Reagan and the Left: A Eulogy

By Richard F. Miller
I did not know Ronald Reagan and thus have no personal anecdotes to add to the
stream of memories now flooding the airwaves. Like most Americans my knowledge
of the 40th President is limited to the consequences of his policies. For


millions in Eastern Europe those consequences are freedom and prosperity while
for more millions in the West there is finally the elimination of a nuclear
nightmare that in 1980, many assured us might last forever.

For Americans of a certain age--my age--there are other consequences that
deserve mention. In eulogizing Reagan, many commentators naturally point to the
legacy he--and the country--were saddled with by Jimmy Carter, arguably one of
the worst American presidents of the 20th century. This doleful bequest included
soaring inflation, spiking interest rates, oil shortages, an ineptly handled
Iranian hostage crisis, a weakened military, a dismantled intelligence system
and a resurgent Soviet Union intent on branding the Hammer and Sickle onto the
Afghan mountains.

But to understand one of Ronald Reagan's most interesting achievements one must
understand that James Earl Carter was not the cause but rather the symptom of
those long-ago ills. Some of Reagan's eulogists have described "Carter's
America" as a demoralized, broken nation. In truth, it wasn't America that was
demoralized--it was the commentators and the elite class on whose behalf they
chattered (and chatter still.) Remember that when America chose Reagan the
Carter malaise mysteriously disappeared, replaced by sentiments more natural to
a vibrant democratic people. The great domestic achievement of Ronald Reagan was
that he successfully challenged a defeated and demoralized left-wing elite--for
which they hated him (and hate him still).

The Age of Reagan marked the beginning of the American left's Long March to the
margins. Several reasons for the left's exodus can be attributed directly to
Reagan's policies. He was right and they were wrong. Democrats had assured
America that the status quo of Mutually Assured Destruction, Peaceful
Co-Existence, stagflation and a 90% top tax bracket were the best that we could
do. They told us that American decline was inevitable--in fact, deserved--and
that the public should just shut up, feel guilty for what it had and remember to
set aside money for next year's tax increase. Reagan not only proved them wrong
but did so forever--while his aging critics may spin they cannot hide their
published Op-Eds and editorials, their speeches and books in which they opposed
every military budget Reagan proposed, opposed the tax cuts, opposed the
deployment of Pershing missiles in Europe, and denounced him as a simpleton and
a mere actor. In fact those who seek a useful primer in the left's intellectual
bankruptcy, lack of imagination and moral cowardice have only to peruse the
1980s editorial columns of the New York Times.

One consequence of the Age of Reagan was the conversion of a once honorable
Democratic Party into a collective of professional liars. In 1984 and 1988,
Mondale and Dukakis showed that avowed liberals could not win elections. The
lesson was clear--in the future, to gain power liberals would have to disguise
their ideology. How ironic for a party that had denounced Reagan as a mere
thespian! Since 1992 liberals have reinvented themselves each election. They
change clothes, use new words, deny early affiliations, and ignore long ago
votes and speeches. They run on middle class tax cuts and denunciations of
Sister Soulja or continue to dine out on their wartime medals while feigning
amnesia about everything else. The ideal candidate has become the true
anti-Reagan: a hollow, core-less man, a chameleon, capable of turning red white
and blue in November but dropping the white and blue during the next eleven
months. This time around, the Great Liberal Hope is John Forbes Kerry. Indeed,
if the Trojan Horse had a real mane, it would closely resemble the
Massachusetts' Senator's coif. Anti-war militants, social revolutionaries, labor
bosses, racial spoilsmen and the other Democratic constituencies do not denounce
their candidate when he adopts "positions" contrary to theirs--they know the
game and are content to lodge within and hope their man can bamboozle a public
that they already hold in low esteem.

Since the 1980s the left, wrong on policy and unpopular when exposed, has
retreated into its diminished empire of declining readership and television
audiences or the groves of academe where trees fall by the score but make no
sound for want of listeners. With the passing decades, historians will regard
the left-wing opposition to Reagan (and of Bush today) as something akin to the
Civil War's Copperheads or the appeasers of 1930s Britain: Morally myopic,
counseled by their fears, educated beyond their intelligence, wrong in history
and worse for those who must listen to them, passionate about their own
rectitude.

Diabetic I may be but I'll always take jellybeans over brie.

Ronald Reagan, American, Rest in Peace.