XPost: alt.drugs.psychedelics, alt.drugs, alt.drugs.rfg   
   XPost: rec.drugs.psychedelic   
   From: evilclown@dark.cloud.empire.tr   
      
   "Joel"  wrote...   
   > He was a two-faced, ideological performer-president, but today's   
   > events have made me reconsider how I see him.  He really did have an   
   > incredible work ethic, whatever one thinks of his actions.  I don't   
   > credit him with ending communism, nor with creating prosperity, but I   
   > guess one just can't help but admire President Reagan.   
      
   I grew up under Reagan.  While I did hear lots of leftist anti-Reagan   
   propaganda during those years, in the end I got to admire him.   
   Looking back, my life really was fairly good during his administration.   
   Though I was pretty young, I can also remember Jimmy Carter and how   
   terrible things were during his administration.  Ronald Reagan was   
   a definite improvement over Jimmy Carter.   
      
   Regan's greatest achievement was to restore America's morale.  He is   
   credited with restoring the economy as well, but my opinion is he   
   just got lucky, that after what Carter had done to it there was no   
   way it could get worse and any policy not Carter's would have   
   improved it.  And while Reagan got so much flak for his military   
   "buildup" (actually just a restoration of former defense funding   
   levels that had been slashed by Carter and other presidents), in the   
   end this buildup destroyed the Soviet economy.  I recall reading   
   that during Reagan the U.S. spent 3% of its GDP on its military,   
   while the Soviet Union spent 50% of its GDP on its military just to   
   keep up with us.  The whiny anti-Reagan leftists complained that   
   that money (several trillion dollars?) could have been spent on   
   the poor, but I think we all know that if they had gotten their   
   grubby little socialist hands on it they would have just squandered   
   in on things like midnight basketball programs for negro kids in   
   the ghettos.   
      
   All in all I admire Ronald Reagan.  No, I don't agree with all his   
   policies, particularly the "war on drugs" that he escalated.  I   
   also feel that much of his success was sheer luck.  And while you   
   may disgree with some of his beliefs and principles, at least he   
   had some, unlike our current president.  Reagan was smarter than   
   average, but far from genius.  His problem was that he delegated   
   too much responsibility to subordinates, people he thought he   
   could trust.  In the end, they took advantage of his trust and   
   did some pretty sleazy things right under his nose, rightfully   
   assuming that his early symptoms of Alzheimers would keep him   
   from noticing (Iran-Contra).   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)