We should look for one iota of truth .......

[kentuck]

And I think I have found it!

Granted, most of it was lies, propaganda, and show biz. But, near the end, there was a moment of truth. The light did shine through. And from all places, it came from Ron Reagan, Jr.
============================================================== ====
"Dad was also a deeply, unabashedly religious man. But he never made the fatal mistake of so many politicians wearing his faith on his sleeve to gain political advantage. True, after he was shot and nearly killed early in his presidency, he came to believe that God had spared him in order that he might do good. But he accepted that as a responsibility, not a mandate. And there is a profound difference."
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It was so important that someone speak up and say the truth. Our country was in need of the truth. The talking heads with microphones were not going to provide it, it was obvious. The reason it is important is that we now have a leader that wraps himself in religion while he commits and orders the commission of atrocities that betray the soul of our nation. Thanks to Ron Reagan, Jr for speaking up.

[Mnemosyne]

1. Ron, the younger, voice of reason

[supernova]

2. I knew there was some reason

I liked him. :-)

[punpirate]

3. It wasn't the truth....

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.

[kentuck]

4. You may be right....

The iota of truth may be in his remarks about people wearing their religion on their sleeve...perhaps the quote covers more than an "iota"? :)

[punpirate]

5. I think the dig was at Bush, but ignored...

... what his father was while he was in office. When his father left office, perhaps he was too incoherent to remember what he'd done.

There's some suggestion that such is true--when Lawrence Walsh interviewed Reagan in 1991 about matters of Iran-Contra, Reagan could not remember anything.

But, remember, we're not talking about everyone's favorite grandpa. We're talking about a man who held the pre-eminent political position in the country for eight years. Ron, Jr. can be forgiven for forgetting his father's transgressions, but I will not forget. The man smiled while hurting people.

Perhaps that's the only difference between Reagan and Bush. Reagan might be excused for his intellectual lapses, because of encroaching disease. Bush cannot hide under that excuse.

But, regardless, Reagan's policies hurt many people, and, I think, he never noticed that he'd caused so much harm to so many people. Maybe his children have not noticed, either.

[kentuck]

6. I hear you...

You speak the truth. Reagan is now gone and the enemy at the gate is George W Bush.

[supernova]

7. Actually, I think Patti

did take her dad to task for his policies during those years. It was part of the philosophical rift between them.

But I do remember Reagan not really wearing his religion on his sleeve in the same way that Bush and the neocons do. That much is true. Oh, Reagan did court them, and curry favor with them to be sure. And he certainly sprinkled his speeches with their favorite buzzwords. But he managing to do that with mimmicking that behavior.

The result of course, is that Reagan encouraged them and they became bolder than their more moderate compatriots in the Republican party. And that is the central problem int he Repub party today. And it's now the country's problem as well.