In Which I Rise to Victor's Bait
In "Reagan: Almost Revolutionary," his post below, my friend and hero Victor Davis Hanson proves intentionally and mischievously provocative. Also successfully. The proof? I'm provoked. To take each of Victor's accusations in turn:
Item: "Reagan signed an abortion bill."
True. As governor of California, Reagan did sign what was then one of the most liberal abortion laws in the nation. He agonized beforehand, concluding that fetuses represented human life and that abortions could therefore only be justified in the interest of the mother's medical well-being. He sought--and received--extensive assurances from the medical community that abortions would take place only rarely, and only when truly medically necessary. Very soon after signing the legislation, Reagan realized he'd been duped, and he regretted it for the rest of his life, becoming, and remaining, staunchly pro-life. See for yourself.
Item: Reagan "provided blanket amnesty in disastrous fashion."
Wrong. Completely. The 1986 immigration bill that Reagan signed did indeed grant amnesty to the three million or so aliens then in the country illegally, but--a point often overlooked--the legislation also contained stringent new measures to shut down illegal immigration from that point on. What went wrong? In subsequent years the federal government utterly failed to enforce these new measures. But by the time this breakdown became clear, Reagan had left office. An amnesty for a modest number of immigrants in return for secure borders from then on. There was nothing "disastrous" about that, and if the feds failed to enforce the law, the blame falls on subsequent chief executives, not the Gipper.
Item: Reagan "started withholding taxes in California."
True--although he resisted doing so for a good long time before, under intense pressure from the whole apparatus of the state government, he finally gave him. Care to guess who made the same mistake? Milton Friedman, who, in the Treasury Department during the Roosevelt years, advocated tax withholding. Nobody's perfect.
Item: Reagan "raised them [taxes] while in Washington."
Oh, please. Yes, Reagan raised taxes, but the critical question, surely, is what he did on net. The answer: he cut taxes a lot more than he raised them. After enacting the biggest income tax cuts in history in 1981, Reagan came under intense pressure again, agreeing in 1982 to take back part--but only part--of his tax cuts if Congress would reduce spending. (Does it go without saying that Congress welshed on the deal?) And then, with his 1986 tax reform, Reagan reduced tax rates once again.
Item: After the 1983 bombing of the Marine Corps barracks in Beirut, Reagan was guilty of "fleeing Lebanon."
True--with important qualifications. As Donald Rumsfeld demonstrates in his new memoir, Known and Unknown--Rumsfeld served as Reagan's Mideast envoy--whereas Reagan's own instincts were to remain in Lebanon, everyone else wanted out. Everyone? Yup. Secretary of Defense Cap Weinberger and Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher included. You could argue that Reagan should have overridden the counsel even of these tough-minded, courageous advisors. What you can't argue is that Reagan simply cut and ran in some sort of spasm of cowardice.
Which leads to an important question of historical judgment. Rumsfeld gets to it in the title of his book, which of course comes from his remarks during the war in Iraq that there are "known unknowns" and "unknown unknowns." During the nineteen-eighties, the Reagan administration was focussed on defeating the Soviet Union--and, of course, did so. Terrorism tended to be seen in the government as disconnected acts by separate groups with disparate grievances. The notion that terrorists of all kinds might make common cause under the banner of a radical form of Islam or that they might represent a systematic threat to the United States--this was something new, something that a few figures here and there (George Shultz, for one) seem to have glimpsed, but to which the government as a whole, including Reagan himself, was not awake. It represented, in some basic way, an "unknown unknown."
Should the government have been awake to the terrorist threat? Should Reagan have been? It would have been good, obviously, if they had been. But, again, should they have been? That strikes me as a hard question.
Consider Churchill and FDR. During the Second World War, they devoted all their energies to defeating Hitler. Churchill opposed Bolshevism as a young man, between the wars. And yet during the war, there he is, working hard to ingratiate himself with Stalin. In Moscow in 1944, Churchill connived with Stalin in dividing up Eastern Europe--we have the notes in Churchill's own hand.
Then, at Yalta in 1945, Churchill and FDR cooperated with Stalin in ceding Poland, Czechoslovakia and much else to Stalin entirely. Yes, the Red Army was already in possession of much of Eastern Europe. But you can't read the notes of the Yalta Conference without shaking your head in dismay. Why didn't FDR and Churchill push harder? Why didn't they refuse to permit themselves to become implicated in the Soviet domination of Eastern Europe?
The answer, of course, is that they were still busy fighting Hitler in Europe and Japan in the Pacific--Yalta took place six months before the first test of an atomic bomb. The Soviet overlordship of half of Europe--the whole Communist enterprise that would do so much to blight the second half of the twentieth century--FDR and Churchill simply were not awake to it. Churchill knew better, you could argue--just over a year later he would deliver his "Iron Curtain" speech at Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri. But at Yalta? Even Churchill failed to demonstrate the kind of burning moral indignation you might have expected.
Of course it would have been better if Reagan had grasped the terrorist threat, just as it would have been better if Churchill and FDR had at least laid down moral and diplomatic markers at Yalta, refusing to cooperate quite so completely with the Soviets. But should Reagan? Should Churchill and FDR? As I say, this strikes me as a hard question. History is the story of fallible beings. We ourselves prove naive if, in retrospect, we expect too much of them.
My. I can hardly wait for Victor's reply.
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Jun '10
Re: In Which I Rise to Victor's Bait
A good old fashioned dust off between two California boys! I love it!
Thanks for the clarification on the California abortion bill, Peter. That is a huge piece of evidence to use when Reagan comes under fire.
Oct '10
Re: In Which I Rise to Victor's Bait
Well spoken Peter. Great men are also fallible men. I love TR's famous quote on this subject:
"It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat."
"Citizenship in a Republic,"
Speech at the Sorbonne, Paris, April 23, 1910
Jun '10
Re: In Which I Rise to Victor's Bait
Pulling up a chair. Popcorn is popping in the microwave. Let the games begin!
Oct '10
Re: In Which I Rise to Victor's Bait
More like: "the joints they are a roasting, the flaggons topped with ale, the pennants are a flying, the ladies bright and hale."
Re: In Which I Rise to Victor's Bait
Your account of Yalta, Peter, leaves something to be desired. At Yalta, Churchill did what he could to persuade FDR to take a tougher line, but he failed to do win him over, and Britain was not strong enough to go it alone. For details, see my essay: “The Beginning of the Cold War,” in Churchill’s “Iron Curtain” Speech Fifty Years Later, ed. James W. Muller (Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 1999) 49-67.
Re: In Which I Rise to Victor's Bait
Thanks Peter my Ronald Reagan debating points have just been greatly improved!
Let's untie a liberal from the Ricochet basement and let me have at him! I'm ready for debate now!
Re: In Which I Rise to Victor's Bait
Paul, I'm not sure you see my point. Any account of Yalta that extends to only a few paragraphs will leave a lot to be desired, and I'm certain that Roosevelt was the worse culprit. But that Churchill could have done more? That even he, great man that he was, failed to display the kind of moral indignation that the Soviet occupation of Eastern Europe would richly have justified? This is a matter of judgement, I suppose, but I myself have, on this point, zero doubt.
At Yalta, we see Churchill maneuver. We see him probe. We see him attempt limited sallies of indignation. We do not see him thunder.
Of course Britain wasn't strong enough to go it alone. Of course the Red Army was already in possession of much of Eastern Europe. That isn't my point. My point is that Churchill and FDR could still have placed genuine indignation on, as it were, the moral record. They failed to do so.
Edited on February 22, 2011 at 9:21pmRe: In Which I Rise to Victor's Bait
Peter Robinson: Paul, I'm not sure you see my point. Any account of Yalta that extends to only a few paragraphs will leave a lot to be desired, and I'm certain that Roosevelt was the worse culprit. But that Churchill could have done more? That even he, great man that he was, failed to display the kind of moral indignation that the Soviet occupation of Eastern Europe for the next four-and-a-half decades would richly have justified? This is a matter of judgement, I suppose, but I myself have, on this point, zero doubt.
At Yalta, we see Churchill maneuver. We see him probe. We see him attempt limited sallies of indignation. We do not see him thunder.
Of course Britain wasn't strong enough to go it alone. Of course the Red Army was already in possession of much of Eastern Europe. That isn't my point. My point is that Churchill and FDR could still have placed genuine indignation on, as it were, the moral record. They failed to do so. · Feb 22 at 11:28am
Edited on Feb 22 at 11:32 am
You greatly underestimate the constraints under which WSC was working.
Jul '10
Re: In Which I Rise to Victor's Bait
You're two of my absolute favorite contributors but if I can just defend Churchill for a moment...I believe at Yalta, he wanted to do otherwise but felt he had no support from the U.S. Michael Dobbs has illustrated this private agony beautifully in his novels but the historical record seems to indicate it was a bit more than a piece of fiction. I think if anyone at the time had even the most remote idea how big of a problem the Soviet Union was going to become, it was Winston Churchill. President Roosevelt was a great man and in many ways a great president but his handling of that situation (as well as the years we let Great Britain fight alone) have always given me pause when considering him a moral man, as well. He was a politician. Churchill, on the other hand, was something else entirely. Had he lived, I'm not certain FDR would have considered Yalta his greatest regret but Churchill certainly did.
Jun '10
Re: In Which I Rise to Victor's Bait
Good Berean
More like: "the joints they are a roasting, the flaggons topped with ale, the pennants are a flying, the ladies bright and hale." · Feb 22 at 11:10am
A bit too early to top my flaggon but there is a Guinness at the ready in case I need to have a refreshing meal later on in the course of the match.
May '10
Re: In Which I Rise to Victor's Bait
I think this suggests that the fall of the Soviet Union wasn't a collaborative event. Personally, the socio-economic dilapidation caused by Soviet socialism was the primary catalyst. Credit also must be given to the popular movements led by now famous Eastern European agitators such as Vaclav Havel and Lech Walesa.
Oct '10
Re: In Which I Rise to Victor's Bait
Churchill and FDR are a sideshow. Let's get back to main event: Reagan.
Re: In Which I Rise to Victor's Bait
We may be arguing crosswise here, Paul. As best I can tell, we actually agree.
Could one imagine Churchill's demonstrating greater indignation at Yalta? His storming over to the villa where FDR was staying to insist on seeing the president? For that matter, his refusal to sign the final documents? Yes, one can at least imagine something like that--and, in light of more than four decades of the effective enslavement of half of Europe, one can really crave for some sign, on the record, that Churchill at least felt an impulse to do so. Then reality settles in. Churchill was constrained in a hundred ways, just as you say. Expecting him to have done more may simply be unrealistic and unfair.
Just so--and this is my point--Victor's charge that Reagan fled from Lebanon. One can certainly imagine Reagan's grasping the terrorist threat as we grasp it today, then taking the battle to the terrorists themselves. But over the objections of his Secretary of Defense? And of Margaret Thatcher? Again, a sense of historical reality settles in.
Dec '10
Re: In Which I Rise to Victor's Bait
Reagan started out as Democrat who admired FDR. He made mistakes in judgment and in governing.
Over time his views and political philosophy developed and evolved. He became a Republican and he became more conservative and libertarian, in particular about the role of government in the economy and in domestic affairs.
He concluded government is part of the problem, not part of the solution, and he said so.
Those who agree are still trying to convince the majority this is true.
Aug '10
Re: In Which I Rise to Victor's Bait
Oh, I see, Reagan can be against abortion and sign a bill legalizing it but Romney gets excoriated for doing essentially the same thing. Seems fair to me...
Jan '11
Re: In Which I Rise to Victor's Bait
I
Item: Reagan "provided blanket amnesty in disastrous fashion."
Wrong. Completely. The 1986 immigration bill that Reagan signed did indeed grant amnesty to the three million or so aliens then in the country illegally, but--a point often overlooked--the legislation also contained stringent new measures to shut down illegal immigration from that point on. What went wrong? In subsequent years the federal government utterly failed to enforce these new measures. But by the time this breakdown became clear, Reagan had left office. An amnesty for a modest number of immigrants in return for secure borders from then on. There was nothing "disastrous" about that, and if the feds failed to enforce the law, the blame falls on subsequent chief executives, not the Gipper.
With respect, Mr. Robinson, but this is akin to saying: John Adams signed the Sedition Act but he didn't really enforce it so that makes it OK.
May '10
Re: In Which I Rise to Victor's Bait
Peter, I understand your point on Churchill, but you overlook some important qualifications. Your first major problem is that you do not distinguish between “Central” Europe and “Eastern” Europe, a distinction largely lost for people in the West following the Cold War. Most of the agreements during the war were designed to concede the states on the Soviet Border (Romania, Bulgaria, the Baltics) while establishing Central Europe (Poland, CS, Hungary, and YS) as neutral states. Conceding Eastern Europe was necessary to appease a paranoid Soviet ally (not to mention their limited strategic necessity and the inability to beat the Soviets to their “liberation” anyhow). If you look at Churchill’s note, it falls right in line with this framework, allowing Soviet domination of strategically unimportant Romania and Bulgaria in exchange for the more strategically relevant Greece, while dividing influence in Hungary and Yugoslavia evenly.
Edited on February 22, 2011 at 10:59pmMay '10
Re: In Which I Rise to Victor's Bait
Nickolas: Reagan started out as Democrat who admired FDR. He made mistakes in judgment and in governing.
Over time his views and political philosophy developed and evolved. He became a Republican and he became more conservative and libertarian, in particular about the role of government in the economy and in domestic affairs.
He concluded government is part of the problem, not part of the solution, and he said so.
Those who agree are still trying to convince the majority this is true.
I think most libertarians would dispute this and I would agree with them. I wrote a member feed on Reagan's advocacy of government intervention and the scathing reviews of him by his libertarian detractors. Many admire his rhetoric but treat him as a kind of fraud.
May '10
Re: In Which I Rise to Victor's Bait
Allowing Soviet domination of Central Europe, on the other hand, is where to draw the line between Churchill and the US leadership. Churchill, not trusting the Russians, wanted the Western armies to push as far east as possible into Czechia, Hungary, and Yugoslavia to assure their neutrality after the war. He particularly pushed this on Truman, who turned him down because the US military leadership (particularly Marshall and Eisenhower) wanted to focus on ending the war quickly and opposed breaking their military agreements with the Russians. The US thus held to a position of simply trusting the Soviets to uphold their agreements on a democratic, neutral Central Europe.
May '10
Re: In Which I Rise to Victor's Bait
That said, the status of most of Central Europe remained undetermined until around 1948. Yugoslavia remained a Cold War neutral, although not in the ideal manner. The Soviets allowed free elections in Hungary, but after the pro-US Smallholders won, a Red Army backed coup shortly followed. Czechoslovakia also became a legitimate neutral including a mutual SU and US troop withdrawal, an interim government led by both communist and pro-western leaders and then free elections. Unfortunately, the Czechs voted in a communist majority (although the Slovaks did not), which later led a coup. Had the US followed Churchill’s plans, it is highly possible both Hungary and CS likely could have remained neutral states (Yugoslavia is more complicated). The main exception to this was Poland. Although it received the most rhetorical support from the US, there was no way the SU would allow an independent government there given its history. The only Central European country to become neutral was Austria, which had an ample US military presence. Really, while the West had conceded Eastern Europe by Yalta (including Churchill), most of Central Europe became a casualty of US containment policy after the war.
Edited on February 22, 2011 at 10:46pm