The Ronald Reagan Presidential Library Foundation sent me this spacko bumper sticker. 'I Remember Reagan' it says. Of course their looking for money to keep the lights on and keep the old Air Force One from falling on anyone. The plea starts off with;
Dear True American,Wouldn't you like to cast your ballot for Ronald Reagan just one more time ?
Actually I never had the opportunity despite being a rather precocious 12 year old the first time. I actually was a Bush man at the time.
The Voodoo economics snipe caught my young imagination. I watched all the Sunday morning shows if I could get out of Sunday school. Read Time magazine and diligently watched the evening news. I liked Bush's military, CIA and economic background enough to distinguish it against the vapid pretensions of the former governor of California. But as time rolled on and the hostages were announced free after our seventh grade lunch, he seemed better than Carter. Despite whatever the news was saying in 1982 about the recession, by 1984 I was reluctantly telling my manager at McDonald's that Mondale didn't cut it as the 'thinking man's' candidate.
I suppose that's why I didn't see that commercial about morning in America that much. Too busy working and learning how to drive and live despite bondage to the public school system. There simply was no greater freedom than driving and working at age sixteen. I got in trouble in American History class for advocating a build up of short range nuclear weapons in Europe as a way of deterring the Soviet Union. But reading National Review did that to you at such a young age.
Every day we read stories in the newspaper of evil in the world. We see news reports on the television of men and women who despise the very freedom that President Reagan fought so hard to preserve.
It was probably the 'evil empire' reference which started 'the Fall' for me, maybe the Camus book too. I suppose if you watch O'Reilly every night or listen to Limbaugh during lunch, you see a lot of evil in the world. In reality if hatred, ignorance and motivation are truer representations of the truth, perhaps these people aren't so evil as just stupid. Evil implies all that Beelzebub stuff. When Ollie came sauntering in and the tawdry details revealed, it was looking more like the man man was a figurehead for something more notorious and anti-American than the pre-blog world could even imagine at the time.
Of course in retrospect any reference or knowledge to Mises or Rothbard was hitherto unknown, so their predictions of the Soviet failure alluded me altogether. But like Santa and the white bearded guy in the clouds my skepticism was starting to grow. It also wasn't to hip or cool to be a conservative in the mid eighties as a teen/college student, but I never trayed from my anti-government rhetoric, I just didn't defend Micheal Deaver & crew out loud. So when Bush finally got his chance and I could vote too, it was for Ron Paul. All the crunchy kids and bleeding heart professors in the world couldn't get me to forsake the anti-government sentiment that has stirred my soul/being ever since. While the diary might be interesting to a student of history, it's not worth the hundred the $125 gift to what I presume is already paid for in part by the theft of taxation.
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