The stupidity of Ronald Reagan.By Christopher Hitchens

[indigobusiness]

The stupidity of Ronald Reagan.
By Christopher Hitchens
Posted Monday, June 7, 2004, at 10:03 AM PT


Not long ago, I was invited to be the specter at the feast during "Ronald Reagan Appreciation Week" at Wabash College in Indiana. One of my opponents was Dinesh D'Souza: He wasn't the only one who maintained that Reagan had been historically vindicated by the wreckage of the Soviet Union. Some of us on the left had also been very glad indeed to see the end of the Russian empire and the Cold War. But nothing could make me forget what the Reagan years had actually been like.

Ronald Reagan claimed that the Russian language had no word for "freedom." (The word is "svoboda"; it's quite well attested in Russian literature.) Ronald Reagan said that intercontinental ballistic missiles (not that there are any non-ballistic missiles—a corruption of language that isn't his fault) could be recalled once launched. Ronald Reagan said that he sought a "Star Wars" defense only in order to share the technology with the tyrants of the U.S.S.R. Ronald Reagan professed to be annoyed when people called it "Star Wars," even though he had ended his speech on the subject with the lame quip, "May the force be with you." Ronald Reagan used to alarm his Soviet counterparts by saying that surely they'd both unite against an invasion from Mars. Ronald Reagan used to alarm other constituencies by speaking freely about the "End Times" foreshadowed in the Bible. In the Oval Office, Ronald Reagan told Yitzhak Shamir and Simon Wiesenthal, on two separate occasions, that he himself had assisted personally at the liberation of the Nazi death camps.
<snip>

http://slate.msn.com/id/2101842/

[Fenris]

1. God, Christopher is so inconsistent.

Stick to a side!

[indigobusiness]

4. That was sort of my reaction...

who and where, is Christopher Hitchens?

[hlthe2b]

5. Chronic Alcoholics are often "schizophrenic -like" in their outlooks/moods

Hitchens does exemplify that....

[qb]

12. I don't think he has a side. He only lives to offend. nt

[madrchsod]

2. my dad used to call reagen

"a big dumb mick" back in the day..i guess my dad was right.....

[PROGRESSIVE1]

3. There's something that I agree with this SOB on!!!

:think:

Gee, Chris, you're 100% right about Reagan's crimes and imcompetence, maybe you should see Bush in the same light too?!?

:eyes:

[Az]

6. I think he is too proud to admit he got snookered

Hitchens comes from the same school of social libertarianism as Dennis Miller. They have some ego issues and like the idea of being superior but generally believe in socially liberal positions. But after 9/11 they got sucked in by the bravado of Bush. They wanted to walk tall and strike fear into those who would dare to act against us. So they sided with Bush.

Hitchens has stuck closer to his roots than Miller did but he still is too proud to admit he got conned. He still has the insite (despite the booze) to see through Reagan's nonsense. Hitchens skeptical base may enable him to break free of Bush in the end. Till then he is a political spastic colon. Spewing whatever comes into his mind.

[calimary]

10. "A political spastic colon"?!?!?!? Hilarious!

ROFLMAO!!!!!!!

GREAT quote! Even better mental picture!

[Westegg]

34. You have a point, but: Comparing Hitchens to Dennis Miller...

...is like comparing Einstein to your high-school physics teacher.

[mopaul]

7. what planet am i on? isn't he a hardcore rightwinger? thought so

how the mighty have debased themselves to call reagan stupid two days after he went to hell.

[indigobusiness]

8. His reference to "us on the left" is a bit rich.

or words to that effect

[Az]

9. No

Hitchens is primarily a social libertarian. He got sucked in to Bush via 9/11 (ala Dennis Miller). He is a long time opponent of the religious right. He has always been more focused on social issues than economic so never really sided with the republicans until the war on terra (sic).

[Media_Lies_Daily]

13. "Some of us on the left"???? What planet does Hitchens live on now?....

The man is a rightwing, goose-stepping NeoCon!!

[RobinA]

26. No, He Is Not

The guy is practically a socialist. As mentioned above (or below), he went off the deep end with Clinton, but basically because he thought Clinton wasn't left enough and considered him a sell-out. When Monica came along he added it to his existing Clinton-hate and went rabid anti-Clinton.

He thought Saddam should be deposed under any circumstances because Saddam was a very bad guy. He wasn't so much caught up in the WMD angle, as he was by the humanitarian side.

He has a very childish, hyperbolic (sp?), peevish streak that often comes across as a little nutty and ruins his credibility, but he is NOT a neo-con.

[indigobusiness]

30. thanks

for that

http://sludgereport.blogspot.com/

[KC21304]

17. This is the Christopher Hitchens I knew

and liked before he started with his hatred of Clinton. I don't know what sent him around the bend in the late 90's.

[DerekG]

31. He had a very good reason to hate Clinton...

You should read "No One Left To Lie To", it's a high-minded companion to Moore's denunciation of Clinton in "Stupid White Men."

[hlthe2b]

33. Well, I'm not going to have time to read that book: Why not explain

what you are getting at?


At the risk of jumping to a wrong conclusion, if you are implying Hitchens was justified in "hating" Clinton specifically because of inappropriate consensual sexual behavior with an intern and the lie that accompanied same, I'd only point out that "judge not lest ye be judged," is a fundamental Christian teaching point from the bible that the fundamentalists and RW seem to prefer to ignore. Clinton was far from perfect and deeply flawed in some areas. But, I find it hard to understand why liberals, progressives, democrats and moderates of all stripes would/should "HATE" him. Please enlighten.

[UTUSN]

11. It's Like When Tweety Tosses Us a Crumb

Tweety defenders claim that, when he's speaking for us, there's nobody better. Well, I'll accept the crumbs on a stand-alone basis, but won't trust HITCHENS *or* Tweety.

[kaitykaity]

14. This is the second time in a month that

Hitch has written something that could be seen as
coming from our side.

Hmm. I wonder if he's having some unfogged regrets.

[Hamlette]

15. what in the world is he talking about in the last two paragraphs?

I would have expected Hitchens to like Reagan for the same cowboy attributes he seems to admire in Bush.

Is he implying that it is elietist to dump on a prez just because he is dumb. Isn't that what he does in the first part of the piece.

The last two paragraphs make no sense. None of it does really.

[K-W]

16. Reagan's charisma wrote checks his intellect couldnt cash. eom

[indigobusiness]

18. Exactly

Well put.

[Arugula Latte]

19. WTF?

Hey Hitchens, do you sense the pendulum swinging back and you want to get back in with rational people?

[Az]

20. Dennis Miller syndrome

9/11 freaked him out and he jumped on board with the Bushies in striking holy retribution on the Arab world. Perhaps sanity is returning to his brain.

[indigobusiness]

22. Miller has always been a

nazi.

[Az]

24. Na

He started off a social libertarian and went nutzoid after 9/11. Not necissarily playing for out team but hardly nazi material untilhe went coocoo for Bushie Puffs.

[indigobusiness]

25. Listen to him talk about his time at snl

he was the token nazi. Regardless of what he called himself.

What a pseudo-intellectual schmuck...he butchers the language as bad a Bush does.

[evil_orange_cat]

21. wow... after the Mel Gibson trashing and now this, I love Hitchens.

I'm not sure I agree with him over Iraq, however... IIRC, he was pro-war.

[Cocoa]

23. cheap shot at Kerry at the end

Sen. John Kerry waited until the first week of June 2004 to tell us that he met Ahmad Chalabi in London in 1998 and that he didn't care for him then. That makes six intervening years in which the senator could have alerted us to this lurking danger to national security. But something kept him quiet. One must hope that that something wasn't the tendency to pile on. Cheer up, though. At least this shows that Kerry has no pre-emptive capacity.

Not even sure what it means, probably that Hitchens is bitter that he's one of the many people that Chalibi snookered.

Listen to this star-struck ode to Ahmed, and imagine how embarrassed the proud Hitchens must be:

http://slate.msn.com/id/2101345/

At our long meeting, Chalabi impressed me for three reasons. The first was that he thought the overthrow of one of the world's foulest-ever despotisms could be accomplished. I knew enough by then to know that any Iraqi taking this position in public was risking his life and the lives of his family. I did not know Iraq very well but had visited the country several times in peace and war and met numerous Iraqis, and the second thing that impressed me was that, whenever I mentioned any name, Chalabi was able to make an exhaustive comment on him or her. (The third thing that impressed me was his astonishingly extensive knowledge of literary and political arcana, but that's irrelevant to our purposes here.)

[RobinA]

27. Very Cheap

and typical Hitchens snideness that makes me believe nothing he says.

Kerry was supposed to get up there and say "I don't care for this man, Chalabi, therefore he needs to be sent packing." Yep, that would have been effective.

[evil_orange_cat]

28. I think Hitchens makes a valid point...

Kerry didn't have a clue (like everyone else) when it came to the big mistake Iraq was going to be... I'm supporting Kerry because the stakes are too high to let Bush win, but Kerry shouldn't get a free pass from those of us in the anti-war crowd.

[indigobusiness]

29. It was a politically safe move...

disappointing

[mike1963]

32. Yep, in the body politic, expeditious trumps brute honesty every time.

:eyes:

[indigobusiness]

35. I wonder what Hitchens thinks of Ashcroft's testimony...

today.?

He's tap-dancing for all he's worth.

Biden said he was in contempt of Congress.

He is surely in contempt of America...maybe the entire planet.




http://sludgereport.blogspot.com/