How to sum up the life of former US president Ronald Reagan, lifeguard, actor, labor union president, television personality, governor and lecturer? His long goodbye as Alzheimer's dimmed his memory cannot obscure his role as one of freedom's most optimistic advocates.
With capitalism ascendent and communism defunct, we easily forget the world 40 years ago, when Reagan entered politics. Free enterprise seemed to be operating on borrowed time, "saved" only by former president Franklin Roosevelt's "New Deal." The Soviet Union was supposedly making economic strides; newly independent states were choosing autarkic collectivism. Communism prevailed in much of Southeast Asia despite the more than 50,000 American lives lost there.
America's political agenda was set by the liberals. New regulations and bureaucracies multiplied even when Republicans held office. Reagan's sparkling speech on behalf of 1964 Republican presidential candidate Barry Goldwater was overshadowed by the latter's overwhelming defeat by former president Lyndon Johnson, architect of the Great Society.
Who could be optimistic in such a world? Reagan. In 1966 he ran for California governor, upending a Democratic incumbent in a massive upset. His 1968 presidential campaign was abortive, but he easily won re-election as governor in 1970. In 1976 came the narrow loss to incumbent Gerald Ford, who went on to be defeated by Jimmy Carter.
The world further darkened. President Carter disclaimed responsibility, spoke of malaise and warned of tougher times. Again Reagan challenged the odds, which seemed long when I signed onto his campaign just out
of law school in 1979. Yet Reagan won easily in 1980, confounding critics horrified by the candidacy of a
supposedly ignorant cowboy.
Reagan's policy achievements were vitally important but ultimately mixed in their outcomes. Still, he infused Americans with his optimistic outlook while confronting America's enemies abroad. He unashamedly extolled the virtues of liberty. He reminded Americans that they had always achieved the seemingly impossible. He called the Soviet Union an evil empire. He challenged then Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev to make good on his professed humanitarian vision by banning nuclear weapons and tearing down the Berlin Wall.
Reagan's vision, so often derided as simplistic, became reality. The US now dominates the world. Where else but America do other peoples look for leadership? Communism -- the Soviet Union, its ragged gaggle of conscript allies and of Third World impersonators -- has disappeared into history's dustbin. The Berlin Wall, perhaps the most dramatic symbol of oppression, is gone. The US and Russia have reduced their nuclear arsenals and Washington is preparing to deploy missile defenses.
We are truly living in Reagan's world. The challenges facing America are immense, but few doubt that the US will meet those challenges. The world fusses about US arrogance and hegemony, but no other state combines such ambition, commitment, competence, energy and optimism.
The 21st century is beginning like the last one ended, as the American century. The US remains the shining city on the hill. Moreover, America's prime animating force comes from private people in industry and charity. The 20th century was, in historian Paul Johnson's words, the age of politics. The politicians used their opportunity to inflict mass poverty, oppression and murder. There has been no more disastrous social experiment in history.
Now inventors and
doctors, businessmen and engineers, clerics and hackers, and artists and philanthropists are getting their turn. They are developing new medicines, finding new sources of energy, inventing new processes to protect the environment, and creating new ways to communicate.
Our technological vistas have never seemed wider. The 21st century looks to be the age of entrepreneurship, when civil society regains its dominance over the politicians. Get out of people's way, Reagan long demanded of government. When it refuses to do so, people now push it out of the way. Of course, there is more than the material to life, and Reagan worried about the larger moral environment within which we live. But he understood that virtue was not possible without freedom.
How to remember Reagan? He was friendly and engaging, warm and concerned about even young staffers such as myself. He was bright, focused on the big picture rather than policy minutiae. He was passionate about achieving a free society, and convinced that a free society was the best way to achieve a just and prosperous one as well. Finally, he was an optimist. He believed in himself and America, and the ability of free people the world over to work together to better themselves and those around them. Reagan died without knowing how right he had been. We know.
Doug Bandow is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute. He served as an assistant to Reagan.
In their recent op-ed “Trump Should Rein In Taiwan” in Foreign Policy magazine, Christopher Chivvis and Stephen Wertheim argued that the US should pressure President William Lai (賴清德) to “tone it down” to de-escalate tensions in the Taiwan Strait — as if Taiwan’s words are more of a threat to peace than Beijing’s actions. It is an old argument dressed up in new concern: that Washington must rein in Taipei to avoid war. However, this narrative gets it backward. Taiwan is not the problem; China is. Calls for a so-called “grand bargain” with Beijing — where the US pressures Taiwan into concessions
The term “assassin’s mace” originates from Chinese folklore, describing a concealed weapon used by a weaker hero to defeat a stronger adversary with an unexpected strike. In more general military parlance, the concept refers to an asymmetric capability that targets a critical vulnerability of an adversary. China has found its modern equivalent of the assassin’s mace with its high-altitude electromagnetic pulse (HEMP) weapons, which are nuclear warheads detonated at a high altitude, emitting intense electromagnetic radiation capable of disabling and destroying electronics. An assassin’s mace weapon possesses two essential characteristics: strategic surprise and the ability to neutralize a core dependency.
Chinese President and Chinese Communist Party (CCP) Chairman Xi Jinping (習近平) said in a politburo speech late last month that his party must protect the “bottom line” to prevent systemic threats. The tone of his address was grave, revealing deep anxieties about China’s current state of affairs. Essentially, what he worries most about is systemic threats to China’s normal development as a country. The US-China trade war has turned white hot: China’s export orders have plummeted, Chinese firms and enterprises are shutting up shop, and local debt risks are mounting daily, causing China’s economy to flag externally and hemorrhage internally. China’s
During the “426 rally” organized by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the Taiwan People’s Party under the slogan “fight green communism, resist dictatorship,” leaders from the two opposition parties framed it as a battle against an allegedly authoritarian administration led by President William Lai (賴清德). While criticism of the government can be a healthy expression of a vibrant, pluralistic society, and protests are quite common in Taiwan, the discourse of the 426 rally nonetheless betrayed troubling signs of collective amnesia. Specifically, the KMT, which imposed 38 years of martial law in Taiwan from 1949 to 1987, has never fully faced its
RSS