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Trying to erase ‘tear down this wall.’

By: Moe Lane (Diary)  |  January 14th, 2011 at 09:00 PM  | 

RESIZE: AAA

It is my first instinct to treat this report of Ronald Reagan Jr’s… commentary… by simply letting it pass by without a response.  For those not wishing to click through, the boy (use of term deliberate) is indulging elderly liberal fetishists everywhere by making the claim that his father was suffering from Alzheimer’s as far back as the 1984 debates*, as well as ‘details’ regarding a supposed operation in 1989 that had even the US News & World Report doing some fancy footwork in order to avoid having to declare it a lie.  It’s the Left; it’s pornography; it’s Left-porn.  Outside of that particular niche market, its utility is… low.

So why even bother addressing it?  Simple: because Ron Reagan Jr picked his dates carefully.  1984 and 1986 are before 1987, which the boy made a point of explicitly referencing as being the year that his father should have resigned.  1987 is the year that the boy wants people to decide was a year where his father’s illness was clearly and obviously advanced.  1987 is the year where the boy wants his father to be dead inside.

The only problem is, 1987 is the year of the Brandenburg Speech.  You know: ‘tear down this wall.’

Decide for yourself whether or not that is a man with Alzheimer’s – but never forget this.  Before they hated Sarah Palin, or Dick Cheney, or Donald Rumsfeld, or Condoleeza Rice, or George W Bush, the Left hated Ronald Wilson Reagan.  They hated and feared him – and not least for the way that he destroyed the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics in eight short years.  It’s not even that he did it; it’s that he did it so apparently effortlessly.  Reagan made his opponents look like chumps – which they were; I was on the other side during that decade, so I have some familiarity with the type – and he will not be forgiven for that until after his last opponent is dead in his bed of old age.

So keep that in mind when you decide what books you want to read this month.  If you must buy a political book, try Known and Unknown: A Memoir.  I have it on excellent authority that the author doesn’t need to defecate on the memory of his father in order to feel less of a failure.

Moe Lane (crosspost)

*Which is a charge that should have Walter Mondale contemplating a lawsuit for libel, but never mind that right now.

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COMMENTS

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  • bcochran1981

    ..Ronaldus Magnus helped drag our country out of time that actually necessitated a “misery index,” routinely showed up his opponents with wit and flair, cut taxes (the top rate in HALF) with a Democrat Congress and almost singlehandedly brought down the USSR. And they want us to believe that he was suffering from a mental defect? That just makes them look MORE pathetic. You got beat by a man with a disease that affects the ability to reason and function. That’s the argument?

  • http://moelane.com/ Moe Lane

    I know why *I* believed it at the time: I was a teenager and stupid. But, you know? I grew out of both conditions. I don’t know what other people’s excuses are. :)

  • edwyrd

    and fast by, hanging in a golden chain, the pendant world. in bigness as a star of smallest magnitude. thither, fraught full of mischievous revenge, accursed and in a cursed hour, he hies…

    all libs are the spiritual sons of satan

  • edwyrd

    left a bit out, for sake of accuracy.

    in bigness as a star of smallest magnitude, CLOSE BY THE MOON

    got to love milton!

  • Superheater

    Is a clinical psychologist. Perhaps she can explore his issues.

  • Tbone

    for which I have no response.

  • http://www.dirkworld.com dirkbelig

    I was in high school then (1985 grad) and I remember having this “discussion” with a classmate:

    HER: The President is stupid!

    ME: Why is that?

    HER: He’s stupid!

    ME: What’s stupid about him?

    HER: He wants a war. He’s going to start a war.

    ME: What war? Where? They’ve said Reagan was a warmonger for the past four years, so where’s the war?

    She stares at me like I’m stupid.

    HER: The President is stupid.

    Aaaaaaaaaaand SCENE!

    Flash-forward to today and ask a liberal about what specific “lies” of Fox News, Palin, Rush, Beck, etc. they’d care to cite and they just scream even louder that “so and so is a liar!”

    Yep. When conservatives make a claim WITH EVIDENTIAL PROOF, they’re told their sources are unacceptable and biased. (I had a friend refused to believe a video clip and AP transcript of something that ran on CNN because the link was to FoxNews.com. I’m not kidding.)

    Meanwhile, any assertion liberals make is true, even if you point out LIBERAL news sources that debunk it. (e.g. An EX-friend on the night Obama was elected staked everything on a twisted reading of whether Palin charged for rape kits. “Just because it doesn’t say she did charge them doesn’t mean she didn’t charge them,” or some crazy version of that.)

  • yuletide

    My grandfather basically died from Alzheimer?s. My father started to show signs that my mother and me picked up on about a year ago. To outside world, he is fine mentally. Alzheimer?s takes a long time to completely destroy the brain. Ron Reagan is just saying there were signs like his dad using notes to remember things (my dad does this too). He did not say his Dad was out of it on TV or in article that was linked. Alzheimer?s is a terrible disease.

  • conservativecurmudgeon

    And Ronald Reagan’s little baby boy caused President Reagan much consternation, as did his daughter. But, that only adds to RR’s greatness in that The President allowed–insisted, rather–that his children choose their own paths, never dictating and shoving them in one direction or the other.

    How creepy that Ron Junior would want to sully his father’s memory. I just shake my head. Even if what Junior says is true, why air the laundry? What good does it possibly serve?

    I strongly urge those who have never read Reagan’s autobiography (written 1990-91) to do so, and those that have, to read it again. Reagan is the epitome of American greatness: Hard work, dreams, more hard work, boot-strap pulling, civic involvement, intense life-study, worshipping, and on and on. We were so blessed to have this man at the helm in such a critical time. I hope the Lord sees us through to allow us another person to lead that loves this nation, believes in its enduring foundation, and doesn’t waver from it as cheerfully and unabashedly as Ronald Reagan.

    Lord, I still miss him.

  • gekster

    In my life time, I saw no greater Man.

  • gazill

    I too was in my formative teen years. I was conservative, but didn’t know it. I was a Reagan fan; I did not know why, but I recall being pissed off at the Genesis video for “Land of Confusion” for making him look like a buffoon. Back then I could not even imagine how much that fine man did for this country.

  • gazill

    If you have not been there yet, I HIGHLY recommend going to the Reagan Library. I challenge you to stand in front of his memorial and not well up.

  • gekster

    But I know more of uncle Ronnie than I know of my own parents.
    And I do well up when I watch some of his speeches sometimes.
    Toutube is full of them.
    this is long, but it’s uncle Ronnie.

  • gonzo55

    The Reagan presidency was the rebirth of this country; after a 50-year span of weak and ineffectual presidents post-Coolidge and ending with pinko Jimmy Carter, who never met a horse he couldn’t bore to death, the country was weakened, discredited, in economic free fall, and in danger of losing the Cold War. President Reagan changed all of that; I still remember the stock market surging the day he was elected on the news that sane, common-sense economic policy would be restored and the Cold War would likely be won. The next 8 years saw a transformation of this country, greater, I believe that that from 1773-1781; the country simply started working again, and I personally believe that is was President Reagan that made this all possible with his economic and foreign policies, and his truly inspirational leadership. I believe the final two years of his presidency were among his most productive; it was then that he truly laid the groundwork for winning the Cold War. If that be Alzheimer’s, then sign me up, as soon as possible.

    Mr. Reagan, I hope you’re riding horses and rooting out socialists in heaven, good sir!

  • msctex

    Ronald Reagan Jr., minus the fact he is Ronald Reagan’s son, leaves. . .

    Somehow less than nothing. And he knows it.

  • zornorph

    It’s an insult to boys to call Ron Reagan Jr. one.

  • powertothepeople

    you granted the left their claims of mental issues with Reagan, it speaks volumes about their own party when a “half wit” is many times smarter than anyone they have put up for president in the last 75 years.

  • Michael Dugas

    He’ll never be able to fill them or get out of their shadow because he uses his fathers memory as his ticket to attention and notoriety. He’s chained himself to that memory and argues with it’s ghost and he’ll never win because even in his worst day on this earth Ronald Reagan Sr. was 100 times the President that Obama is and 1000 times the man Jr. could ever dream of being.

  • drfredc

    Yes, the left hated Reagan. Hate by itself doesn’t get you anywhere. The left stumbled and bumbled their way thru their hate to come up with the ‘political bigoted’ playbook that they use to this day.

    They took everything that was black in racial bigotry (blacks are stupid, lazy, can’t take care of themselves, are dangerous), and turned it into political bigotry against conservatives. To the politically bigoted, conservatives are stupid, can’t take care of themselves, conservatives are dangerous and more.

    Furthermore, the left found they could sell this political bigotry to the blacks as some sort of way for blacks to get some retribution for all the racial bigotry of the past — after all, according to the book of political bigotry, conservatives are whites. How convenient a lie…

    It’s also a very successful gambit — to this day, blacks are overwhelmingly on the politically bigoted side of the political spectrum.

    It’s also important for the lefts to use every opportunity to tear down and deface any accomplishment by conservatives. Hence political bigotry is at the core of the never ending attempt to tear down Reagan. It’s no secret the politically bigoted have already ripped Bush to shreds… They are working hard to preemptively do the same to Palin.

    One can expect the political bigotry of the left to continue into the future… at least so long as it’s not purposefully and publicly challenged by conservative leadership for the bigotry that it indeed is. Folks of most any political strip don’t like to be labeled bigots, especially when the difference between political and racial bigotry is just changing who it’s all about.

  • Adjoran

    Diagnosis under age 70 can give up to 10 years, but males tend to die sooner.

    Reagan announced his diagnosis in 1994, already seven years after 1987, and lived ten years after that.

    In short, Ron Jr. is full of it and chose to smear his father to sell a few more books. Guess the whole ballet thing didn’t work out.

  • osolono

    At a time when we may soon attempt to reform Social Security, let us remember Ronald Reagan’s words at the signing of the Social Security Amendments bill in 1983.

    “This bill demonstrates for all time our nation’s ironclad commitment to social security. It assures the elderly that America will always keep the promises made in troubled times a half a century ago. It assures those who are still working that they, too, have a pact with the future. From this day forward, they have one pledge that they will get their fair share of benefits when they retire.

    And this bill assures us of one more thing that is equally important. It’s a clear and dramatic demonstration that our system can still work when men and women of good will join together to make it work.”

    http://www.reagan.utexas.edu/archives/speeches/1983/42083a.htm

    Reagan was a conservative, but he believed in compromise.

  • azaeroprof

    We went there this summer for our family vacation. I’m not a crier by nature, but I lost it. Especially standing there with my daughter, Reagan, paying tribute to the Gipper.

    And if you go to the library, hop on up to Santa Barbara and visit the Reagan Ranch Center (the Ranch itself is not open to the public). They have some really neat exhibits there.

  • JadedByPolitics

    That she was a FOOL to believe the lies of the left about him propagandized by the Media Wing of the Democrat Party as the most evil man in the world. These of course are the same shameless, hateful, disgusting media that now is trying to have another generation hate Conservatives as much as they have and always will. Democrats/Liberals/Progressives do not just hate Conservatives they look at you and me and they see animals. They look and you and me and Reagan and they see us as we see the Taliban. If we and our elected Republicans do not see that there is no working with the other side we are doomed to the life of misery that Reagan warned about over and over again. He recognized the enemy and it was ideology and that ideology has now gained a strong beachhead in our Government. WE MUST be victorious is wiping it out, election after election until the amount of the progressives in the Congress and the Federal Government are only the %18 who still admit to being a liberal.

    To Ron Reagan Jr, I say your hate for yourself has parlayed itself onto your Dad but I who used to hate him the way you do actually GREW UP and recognized the greatness of the man. I would have hoped you would too, obviously your ideology is greater then your intelligence, too bad.

  • http://www.hakubi.us/ Neil Stevens

    - He liberalized abortion as Governor
    - He was a former union boss
    - His former career was in Communist-infested Hollywood
    - He divorced and remarried
    - He couldn’t beat Ford last time
    - He picked an establishment guy as his running mate last time
    - His hair’s too perfect

    :)

  • JadedByPolitics

    amends on abortion, saying he didn’t realize the extent to which the abortionists would go to kill so many babies.

    On the unions I believe he would have still busted them up for the power they weld.

    The Hollywood thing probably would not have helped him at all.

    The divorce thing would have definitely been a negative.

    The grassroots would still be the driving force against Ford (the Rockefeller Republican for sure)

    WE would have HOWLED at the choice of VP and been angry for the next 4 yrs :)

    The hair thing would probably be the last straw due to the idiots in 2004 who thought they should win because of their hair….jeez…think how close Kerry/Edwards got to the White House. If nothing else America chose safety over stupidity and in 2012 I think Americans will choose finances over government intervention. Reagan spoke as a Constitutional Conservative and in today’s environment he would win the primary, IMO!

  • Christine (Trelaina)

    Why does the world need to know that the President may have done a few things that, in hindsight you can maybe say were signs of pending Alzheimers?

    If you were President of the United States, with the pressures of the world on your shoulder every second of every day for 4-8 years, do you think you could remember everything even if you were a genius? I wouldn’t blame a single man who’s held that office for needing to write stuff down every now and again or forgetting stuff.

    Ron Jr did this for a reason – and I imagine Moe is not far off the target in his suspicions.

    That said, I love bcochran’s take above…”You got beat by a man with a disease that affects the ability to reason and function. That?s the argument?” These libs really need to think through their arguments before opening their mouths…or better yet, let them keep it up, please…

  • Christine (Trelaina)

    “You got beat by a man with a disease that affects the ability to reason and function. That?s the argument?”

    Perfect…

  • rdm42

    Its strange how his adopted son is fifty times more like him than his Biological one.\

  • Death_of_the_Donkey

    who believed in compromise. I believe the talking heads of today would have never let him get the nomination in 1980. Reagan was great because he took a principled stance and was willing to take as much as he could get towards that stance without requiring everything (ie he was happy to get 70%). We now seem to live in an all or nothing political world, where the base and pundits demand no compromise on anything and that makes the country less well off.

    Also, it is very important to remember that Reagan had no real love for corporations and was much more concerned with issues that affected average Americans (ie individual income tax) than things that would help the corps at the average American’s expense.

  • streiff

    From the article

    And Dr. John E. Hutton Jr. his doctor from 1984 through Reagan?s retirement, told the New York Times that Reagan didn?t show the tell-tale symptoms until 1993.

    If you want to participate in calumny find some other place to play

  • spainishirish

    nt

  • spainishirish

    nt

  • http://vladenblog.tumblr.com Vladimir

    If we’re now defining “taking notes to remember things” as a warning sign, we’re all in trouble.

  • penguin2

    was to say something that was dismissive. But, then I realized that you are writing with, and from a world of pain. I am sorry about your grandfather and your father (if there are other confirming symptoms). I realize then you are living in a world of anxiety for yourself as well.
    That said, memory does decrease as we age, and it is caused by a number of physiological changes the body is going through. Yet, there were very few that could pass a test in school without having notes to study. Notes are prompts for memory, useful and necessary; the concern lies when you look at a note you wrote, and you don’t know what or why it is there. Or use to the example of when people can’t find their keys, it isn’t the misplaced keys, only if you don’t know what to do with them when in hand.

    The issue here is why would the son of such a highly respected man, want to “try” to lessen that person’s image in the world? What does he gain by that? It was unwarranted, and uncalled for. I am sure you don’t go around trying to lessen your grandfather’s image in others’ eyes, and you will protect your father as well.

    I hope that you and your family have the support that you need.

  • sharonmcp

    wasn’t all ‘there’.

  • tankertodd

    then I don’t want to be sane!

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

    what Reagan accomplished.

  • Russ Martin

    1. Liberals are intellectually superior to conservatives. In fact, conservatives are so dumb, they are incapable of realizing how smart liberals are.
    2. Unfortunately, there aren’t as many smart liberals as there are dumb conservatives – its a natural law, or something. That’s the reason they are all so very important – cause there are so few of them.
    3. All of the dumb conservatives are easily swayed by charismatic but otherwise dumb (or now, mentally challenged) conservative leaders like Palin or Reagan – that’s the only way the very smart liberals could ever lose an election.
    4. Whenever a smart, liberal idea doesn’t work, it was because dumb conservatives sabotaged it.
    5. Whenever a dumb conservative idea does work, it was:
    a. Lucky
    b. Unfair because it made the rich richer and the poor poorer
    c. Bad for the environment
    6. Smart liberals must rule over the dumb conservatives, for the conservatives’ own good. Smart liberals feel a responsibility to take care of conservatives – kinda like they do their pets. Because conservatives need it.

    To them, it makes all the sense in the world. And if you don’t see it their way, you’re not smart enough (see #1 above)

  • fotophun

    is he now starting to feel the affects of possibly
    his own
    Alzheimers??

  • antisocial

    a thousand times better than Bill, Barry or any other DEMOCRAT occupant of the white house in the last 100 years.

    Imagine if he did not have that disease.

    PS: Ron you are a pathetic sick boy.

  • Return to Revolution

    around 1990, after Reagan left office. Unfortunately, I had not taken a large interest in politics yet but I distinctly remember one thing this idiot social studies teacher said that even as someone not too involved, struck me as off:

    “Its a shame Reagan was such a popular president because when the history books are written I think he be regarded as a pretty lousy president”

    If anything, public schools demonstrate that you don’t actually need a school to become educated.

  • JoeG

    He goes on and on about how dumb the American voting public is.

    I never let it go unanswered that the Bolsheviks thought the same of their fellow countrymen and denied them democracy because they were incapable of governing themselves.

  • aesthete

    resembles the internal thought process of a Scooby-Doo villain if it didn’t affect us in a very real way everyday.

  • aesthete

    “Crazy” Reagan ended stagflation, ushered classical liberalism back into the political lexicon, and ended his term with the USSR unravelling — all without a major ground war and in the face of opposition from the establishment on both sides of the aisle.

    “Sane” Gorbachev lost his party and his country in desperate attempts to rebut the economic, moral, political, and ideological supremacy of the US under Reagan. Disgraced, his career petered out into making commercials for te capitalists of a rival nation.

    Reagan was crazy, alright: crazy like a fox.

  • momma

    Sorry, had to say it.

  • http://www.examiner.com/x-1597-Charlotte-Law--Politics-Examiner Mike gamecock DeVine
  • http://www.examiner.com/x-1597-Charlotte-Law--Politics-Examiner Mike gamecock DeVine
  • alvin691

    “It’d be amusing how much this narrative resembles the internal thought process of a Scooby-Doo villain if it didn?t affect us in a very real way everyday.”

  • Superheater

    Even if Ron Jr. had some medical training, say as a neurologist, he wouldn’t make this statement.

    At initial onset, Alzheimers is a diagnosis of exclusion, that is, other things must be ruled out first. This is because in the elderly, prescription side-effects, depression, stress and other conditions can create the short-term memory loss that accompanies Alzheimers. (Gee, no stress with being President, huh?)

    There is no objective test for the disease, in the way you identify diabetes with a fasting glucose, Hemoglobin A1C or the glycomark test. The only way to truly be sure and make a positive diagnosis based on objective physical criteria is to make histological examination of the brain-(post mortem) to confirm the presence of the “plaques” that develop as the disease progresses. This is why DOCTORS make diagnoses, not ballerinas or failed talk show hosts.

    If Ron Jr. had done something on his own, other than becoming the antiRon and hadn’t had such a long history of hostility to his father and his politics, well, I’d say this was something other than a calumnous attempt to sully the old man.

    As it stands, he’s now a bitter middle-aged man with no discernable skill (other than being a prized “traitor” to the left) and whose atheism gives him no hope of any thing.

    Its a small and petty thing to pick fights with a man who now cannot answer and likely wouldn’t if he were still here. Most of us go through that phase where we reject our parents and all their values-most of us outgrow it, and give them some slack, long before we hit our 50′s.

    Ron seems to have no kids, its easy to lob grenades at the the guy in front, when you have no fear of being lobbed at from the rear.

    If he really found the old man so objectionable, he should change his name and quit prostituting his paternity.

  • bobmontgomery

    …who now says he was so distraught and fearful, to the point of nausea, follow up on his concerns, with his Mother, with the President’s physicians, with his brother and sisters, with the president’s men? There have already been many attempts to downplay Reagan’s importance in the collapse of the Soviet Union, so it will be interesting to see how this story is played by the media and the operatives in the coming months.

  • 6eorge Jetson

    Ha!