything to stay near the center.

After a little while, however, I began to notice how policy decisions are really made. The fact is that most senior officials have no idea what they are talking about: discussion at high-level meetings is startlingly primitive. (For example, the distinction between nominal and real interest rates tends to be regarded as a complex and useless bit of academic nitpicking). Furthermore, many powerful people prefer to take advice from those who make them feel comfortable rather than from those who will force them to think hard. That is, those who really manage to influence policy are usually the best courtiers, not the best analysts. I like to think that I am a good analyst, but I am certainly a very bad courtier. And so I was not tempted to stay on in Washington.

I did, however, discover a new talent: that of writing serious economics in seemingly plain English. I got to practice that talent in writing classified memos, and proved good enough at it that I ended up writing most of the 1983 Economic Report of the President.

http://www.princeton.edu/~pkrugman/incidents.html

 

I say President Obama … since he’s adopted most of the Regan policies.

Those policies are only bad because President Obama adopted them.

 

Wow, first we were told Obama was like FDR

then he was like Abe Lincoln

then he was like Teddy Roosevelt

now he is like Reagan

Like the lifts core principals and values, your spin is also subject to change without notices given Obama's current poll numbers and the dire state of the US economy

 

Jefferson only 11 votes, and no Teddy Roosevelt in the poll?

Oh well, lets pay homage to the guy that almost obliterated the world with a stupid joke:

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zv13ZnkpWos"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zv13ZnkpWos[/ame]

 

Despite all the hate the left still has for Pres Reagan, they canot change history - but they continue to try to re-write it

The final score

Ronald Reagan 525 Electoral votes

Walter Mondale - 13 Electorial votes

 

The final score is that you were hammered in the debate. An overwhelmingly conservative site like PF voted for everyone else. Look at the conservatives who didn't support Reagan in thus poll - one set up to pay tribute only to the Gipper! Your contributions were inept and infantile. Your research lamentably poor - amounting to posting an electoral map over and over again and trashing one if Reagans own advisors. You have lost. The stadium is empty. Everyone's gone home!

 

That's because Reagan wasn't the best President we have had. He is the best in the modern era, and would easily make it in the top 10 of all time.

 

His supporters couldn't even set the poll up along these lines. And they got utterly hammered in the debate. Destroyed. Humiliated.

 

He is tied for third. Not bad when compared to the caliber of most of the Presidents listed.

 

Unmatched once again, one of the worst Presidents in US History, though touted as one of the greatest Democrat Presidents, FDR embarked on what may have been one of the greatest injustices and violations of American Civil Rights and Liberites in American history, the Internment Camps of WWII.
http://www.politicalforum.com/political-opinions-beliefs/222393-democratic-partys-record-race.html

What is amazing to me is that the liberals have selected FDR as their modern day champion to vote for against Reagan. All the other double digit vote getters so far are founding fathers. So the guy who was a racist and sent hundreds of thousands of Americans of Japanese ancestry into concentration camps where they lost everything they owned, and appointed racists to the USSC is the guy they are voting for?

Those of you who voted for FDR should be ashamed of yourselves. Does this mean that you endorse his views on race and support his decisions that he made above? Or is it just okay to overlook one of the most racist presidents flaws because he was a war president?

 

Pretty crap for a thread that carries his name in the OP. It should have been obvious to anyone reading that list that someone like Washington was a far greater president. This is an overwhelmingly conservative forum. And Reagan was overwhelmingly rejected with the vast majority voting for other candidates. That's because, even to conservatives, Reagan is a long long way from being the greatest ever US President.

The OP is a joke. Even on the Right!

 

I agree. FDR is over-rated.

 

Well, it is hard to pick the best when there are several that come close. Our Founders seem a bit more pure than modern day Presidents.

 

Time forgives a lot of sins, including the fact that many of the founders were much more racist than FDR - see the original Constitution. Even so, they were revolutionaries who changed the world against all the odds. It's obvious to anyone that their achievements and bravery were far greater than any modern President.

 

Not only is FDR over-rated, look at JFK, the Hero of the Left. Yet another failed president who never once submitted civil rights legislation in spite of having a democrat controlled house and senate, and right smack dab in the middle of the Civil Rights movement!!! He failed to get even one vote in this poll! I guess Camelot has lost it's luster.

PS. Sorry , still on ignore. If you want to appologize, I will consider taking you off ignore.

 

LOL. Do you ever listen to yourself? You are arguing that someone who gets zero votes is overrated!

As to ignoring me, I wish you would.

Tip: ignoring me does not mean taunting me with juvenile cartoons. That just tells me how much you realize you got hammered.

Tip 2: ignoring me is not posting messages asking me to apologize and then checking the forum to see if I have done.

It's amusing to keep trashing your drivel but it really is fine by me if you ignore me, and fine by me if you don't. You decide PN.

 

I don't know how many times I have to tell you that you are on ignore. That means I cannot read your posts. I refuse to respond to you until you submit to me a formal appology. You can notify me that this has been accomplished through a third party. I refer you to the following post:

Until I get an appology from you, you might as well not respond to my posts, as I will not be sucked into responding to someone who does not deserve my acknowledgement by reasons given above.

I am guessing that perhaps you are defending or appologizing for FDR or JFK though, which is typical of liberals to defend racism while claiming republicans are racists.

 

I mean seriously, I was man enough to appologize to the guy. Why are some people so full of pride that they cannot appologize on an anonomous internet blog? He is just wrong on this one and is embarrassing himself everytime he responds to my posts. There is nothing shameful in appologizing. Everyone could show some courage and do the right thing, and that goes for all of us. I am trying to set an example here by doing the right thing. Like I said earlier, if you cannot show respect to people, then it is just best that we ignore one another. Who agrees with me?