"How Reagan Became Reagan"

A great essay by Steven Hayward at the Claremont Institute, yesterday (italics and quoted ellipsis in original):

.... Reagan would famously say during his political career that "I was a Democrat most of my adult life. I didn't leave my party and we're not suggesting you leave yours. I am telling you that what I felt was that the leadership of the Democratic Party had left me and millions of patriotic Democrats in this country who believed in freedom." If he was too easy on the Democratic Party, he was very clear that conservatism today has inherited the best of the liberal tradition, which is why he felt none of the sectarian's hesitation about quoting Thomas Paine (or admiring Franklin Roosevelt):

The classic liberal used to be the man who believed the individual was, and should be forever, the master of his destiny. That is now the conservative position. The liberal used to believe in freedom under law. He now takes the ancient feudal position that power is everything. He believes in a stronger and stronger central government, in the philosophy that control is better than freedom. The conservative now quotes Thomas Paine, a long-time refuge of the liberals: 'Government is a necessary evil; let us have as little of it as possible.'

During his GE [yes, General Electric] touring days in the 1950s, Reagan said he began to experience "the vindictiveness of the liberal temper.... Sadly I have come to realize that a great many so-called liberals aren't liberal — they will defend to the death your right to agree with them." The AFL-CIO — to which Reagan belonged as a member of the Screen Actors Guild — branded Reagan "a strident voice of the right wing lunatic fringe." Like Churchill, who read Gibbon and the classics on his own while a young officer in India, in the 1950s Reagan undertook a serious self-education in politics through reading Whittaker Chambers's Witness, Henry Hazlitt's Economics in One Lesson, Fredrich Bastiat's The Law, and F.A. Hayek's Road to Serfdom, among other titles. Yet he adopted neither Chambers's historical pessimism nor a blanket libertarian hatred of government. It is tempting to ascribe this outcome merely to Reagan's irrepressibly optimistic temperament. While this is obviously central to Reagan's character, it seems inadequate to explain his cast of mind entirely. And while his independent reading and speaking tours during his GE years of the 1950s are surely the key period of his self-education, in the end it is not Reagan's thought that was decisive, but his insight, imagination, and moral clarity — none of which can be taught in a classroom or a book.....

(Thanks, Big Trunk.)

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Tue. 08/31/04 05:59:10 PM
Categorized as Ronald Reagan.