June 7, 2004
Ronald Reagan, converter of liberals
On the passing of this great former president, may I add that Reagan spoke of why he became a "former Democrat" in his 1964 address in support of Republican nominee Barry Goldwater:
As a former Democrat, I can tell you Norman Thomas isn't the only man who has drawn this parallel to socialism with the present administration. Back in 1936, Mr. Democrat himself, Al Smith, the great American, came before the American people and charged that the leadership of his party was taking the party of Jefferson, Jackson and Cleveland down the road under the banners of Marx, Lenin and Stalin. And he walked away from his party, and he never returned to the day he died, because to this day, the leadership of that party has been taking that party, that honorable party, down the road in the image of the labor socialist party of England.
Sixteen years later, I shocked myself when as a lifelong Democrat whose Boston Irish Catholic aunt had worked for JFK, I pulled the lever for a conservative for president. Like Reagan, I felt the Democratic Party had headed into the realm of fringe politics, while Reagan stood for freedom from tyranny. The suffering of the common person in the Soviet bloc made an impression on me.
On that day in 1980, at the age of 26, I found myself almost trembling in a voting booth in Silver Spring, Maryland. I had first voted eight years earlier, for George McGovern ... talk about liberal and anti-war (but remember, I was only 18 at the time of McGovern's candidacy). By the age of 26, I had traveled to Britain and Continental Europe several times and been negatively impressed with how left-wing policies led to high unemployment, depressed salaries, strikes by groups of workers (nurses, railway and airport workers, newspaper printers) aimed at maximum disruption , economic malaise and accommodation with the Soviet Union. My life experiences led me to a conservative conversion, as Reagan himself experienced.
At the time of my first of two votes for Reagan, I had some residual inclinations towards feminism and environmentalism, but I could not hold myself a hostage to the Democrats when I fully agreed with Reagan on limited government, freedom, tax cutting and a strong national defense.
Now at the age of 50, I have spent more than half my life as a Reagan Democrat. When I voted for Reagan, it was with some anxiety -- would the sky fall in? Over time, Reagan exceeded every possible expectation, along with Pope John Paul II and Margaret Thatcher liberating millions in Europe and bringing prosperity to many.
How many thousands and millions of Americans in their 20s and 30s during the 1980s also were swayed by Reagan? Did he create the neo-conservatives (ex-liberals) who so creatively seek solutions to poverty, terrorism and other issues of today? Did he move a plurality of the United States rightward? Did he strip the romantic patina off Marx, Lenin, Guevara and all the other chi-chi campus darlings, cutting through the fog with plain talk?
I believe the answer to all these questions is yes. Reagan got me and a whole lot of other former Vietnam protestors thinking twice about all the nonsense we picked up in the 1960s. Once you start looking at socialism closely, you get plenty nervous about liberalism's similar emphasis on government solutions to problems, and then voila -- you find yourself a Reagan Democrat and eventually, a conservative, believing in God, human rights derived from the Lord, and government as a tool of national defense rather than social engineering.
What was most interesting to me listening to talk radio yesterday (Michael Graham on WMAL-AM in Washington, D.C.) was how many immigrants from the former Soviet Bloc calling to offer their heartfelt remembrances. You can fool the sociology professors at the University of Maryland and the journalists I've worked with in Britain and the U.S. East Coast and a whole lot of other people about life in the fool's paradise of socialism, but not a Latvian or Czech or Russian. Everyone journalist I ever worked with rolled their eyes at Reagan's "evil empire" on the ash heap of history remark, but prisoners in the Soviet gulag took heart -- Natan Sharansky in the Jerusalem Post via The Corner on National Review Online:
In 1983, I was confined to an eight-by-ten-foot prison cell on the border of Siberia. My Soviet jailers gave me the privilege of reading the latest copy of Pravda. Splashed across the front page was a condemnation of President Ronald Reagan for having the temerity to call the Soviet Union an 'evil empire.' Tapping on walls and talking through toilets, word of Reagan's "provocation" quickly spread throughout the prison. We dissidents were ecstatic. Finally, the leader of the free world had spoken the truth – a truth that burned inside the heart of each and every one of us.
Goodbye to a great patriot and a true freedom fighter of the 20th century.
