The True Legacy of the Reagan Revolution!
Well People, here’s an article I ran into from Dec. 26, 1985. Titled The Reagan Revolution:
In a provocative article called “Ideas Move Nations” in the January issue of The Atlantic Monthly, writer Gregg Easterbrook notes the rapid growth in the past decade of what might be called the “Anti-Liberal Intellectual Establishment.” This new establishment consists of a network of conservative and libertarian publications and think tanks–magazines like Reason and The American Spectator, think tanks like the Cato Institute and Heritage Foundation. The ideas produced by these periodicals and institutions, Easterbrook writes, have “spread throughout our political and intellectual life” and now “stand poised to become the dominant strain in American public policy”.
But according to Easterbrook, the purveyors of these new, anti-liberal ideas have a problem. “Intellectually,” he writes, “it is always easier to be the party out of power, and conservative think tanks often exhibit a certain nostalgia for the good old days, when Carter was president and taking the blame.” As it is, conservatives and libertarians are forced “to suggest that even after five years of a strong conservative president, a Republican Senate, and popular conservative mandate, liberalism is still secretly controlling Washington.”
Well, isn’t it? It sure looks that way from here.
Conservatives, like libertarians, are supposed to favor reducing–or even eliminating-taxes. Well, “after five years of a strong conservative president, a Republican Senate, and a popular conservative mandate,” federal taxes are taking a larger share of total national income than they did in 1980. Conservatives, like libertarians, are supposed to favor reducing the size of government. “Get government off our backs,” President Reagan used to say. Wake up and recognize, he used to exhort us, that “government isn’t the solution, it’s the problem.” Well, “after five years of a strong conservative president, a Republican Senate, and a popular conservative mandate,” more bureaucrats are employed by the federal government than in 1980. And many of those new bureaucrats are assigned the task of monitoring what we read, what pictures we look at, and what we choose to eat, drink, smoke, or inhale in the privacy of our own homes. This is getting government off our backs?
Conservatives, like libertarians, are supposed to favor reduced government spending. Well, “after five years of a strong conservative president, a Republican Senate, and a popular conservative mandate,” the federal government is spending more than ever before in history. In constant dollars, the Reagan administration has increased spending more than 5 percent above Jimmy Carter’s projected budget for fiscal year 1985. As a percentage of gross national product, the administration has increased spending from a little less than 23 percent in fiscal year 1981 to more than 25 percent today. Contrary to popular mythology, Mr. Reagan hasn’t even succeeded in slowing the rate of growth in federal spending. The rate in fiscal year 1984 was almost two-thirds higher than the average annual increase under Carter. For the first five months of 1985, the real growth in spending reached an annual rate of 8.4 percent, three times the Carter Average.
Nor did all the increase go to military spending. Payments to individuals for social programs have risen 4 percent a year under Reagan, twice the planned Carter growth rate. Reagan has presided over growth in spending “for the Poor” at the same rate proposed by Carter during his last hear in the White House.
The moral of this depressing story is simple: if the record of our president, his administration, and his Senate over the past five years is truly conservative, then conservatives have no real interest in cutting government back, and they have nothing important in common with libertarians. For those genuinely dedicated to promoting individual freedom and reducing government, the cause has not been advanced one whit by the political developments of the past five years. And there is nothing to be gained by attempting to pretend other wise.
This editorial appeared in The Orange County Register, the county daily paper in one of the most conservative areas in California and referred to as Reagan country.
This brings to mind the contradictions between what is vilified as being liberal and the reality of what liberals do; as a comparison of Reagan and Clinton would illustrate. It seems that applying liberal policy to problems is only a problem to conservatives when it is done by a Democratic administration. Also, consider how much more “W” is like Reagan, but worse, and Reagan is lauded as the contemporary model for conservatism. I think, now, that I understand how conservatives were so duped by the neo-cons; conservatives don’t really know who they are–only that they hate any package labeled Democrat. Maybe another 8 years of a Clinton administration wouldn’t be so bad!?!
Naw, just kidding–Go Kucinich!
