Ronaldus Magnus
July 5, 2012 — Steven Hayward
My occasional series on F.A. Hayek last fall drew exclusively from his economic books, especially The Constitution of Liberty. But cleaning up some old files today I came across a 1983 interview with Hayek in Encounter magazine where he displayed that he was not only a dedicated Cold Warrior, but understood the logic of deterrence and completely approved of President Reagan’s peace-through-strength strategy: Question: Isn’t high arms expenditure also a
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July 4, 2012 — Steven Hayward
Okay, I take a back seat to no one in admiring Ronaldus Magnus, but this is just over the top (though I do admit I kinda like it–I mean, if we can have “Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter,” why not this):
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June 13, 2012 — Scott Johnson
Not many speeches are mighty deeds. When Ronald Reagan stood in front of the Berlin Wall at the Brandenburg Gate on June 12, 1987, he performed a mighty deed by giving the speech he gave (video excerpt below). Our friend Peter Robinson was the man who wrote the speech. He tells the story behind the speech in his memoir How Ronald Reagan Changed My Life. On the occasion of the
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June 12, 2012 — Steven Hayward
Today, as has been widely noted throughout the morning on all the right Twitter feeds and Facebook posts, is the 25th anniversary of Ronaldus Magnus’s speech at the Brandenberg Gate in Berlin, where he issued his demand, “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!” Oh what the heck, here’s how I describe the scene in the opening passage of The Age of Reagan: MOST of his senior aides didn’t want him
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June 12, 2012 — Steven Hayward
I’ve always liked Jeb Bush. He was a great governor of Florida, and would likely make a very good president. He might still have been a contender some day if he hadn’t put his foot in his mouth in the precise fashion he did over the weekend, embracing the stupid liberal talking point that Ronaldus Magnus couldn’t win the Republican nomination today. Not only that, he complains, Poppy Bush couldn’t
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June 8, 2012 — Steven Hayward
Today is the 30th anniversary of Reagan’s famous address in Westminster Hall, London, where he outraged fashionable opinion with his argument that it was Communism that would end up “on the ash heap of history.” Kudos to the Washington Post editorial page today, which takes positive note of the anniversary to say: THIRTY YEARS AGO, on June 8, 1982, President Reagan delivered an address to the British Parliament that stands
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March 18, 2012 — Steven Hayward
Of the many things liberals hated about Ronald Reagan, few excited more spasms of outrage than Reagan’s use of the image of the “welfare queen.” Reagan gave an example of a person in Chicago who illegally collected welfare benefits under multiple names: “She has eighty names, thirty addresses, twelve Social Security cards and is collecting veteran’s benefits on four non-existing deceased husbands. And she is collecting Social Security on her
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February 6, 2012 — John Hinderaker
Steve noted earlier today that it is Ronald Reagan’s 101st birthday. Americans For Prosperity released this video in honor of the occasion, contrasting Reagan’s leadership with that of the current president:
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January 27, 2012 — Steven Hayward
Both Elliott Abrams, at National Review Online, and, as John Hinderaker noted yesterday, Pete Wehner (quoting from my book) have brought up Newt Gingrich’s pungent criticisms of Reagan back in the 1980s, supposedly giving the lie to Newt’s claim to have been solidly aligned with Reagan in those glory days of conservative nostalgia. It is perfectly fair of Elliott and Pete to call Newt on his revisionist history, but what
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November 8, 2011 — Steven Hayward
There’s a splendid line in The Queen, the film about how the royal family responded to the death of Princess Diana in 1997, where the new Prime Minister Tony Blair (played pitch perfect by Michael Sheen) turns savagely on his press assistant Alastair Campbell and says, “When you get it wrong, you really get it wrong!” The line comes immediately to mind when seeing the latest issue of The Economist,
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October 26, 2011 — Steven Hayward
It is with great sadness that the news comes today of the passing of William Niskanen, the long-time chairman of the Cato Institute and veteran of the Reagan Administration (he was chair of Reagan’s council of economic advisers for a spell). Niskanen was one of the great gentlemen of Washington and one of the intellectual giants of our movement. His modest, quiet manner in a town of loud climbers made
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October 10, 2011 — Steven Hayward
So now it’s Nancy Pelosi’s turn, saying on ABC’s “This Week” yesterday: “Listen to Ronald Reagan when he talked about how unfair it was for a bus driver to be paying at the same rate as a millionaire. . . . He speaks beautifully to the unfairness of that scenario.” Sigh. Well, good news: my Commentary magazine October cover story, “The Liberal Misappropriation of a Conservative President,” is now out from behind
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October 7, 2011 — Steven Hayward
The Washington Post’s Al Kamen today spotlights the Center for American Progress’s latest bit of mischief (“Ronald Reagan, The Original Class Warrior?“)—reposting a speech of Ronald Reagan from 1986 in which the Gipper said: We’re going to close the unproductive tax loopholes that allow some of the truly wealthy to avoid paying their fair share. In theory, some of those loopholes were understandable, but in practice they sometimes made it
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October 1, 2011 — Steven Hayward
My Commentary magazine cover story, “The Liberal Misappropriation of Ronald Reagan,” is out in the October issue. Unfortunately it is behind a subscriber firewall for the time being; the link here is to the abstract only. But this gives you a good reason to subscribe! But here’s one excerpt about Obama’s abuse of Reagan: WE CAN START with Obama’s use of Reagan’s words about “raising revenue from those who are not now
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