true enough,thats why i tell them to read the book TEARING DOWN THE MYTH and get back to me on reagan being a great president.they dont want to take the challenge because they are in denial though.so same with me,if they want to live in denial and ignore facts,no skin off my nose,thats their problem if they cant handle the truth.its their loss.
(1) Anyone who chooses such puerile (and mean-spirited) corruptions of others' names as "Raygun" and "Shrub daddy" should really not expect to be taken seriously. (2) Your laundry list of policy disagreements with the Reagan administration is hardly tantamount to proof that the man was "the most corrupt president ever." (3) your obvious contempt for the American people (or, as you have phrased it, the "american sheople") stands in stark contrast to your (apparent) high regard for your own intelligence. (4) It does seem like a minor point; but it is a bit of an irritant: The pronoun, "your," should not be confused with the contraction, "you're."
You're correct. Those polls that you cite are public opinion polls, and the public tends to rate Reagan very high. I think that is because Reagan is one of the most recent presidents who seems to hold a reputation as being a good president and also because the public isn't all that educated about some of our best presidents that we had long ago. Just look at the Gallup poll, Reagan is 1, Clinton is 3, Obama is 7, and George W Bush is 10. I was not about to include all of those presidents in my poll. That is why I chose to base my polls off of scholar surveys, simply because they tend to have people who are educated about all the presidents, and not just the most recent and most popular historically (like Lincoln). You're also correct in saying Reagan is ranked high in recent scholar surveys. History has been kind to him. He is in the top ten in most of the recent surveys; however, since I couldn't pick just one survey, for fear of bias, I decided to use the aggregate of all the surveys, in which Reagan is 17. I remain to this day as the only person who picked JAMES K POLK!!! I picked him because I like his hair. Also, although he was a sort of wimpy looking guy, he had big plans for expanding this country, and he did it. His war on Mexico may have been, well, a little questionable, but he gives hope to short, frail people like me!
great rebutalls to the facts there .hee hee.another american brainwashed by our corrupt government institutions and the likes of Rush Limbaugh in denial I see.hee hee.funny how the truth hurts. your funny."you talk about irrelevent stuff like you're.hee hee.way to evade the facts" because a lot of that was taken from posts of MANY other posters and their words not mine from another thread.I just did not feel like bringing that thread back to the top again since we have this one. oh and you might bone up on YOUR-hee hee,reading skills as well since i proved he was the most corrupt president "AT THAT TIME" were my words.every president we have had since JFK,our last GREAT president we had,has been more evil and corrupt than the previous one with the exception of Carter who like Kennedy,also tried to get rid of the CIA as well which is why he only served as a one term president also since he also like JFK,tried to do the right thing unlike that bastard Reagan who made former CIA director Bush vice president. yep great president Reagan was making someone like that vice president. that evil organization the CIA was very happy with Ronny for playing their game and making one of their own a VP.they were doing cartwheels over that since they knew they could go back to their corrupt and evil ways of starting secret covert wars with other countries again.
amazing how the american sheople have fallen for the lies and propaganda of the government and ignore how reagan betrayed americans.whats worse is they actually consider him one of the top 5 best presidents ever instead of the corrupt bastard he was. funny that our corrupt government considers him one of the best presidents ever and this guy in this link the worst ever. http://www.tomatobubble.com/warren_harding.html
Translation: You decided to lump in the older surveys with the "most..recent" ones, in order to come away with an "aggregate" that would place Reagan outside of the top 10. That is a bit like one's including surveys from 1910 forward, as concerning the matter of what was the finest automobile ever manufactured, and coming away with the conclusion that it was the Model T Ford...
^ The aggregate I used for this poll came straight from Wikipedia. In order to lump only the recent surveys together, I would have had to calculate the aggregate myself, which would have taken up more time than I care to waste. I did not conveniently choose the top ten to exclude Reagan.I never said my method of coming up with ten presidents was the best. That is why I added in my first post that you should say who your favorite is even if he's not on the list.
Well, except that you surely were not oblivious to the (quite obvious) fact that a mere write-in candidate would stand a very diminished chance of winning...
Polls like this are always pathetic. At the end of the millenium we had polls on who the most important people of the millenium were and people came up with 20th century figures.
In the defense of the poll, the most chosen have been older presidents, so I'm not sure if what your saying is applicable here. But no matter, this poll was supposed to be fun more than anything. That is true; however, it doesn't change the fact that I didn't choose my method with the object of leaving out Reagan.
Well, first of all, this is a debate forum. So taking and defending opinions is kind of the point. Otherwise, you are basically right. The Reagan worshippers are going to love Reagan, no matter how much evidence and argumentation you present which shows the flaw in that belief. However, while I cannot change their opinion, I can point out how poorly they have defended their opinion(which is the point of this forum). Almost every justification for why people think Reagan is great, is either inaccurate or invented. The reasons for why people think he wasn't great, tend to be laid out much more clearly and succinctly.
Your enormously tendentious terminology is sufficient evidence of the fact that you wish to pass off your opinion as if it were objective fact, while dismissing the opinions of others as mere "flaw[ed]...belief." Otherwise, you would not attempt to tar those of us who basically agree with the late Ronald Reagan's core philosophy--a philosophy of conservatism--as "worshippers" of the man...
Because that "core philosophy" is an imagined delusion, which didn't actually exist. What conservatives imagine Reagan to have been, and what he actually was, varies significantly. Which was exactly my point. People say they love Reagan, but the person they describe doesn't resemble the actual man or his policies in any way.
It is certainly not "imagine[d]" that Ronald Reagan pursued a policy of peace through strength; which ultimately led to rapprochement with the Soviet Union (in the person of Mikhail Gorbachev). And that is very different from the leftist vision of peace through accommodation (as attempted, for instance, by Neville Chamberlain, in the prelude to WWII)...
Yes it most definitely is. Reagan increased military spending, and the only legacy of that is the crippling debt we now have. The whole narrative about Reagan increasing military spending, the Soviets trying to match it, and the Soviets eventually bankrupting themselves because of it, is a myth. Soviet military spending was stagnant throughout the time. http://www.theatlantic.com/past/politics/foreign/reagrus.htm The reason the Soviet Union collapsed, was because Gorbachev was committed to reforming the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union was a deeply flawed and inefficient giant that was maintained by violence and the threat of violence. The Soviet Union could have just as easily collapsed in 1956 or 1968, but when the threat of liberalization on the periphery came up, the Soviets responded by sending in tanks and crushing the movements. What led to the Soviet collapse, was Gorbachev's decision to go against precedence and NOT crush the movements that rose up in Poland and East Germany. So it was not Reagan, but Gorbachev's decision to remove the violence and threat of violence which had been keeping the system together for decades. As soon as he made that decision, and then stuck to it, the Soviet Union collapsed very quickly. PS. Ronald Grigor Suny, who is a really prominent Soviet historian at U of C(he might be at Michigan now, I don't remember), makes the point that while Reagan's role was minor, it wasn't non-existent. He argues that Reagan's reputation as staunch Cold warrior allowed him to actually be deeply accommodating with Gorbachev, in a way a Democrat never could have been. He says that this actually made a small difference, and I can buy that. Reagan's second term accommodation of the Soviets was important, his first term war mongering and obscene military spending only had the effect of ruining the financial strength of this country in the long term!!
So, your "proof" is the analysis offered by a center-left publication. Would you like it if I were to offer my evidence from, oh, say, The Weekly Standard? Or National Review Online? This is the leftist interpretation of events... Again, the leftist interpretation of events... Reagan was certainly civil toward Gorbachev. But he was hardly "accommodating." At least, not in the usual sense of that word. In other words, Reagan did not jeopardize America's national security, in some fatuous hope of peace through accommodation...
Ummmmm..... No. My source is the CIA, which is where the Atlantic got their information from. The position that the Soviet system was a corrupt and inefficient system which was only held together by violence and the threat of violence, is the leftist position? I can't see it. Maybe you can lay out how that is the case for why it is the leftist position(of course it isn't you are just incapable of defending your position, so attributing disagreement to partisanship is the best you can do). No, he was accommodating. Don't you know the famous summit where Reagan offered to get rid of all nuclear weapons, and Gorbachev balked. That is accommodation, NOT civility. That is the most extreme and famous example, but indicative of something that was very prevalent.
If your source is "the CIA," then why did you refer to it indirectly, by citing the take from someone at the left-leaning Atlantic magazine? The view that the Soviet Union collapsed--just coincidentally, while a conservative Republican was the American president--is, indeed, a leftist position... In order for it to amount to "accommodation," it would be necessary to demonstrate that Reagan was negotiating from a standpoint of weakness; and that he compromised America's national security in order to achieve some sort of bargain. Can you prove this?
The source was the CIA, just as the article states. And THE SOVIET UNION DID NOT COLLAPSE WHILE REAGAN WAS PRESIDENT!!! Seriously, the debates I have on this forum are so idiotic sometimes. Reagan had been out of office for months by the time the waves of protests began in Poland, and for years before the Soviet Union officially collapsed. So, no that isn't leftist. It is just a basic knowledge of facts. A democrat was in office when the Arab spring happened, and that democrat had nothing to do with it. The Soviet Union collapsed because of internal forces. At best you can argue, that years of American pressure by a series of presidents, including Reagan, helped undermine the Soviet Union. However, the ultimate collapse was the result of Gorbachev's liberalization attempts and his ultimate decision NOT to repress protestors in Eastern Bloc countries. Can you prove that there is a connection between accommodation and weakness? No you can't.
One good thing about Lincoln is that had the South left, it almost certainly would have evolved into a backward pariah state like South Africa, shunned by the world, only it would have probably remained more rural and less industrialized. It is unlikely to have been as advanced and wealthy as it is today since it remained in the American union. In that sense, Lincoln benefited the ancestors of the Confederates, if not the Southern whites of the time themselves.
It was a toss up between Jefferson and Truman for me, though Jefferson would also make my 'worst President' list for his second term. Truman was an 'outsider' and didn't receive much support from FDR or his elitist Cabinet before he died, yet managed to overcome such serious handicaps and make some very tough and important policy decisions despite that. Jefferson on the other hand played a key role in keeping the Hamiltonian wing of the Federalists from making the U.S. a totally corrupt state from the beginning, and ameliorated the worst of their excesses, took on our first war as a country, and at least promoted a more Republican form of government, intentional or not, but then his second term was essentially a military dictatorship and he saw the Constitution pretty much the same as every other pampered American aristocrat did and have throughout our history, as an obstacle to be ignored whenever it got in the way of his own wishes, and only to be invoked when it suited his personal interests and whims of the moment, or more often spoiled the interests of his personal political enemies; not really different than either of the Parties today, in fact.
There would never have been a 'Cuban Missile Crisis' in the first place if he were 'nothing but excellent' as a President. He just had the 'good fortune' to die in office before he managed to eventually self-destruct in public opinion polls while in office, and had a massive media myth constructed around him in death. Having a wealthy connected family tends to help manage perceptions.
Dont listen to his rant.what alot of people dont know is that JFK inherited the Cuban missile crisis from Ike just like he inherited vietnam from him and the bay of pigs invasion.Many people think that the missiles in turkey that made the russians place theirs in cuba happened during Jfk's administration.Not true,they were already there before he was inagurated. If not for JFK'S leadership skills,we would have never escaped the cuban missile crisis alive.Matter of fact,thank god Jfk won the election instead of "Dick" Nixon.war mongrel Dick Nixon who sabotoged the paris peace talks that Lyndon Johnson was involved in at the end of his term to end vietnam and made it last another four more years,in later years he said that if he HAD been elected in 1960 instead of kennedy,that if he had been president during the cuban missile crisis,he would have done what the military wanted JFK to do but resisted because he was seeking a peaceful solution during the crisis,Nixon would have done what he said he would have done had he been president back then which HE would have gone in and bombed them just like he said he would have back then has he won the election. Thank god Nixon did not when the election back then because everybody that knew him and served with him when he was vice president under Eisenhower,they said he was the most immature jerk they ever knew.prone to tantrems and used no logic as the vice president.so I guarantee you back THEN when he was so extremely immature,you can take it to the bank he would have done exactly what he said he would have done,bomb cuba which would have started a nuclear war and we all would not be here right now. In 68 when he won the election he had become much more mature by then and resisted what he tried to influence Ike to do as president which was to go in and bomb Laos.He finally matured enough when he became president to resist doing that but back then in 62? forget it,he was so immature back then that he would for sure have done what he said he would have,bomb cuba.
