Communism fell because of Reagan
Liberal Authur M. Schlesinger Jr. will not
rewrite the history of President Ronald W.
Reagan. Maybe William F. Buckly or biographer
Lou Cannon who concluded that
“no president save FDR defined a decade
as strikingly as Ronald Reagan defined the
1980s. And not just in the areas of policy
and politics.
Just as FDR led America out of a great
economic depression, Reagan lifted the
country out of a great psychological
depression, induced by the assassinations
of President Kennedy, and Martin Luther
King Jr. and sustained by the Vietnam War,
Watergate, and the Carter malaise.
In truth, communism fell because when
Ronald Reagan took office in January 1980,
the United States and its allies had been
laboring for 35 years to contain communism
with a wide range of military and
economic initiatives that had cost tens of
thousands of lives and hundreds of billions
of dollars. But for the new president,
containment was not working or at least
not working fast enough. The time had
come to defeat communism.
He went on the offensive, telling
members of the British Parliament in June
1982 that “the march of freedom and
democracy ? will leave Marxism
Leninism on the ash heap of history.” And
he quickened that march with a strategy
that shifted the superpower struggle to the
Soviet bloc and the Soviet Union itself.
He initiated what came to be called the
Reagan Doctrine – a policy of proxy
warfare in Afghanistan, Nicaragua, Angola
and Cambodia. It was the most costeffective
of all the Cold War doctrines, costing
the United States only about half a billion
dollars a year but forcing the cashstrapped
Soviets to spend several times that amount
to deflect its impact.
And then there was the most important
security policy of all – the Strategic
Defense Initiative, derided by liberals critics
as “Star Wars.” SDI convinced the
Kremlin it could not win, or afford, a
continuing arms race and it forced Mikhail
Gorbachev to sue for peace and end the
Cold War.
The Soviet Union didn’t just collapse, it
was crushed.
Voice Of Reason columnist Will Stewart
quoted another liberal columnist,
Schlesinger, as saying, “We will just have to
wait for the cool eye of history to determine
Reagan’s verdict.” This translates to
me that the columnist and others want to
diminish, demean, and declare insignificant
the accomplishment of Ronald
Reagan.
I offer just a few of the reasons that can
not be ignored why President Ronald
Wilson Reagan will go down in history as
one of the world’s greatest leaders:
It was Ronald Reagan who understood
how to revive our spirits, renew our hope,
and inspire Americans to feel good about
our country and our role in the world.
It was Ronald Reagan who declared
there is no moral equivalence between our
political and social systems and those in
communist countries and that we ought to
stop acting as if there is.
It was Ronald Reagan who realized that
one day some unstable tyrant will get
control of a ballistic missile – possibly with
chemical or biological warheads attached –
and that America better be ready with a
missile defense.
It was Ronald Reagan who saw the rise
of small business and its enormous potential
to create jobs and set about making tax
and regulatory policies to accommodate
these entrepreneur.
It was Ronald Reagan who recognized
that lowering taxes is critical to a strong
economy.
Sam Allen
Hickory Blvd.
McMinnville