Reply #3: It wasn't the truth....

[punpirate]

Reagan courted the religious right for the sake of votes, in both his campaigns.

I remember seeing film of him saying to the American Association of Religious Broadcasters, a strong link to the religious right, with an actor's flair for the dramatic, "I know that you cannot endorse me.... But, I endorse you."

He was addressing people like Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, Jimmy Swaggart and Jim Bakker.

He rarely attended church, and let his schedule be determined by his wife's astrologer.

He couldn't care less about ordinary people. He helped push through legislation which hurt ordinary people.

Any suggestion, from his children or others, that he was a kind, decent man has to be tempered by what legislation he pushed through Congress. He was not a kind man. He was a stupid man, manipulated by those with agendas he either agreed with or were hidden from him and he was too out of it to notice the deception.

This man believed in Armageddon, well before he attained the White House. He believed that ICBMs could be recalled after launch. He believed that AIDS was God's scourge against homosexuals. He believed that alternative energy wasn't possible--not only dismantling the renewable energy program of the government, but also removed the solar water heaters on the White House roof. (My girlfriend said, "couldn't he feel the warmth of the sun on his hand?)

He helped kill hundreds of thousands of people in Nicaragua, Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala through his policies. He repeatedly lied to the public about Iran and the Contras. He surrounded himself with criminals who had no respect for the government or the rule of law.

He avoided, out of simple homophobia, even the mention of AIDS for six years.

If this man is remembered as one of our greatest presidents, we've lowered the bar by several feet, have we not?

Ron, Jr. isn't right about his father. He is entitled to familial feelings, but the country thinks differently about his father's record. Too many people were harmed, here and abroad, because his father lied to himself and others too frequently and too well.