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I Can See November 2nd From My Front Porch

Open Thread

By: Aaron Gardner (Diary)  |  August 16th, 2010 at 01:00 PM  | 

RESIZE: AAA

Apparently so can Tom Price, head of the Republican Study Committee from which this video originated. [h/t Ace]

“Well I think it’s time we ask ourselves if we still know the freedoms that were intended for us by the Founding Fathers” Ronald Reagan

Consider this an Open Thread.

Aaron B. Gardner

P.S. And the Democrats seem more than pleased to help us along in our quest to reenact 1994, God bless them.

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COMMENTS

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  • rdelbov

    keeps the democrats at bay.

    I suggest reading or watching (not sure if its on Youtube) Reagan’s evil empire speech. Its another great one.

  • tjpeco

    Every time I hear and/or see a Reagan Speech it brings a tear to my eye.

  • jeremyz

    I am currently reading Craig Shirley’s account of the 1980 election and so many people, republicans included, couldn’t even see it then…the genius and power of Ronald Reagan and his populist conservatism. Great read and suprising how many people were “scared” of and underestimated the Gipper, even after almost beating Ford in the 1976 primary.

    Were there a clear communicator of conservatism today. Someone to help accomplish what Mark Levin stated in Liberty and Tyranny, someone to effectively communicate real conservatism to the drifting and uninformed masses of our country.

  • teapartyamerican

    “Government is not a solution…, government is the problem.” — Ronald Reagan, America’s Greatest Modern President.

  • gekster

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FcSm-KAEFFA

  • Achance

    to a two minute political commercial. Stuff like this is great for motivating the faithful, but it isn’t likely to get us any converts. 15 seconds is the limit of the attention span of much of the electorate and they most learn by osmosis at the watercooler among a group of people largely as uninformed as they are. Start a political conversation in a breakroom or at a local watering hole and see how much faith you have in democracy after a few minutes.

  • lucky364

    Mr. Reagan always made me sit up and take notice. I submit that there is nobody out there today that has the same effect on people.

    November is coming. Is there someone in the newly elected wave that will rise to the top? Will someone emerge to be THE voice of conservatism? I pray for that. Without someone to explain to the American people what we are about and the reason to fight for the idea that America is, we will be fighting with one hand tied behind our backs.

    Pray for someone that isn’t afraid to speak the truth in such a way that it inspires millions of Americans to have confidence in themselves and this country. He or she is out there. We need to be ready when that person emerges.

  • msctex

    . . .by the skillful editing of the stark contrasts between two utterly disparate ways of seeing the world, is beyond help.

    Properly used, this would destroy any hopes the Democrats have left.

  • rdelbov

    I will go back and finish it after I post this note.

    Reagan’s words still ring true and yes they still have meaning.

    No the old Soviet empire is gone-mostly gone that is but there are governments that are still “evil”. One way they are evil is discussed by Reagan. Soviet styled dictatorships tried to keep “God” out. There was no freedom of religion. To Reagan and the ministers in Orlando in 1983 the Godless marxists were not a foe to America but evil as they strived to prevent the spreading of the Gospel.

    I think about Evil Empire today as I have Christian Missionary friends who operate in an Islamic country. They operate under the threat of arrest every day.

  • Achance

    Some significant percentage of those yutes having Obasms for Obama weren’t even born when Reagan was President. Also, we should never underestimate just how intimidating the simple declarative sentences of a Reagan are to the modern mind. We don’t do strong men in American any more; they frighten the women and children.

  • msctex

    But I find that hard to believe. Self-interest will always win out in the end, and Obama is an equal-opportunity destroyer.

  • gekster

    I don’t know of the date,
    Correctly attributed, per Snopes.com
    ————————————————————————————————————

    Robert A. Hall is the actor who plays the coroner on CSI if you watch that show.

    I’m 63. Except for one semester in college when jobs were scarce and a six-month period when I was between jobs, but job-hunting every day, I’ve worked, hard, since I was 18. Despite some health challenges, I still put in 50-hour weeks, and haven’t called in sick in seven or eight years. I make a good salary, but I didn’t inherit my job or my income, and I worked to get where I am. Given the economy, there’s no retirement in sight, and I’m tired. Very tired.

  • Achance

    Many today would define their self-interest as being taken care of by a benevolent government.

  • Achance
  • msctex

    But eventually they realize there is no such thing as a benevolent Government with that sort of power.

  • gekster
  • Achance

    If there’s no US as we know it, how long does it take for the sparks of liberty to ignite a fire. Last time civilization fell apart with the collapse of the Roman Empire, it took the better part of 2000 years for even the fairly well off to achieve anything like the same standard of living an average Roman citizen took for granted.

    It is also well to remember that the Roman Empire and its standard of living went on for almost a thousand more years in the East, but the Moslems eventually destroy it too. It is clear that wealthy, civilized people can almost always win battles with the barbarians. It is much less clear that they can win wars unless they are willing to become truly barbarous themselves. I’m pretty certain that we wouldn’t have the stomach today to incinerate Germany and nuke Japan. We’d just bow, sign a piece of paper, and make a speech.

  • Scope

    Excellent Gekster. What a great read. I agree, turn it into a diary.

  • partyof1

    Let’s see them actually cut spending and shrink government.

    Saying is easy. Doing is hard.

  • qixlqatl

    And every time I come across it, I read it again. It hasn’t lost a whit of impact yet. Mister Hall ‘gets it’.

  • msctex

    Even as damaged and decrepit as we have allowed our system to become, one predicated upon personal freedom and free markets will always eventually rebound. It cannot help it, if granted the opportunity to function, as it is line with the laws of nature and of the nature of man. The timespan you cite in the USSR was due to their having nothing to fall back upon or look to but a dead aristocracy.

    As for whether or not we will have the courage to do what may well become necessary, we will, tragically, only respond when attacked. Our national character has been damaged to the point we see that sort of suicidal behavior as noble, and of man’s better instincts. The reality, of course, is that preemptory actions would ultimately save more lives on both sides, but we are currently under the sway of those who value what “should” be far more than what is.

    So I guess it depends upon what your definition of “is”, is. ;)

  • Finrod

    I tried doing an NFL pick-em last year, but participation was minimal (granted my posting of them was horribly irregular); if anyone is interested in doing it this year I can post the match-ups each week, otherwise I won’t bother.

    I miss redstatesports.com.

  • Jon E. Schultz II
  • Achance

    Reagan contributed and edited, but, like most every other high-level office holder in modern times, he used speech writers. The story of the “tear down this wall” phrase is pretty well know; the speechwriters and advisors didn’t want it in the speech and Reagan insisted on its inclusion.

    Oh, and I doubt Kennedy contributed a word to any of his. Historian, Wm. Manchester among others wrote most of his

  • http://theminorityreportblog.com Repair_Man_Jack
  • jcincy

    Our Declaration of Independence speaks of the unalienable rights granted by the Creator that include: Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.

    Our voluntary army does the following:
    - They risk their life and some cases lay down their life, to protect life.
    - They give up their liberty for service in order to secure liberties for others.
    - They put off ‘Happiness’ to insure the blessings of God for their countrymen.

    I believe the day will come when these men and women will return in vast numbers to this nation from overseas. They will be used to restore the first principles to this nation. Freely they gave, therefore freely they will receive the Honor of bringing the restoration of Life and Liberty to this land. These men and women from every generation will receive the full Honor that they have earned.

    Whatever a man sows, he will reap.

  • JSobieski

    The 1964 speech was 100% Reagan.

    Did the comment above involve any insight?

  • mbecker908

    1. The economic system in the US is no longer based on either “personal freedom” or “free markets”. We are moving into a command economy and unless somebody decides to man-up in Washington, we will be the USSR.

    2. With respect to the USSR having nothing to fall back on is an utterly foolish statement. The Commisars ruled by fiat and NKVD gulags though the ’80s.

    3. As far as responding to an attack, we haven’t bothered to do a darn thing about the sustained attack on our liberty or our markets for the last 40 years. What makes you think anything is going to change beyond the margins.

  • http://www.examiner.com/x-1597-Charlotte-Law--Politics-Examiner Mike gamecock DeVine

    as the many he did write

    How Ronald Reagan Changed My Life – by Peter Robinson (one of his speechwtiters)

    Also see Reagan: In his Own Hand and A Life in Letters

  • janis

    And I echo the rest– make it a diary and I’ll reco. Thanks for posting it.

  • ceili_dancer

    New Rasmussen generic congressional numbers just posted.
    http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/mood_of_america/generic_congressional_ballot

    48-36 Rep-Dem, Wow, just wow, is all I can say.

  • janis

    And definitely one of our best writers in that office. There are books of his letters in which you can see how well the man could write, how intelligent he was and how well read he was, too.

    And guess what? George W. Bush read a whole bunch of books, too. I wonder how many Obama has read? I even wonder how many Obama has written. On his own, that is.

  • gekster

    2nd nt

  • msctex

    Seriously, lighten up a little. There’s vigilance and then there is paranoia. Progressivism’s saving grace, from a Capitalist perspective, is its utter lack of function. It siphons off free markets and personal freedoms, until we reach the point we have reached today — stagnation. And if you check the polls, you’ll note people have noticed. And if you think the US Constitution and 230 years of unrivaled prosperity on the planet will not win out in the end against a half-stable, largely metaphysical Utopia which is forever just over the next hill, then you can do the worrying.

    And you apparently didn’t understand what I meant about the Russians. I meant nothing worth having to fall back upon, which is perfectly obvious in context.

  • makemyday

    Got a couple of links in emails the past few days that are absolutely worth the watch.

    http://www.runawayslavemovie.com/

    http://www.angelfire.com/ak2/intelligencerreport/obama_at_bat.html

  • lovethetruth

    any candidates worth voting for. The vote was split in our republican primary and the liberal got the ballot.

    We no longer have a conservative option. This is the same thing that has always happened when we have tried to overthrow the liberal regimes. They get the office by default and rule as if they have been given a mandate to overthrow the constitution.

  • renny

    and was run as a totalitarian prison. To expect that the people of the former empire, used to secret police and disappearing in the night, could organize to bring down the USSR was more than they could offer.

    What really got them was the system was so bad that it collapsed. Communism could not feed, clothe, house, and employ in any rational way 1/2 a billion people through dictatorial oversight (neither can DC do the same for 300,000,000). The ruble was never traded internationally, so the monetary system had no real value. People were trapped by state media (even worse than MSNBC), deprivation, want, and terror.

    In the end, maybe Elvis and denim jeans were as influential as anything else in freeing the USSR, but Reagan delivered the coup de grace by never lettting up the pressure on a polity that could not sustain itself.

    The USSR killed untold millions and to denigrate those who survived by saying they didn’t act fast enough or strong enough to free themselves forgets they were not founded by an Anglo-Saxon constitutional monarchy with a parliamentary system, bred up on enterprise and initiative like establishing colonies, and led through a middle-class revolution that produced a bourgeoise and enlightened Constitution.

    We should thank our lucky stars for who we are and that we can see when we are being led by liars and hypocrites that we can get rid of them.

  • renny

    and WOW. And he’s an entertainer, too. There is hope. Real HOPE.

  • Achance

    Who did I denigrate? I said it took 70 years; it did. I didn’t say it was too fast or too slow or why. I did say it took a lot of pressure from the US and I don’t retract that statement. In fact, I think if it hadn’t been for US pressure, the Soviets would be ruling the World by now – including the US. Unfortunately, the USSR’s inheritors are pretty close to ruling the US anyway.

  • joayn

    One comment:

    “So wonderful. Seeing this reminds me of just how much Reagan meant to me, a foreigner. Just as Pope John Paul II as a person led me to convert to Catholicism, Reagan made me feel inside as if I could be an honorary American. He was my image of America, and I felt that even if I couldn’t really be American myself, I could, inside, be loyal to the same things he was. I’m getting a little tearful just thinking about him. ”
    Posted by: Dr. Mabuse at August 16, 2010 12:08 PM (CPdUf)

    RWR not only inspired people, he believed in the goodness and dignity of the common man.

  • jackhammer

    Remember Reagan spent the better part of 15 years in the wilderness (OK he was Governor of CA), but basically having these amazing speeches which were totally against the accepted common thought that pervaded American democrat controlled politics post Kennedy.

    Every soundbite, every speech, was so damn crystal clear…no mixed messages, no bowing to polling or public opinion….just strident conservatism…sometimes I see it in Paul Ryan, maybe a bit in Rubio…but with them it is a bit of a rehash, and they have a large audience….

    It was that time in the ridiculed wilderness that made Reagan…that gave him the backbone to be ridiculed and laughed at time and again, and keep up the fight….there was nothing resembling a flip flop….there was no polling to find out what he believed….that is why the Pawlenty’s and Romney’s aren’t the same calibre….Damiels doesn’t have the charisma..

    Reagan was like Milton Friedman….every word uttered, sat! It was exactly what needed to be said, and was irrefutably self evident.

  • jackhammer

    I liked this a lot. I researched it a bit, and it turns out it is NOT the actor from CSI, but the former MA state senator.

  • peg_c

    It indicates there is no helping to convince anyone outside the conservative circle. Millions of us former lefties KNOW that is not true!

  • peg_c

    Amen, brother.

  • peg_c

    Gotta love it! Great video.

  • Flagstaff

    even after Reagan was elected he was ridiculed by the ruling class (yes, there was one then, too) because he thought he could completely revamp the tax system.

    What a joke! He thought he could reduce tax rates and close tax loopholes that were hated by the public, and increase tax revenues, too. Can you imagine that?

    Yet he did it, and with a Democrat Congress, too. He worked with Democrat leaders like Bill Bradley and Dan Rostenkowski to push tax changes through that reluctant, but not strictly politically divided, Congress. In last Friday’s (the 13th) Wall Street Journal:

    http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704407804575425661456858140.html

    “It would be hard to find two more unlikely allies than Rosty, the Chicago pol with New Deal principles who ran the Ways and Means Committee, and Reagan, the California conservative who was then in his second White House term. But both men also knew how to compromise, and tax reform was one of those issues on which liberals and conservatives could both get some of what they wanted.

    Conservatives won lower tax rates

  • Jon E. Schultz II

    …I really just wanted to know if he wrote his speeches..I was genuinely curious.

    Thanks for the ignorance tag…geez.

    - Jon

  • janis

    I should have checked your posting history. If I had, I would have seen that you were a long standing member of RS. And I would have known that you weren’t taking a nasty poke at Ronald Reagan. In my defense……

    I have no defense. Shouldn’t have done it. Again, sorry.