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Ronald Reagan Was the Original American Idol

1/15/2011

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Ronald Reagan was God.

At least, that is what many of my high school classmates told me.  He was the reason for the economic recovery that started in early 1984, the fact that we were not at war with anyone and the resurgence of “morality” in our nation.

When I disagreed, arguments ensued.  The arguments would always revolve around Reagan and what my “problem” was.

I would say I did not agree with the arms buildup under Reagan.  Then I would get a response like:

“These weapons protect us!  Reagan is tough on communists.”

Of course, after I left high school, Reagan made an arms-reduction deal with the Soviet Union.

I said I did not like the strike on Libya that Reagan authorized in April 1986.  He did so in retaliation for what he believed were Libyan leader Moammar Khadafy’s terrorist activities.  The classmates first pummeled me with their fists before the teacher arrived in one of my classes.  They told me we needed to be tough on terrorists.

Of course, after I left high school, an investigation revealed that the Reagan Administration illegally shipped weapons to Iran, designated by the State Department as a terrorist state.  This is now known as the Iran-Contra affair because the profits were diverted to the anti-communist Contras in Nicaragua.

My suspicion that the nation was not being told the whole story about the President’s mental faculties fell on deaf ears.  I guess that is why people even then called him the “Teflon President.”

Of course, after I left high school, Reagan acknowledged that he had Alzheimer’s disease.  And now, in his new book, Reagan’s son Ron, Jr. admits that his father may have had this problem during his time in the White House.

Support for Reagan during those years I was in high school was comparable to idolatry.  Instead of evaluating his policies, my classmates blindly followed them.

Over twenty-five years later, little has changed.  Republicans still view Reagan as anti-communist, anti-terrorist and the epitome of patriotism.  The facts don’t seem to matter.

As we approach the one hundredth birthday of President Reagan, we can expect to hear the same rhetoric from his supporters.  As they did at his funeral in 2004, they will say that he “won the Cold War” (implying that the seven presidents before him did not contribute), that he was a “tax fighter” (he raised taxes sixteen times during his two terms) and that he belongs on Mount Rushmore (well, some say he was a big bust!).

Now would be a great time to talk of the real Ronald Reagan.  He was not as bad as Democrats would say, nor as good as the Republicans believe.

Other presidents can and should learn from the mistake he made in keeping our soldiers in Beirut before a terrorist killed over two hundred of them.  There are some places that not even peacekeepers belong.

They could learn from his use of humor to defuse difficult situations.  Troubled by accusations he was too old for another term, he knocked out any chance that Mondale could make a race of it by saying he would not make an issue out of his opponent’s youth and inexperience.

But to suggest that any leader is without fault opens us to a false argument in which some participants defend a point of view without understanding it.  Even high school students should know better than that.


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How to Argue and Win...or at Least Be Right!

5/27/2010

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Would you rather be happy or right?   Obviously, it would be best if we could be both.  But many times we argue with people who are just as convinced that they are right as we are.  They may wind up playing a game of verbal “chicken,” in which they try to force you to get out of the way of their message and be declared the “loser.”   When you get involved in a heated argument, consider your two choices.  If you really, really need to be right all of the time, be prepared to do the following:
  
  • Determine why everyone who disagrees with you is wrong.  When you debate person after person and keep declaring yourself unequivocally right, you will have to satisfy your own mind as to how this could be so.  Are the other people stupid, uninformed, biased, bought off or perhaps playing the devil’s advocate to annoy you?
     
  • Always choose the subject for debates.  You will need to determine how to keep those wrong-headed people on their toes and challenge them on issues you know something about.  Remember that if they fire back at you about something you know nothing about, you’ll have to fake it or say those words you love to hear other people say “I don’t know.”
     
  • Borrow some stereotypes to help you when you get stuck in your righteous arguments.  You can tell people their “liberal” ideas are against what they mainstream public needs.  Or, if need be, you could tell people their “conservative” or “Tea Party” ideas are not what the mainstream public needs.  Go ahead and be a “switch-hitter” - just keep track of your audiences!
     
  • Keep a few phrases handy when you fear you may be wrong, or, well, not quite right.  Practice telling your opponents that they “don’t get it,” they “do not have one iota of proof” or they suffer from a disorder no one has heard of.  The saying that "it is what it is" is perfect because it is so hard to argue with.  If you can’t be right, you can at least sound like it.
     
  • Don’t forget to imply things.  Telling the other side that people like them have “closed minds” or that they are borderline racist sends the message that they can fight back at their risk – you can always say you referred to other people and not them.
Being right all the time is difficult.  Admitting that your opponent’s argument has any merit is for fools.  You must not give in, compromise or say “whatever.”  That is for those crazy people who want to be happy.  Once you convince yourself that you have all of the answers, you’ll be too far gone to care!
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Without Critical Thinking, the Public Will Lose Its Mind

3/31/2010

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One of the few issues that unites almost everyone is opposition to waste.  No one openly favors wasteful spending or wasting opportunities, for instance.  So I want to identify those who have wasted something even more valuable, our time and to demonstrate the much-needed use of critical thinking.

We can start of with those who have made false statements about Barack Obama.  Their inane comments would all have been disposed of easily had only they listened:

False:  Obama was not a natural-born citizen and is not eligible under the Constitution to serve as the President of the United States.


True:  Obama is a natural-born citizen because he was born in Hawaii, as his birth certificate and newspaper clippings prove.  He is also a natural-born citizen because his mother was a citizen of the United States.  Even if he had been born in Kenya, as "birthers" contend, he would be natural born and could serve as the President.

False:  Obama is a Muslim.
True:  Obama is a Christian.  It does not matter if he were a Muslim, anyway.

We can then move on to the insidious comments made by "Tea Party" members and others in the health care reform debate:

False:  The federal government takeover of the health insurance industry is unconstitutional as a violation of states' rights.

True:  Even if we choose to see it that way, it is no more a violation than the federal government's control over policies enacted by states about medical marijuana and physician-assisted suicide.

False:  We can't have health care reform that is socialist.
True:  We already have socialism in our nation in the form of the use of individual taxes to pay for libraries, the police and air quality, as well as many other things that individuals cannot do by themselves.  It is also worth pointing out that the military and federal officials participate in health care plans that could be described as socialist.

False:  We cannot trust our government to handle health care.
True:  That may be so, but can we trust private corporations who continue to raise premiums sky high?

We could continue with any one of a number of obviously false statements that many people in our nation fell for.  But the point is that fewer and fewer people seem to think or want to think about what they are being told.

Discussion of the national debt serves to bring this idea home.  While we know the national debt to be well over $12 million, few understand how it got to be this way, what its significance is and what we can do about it.  Too many keep parroting the line that Obama has put us in serious debt.

The fact is, his predecessors going back to Reagan (and excluding Clinton) have brought us there.  Under Reagan and Bush I, the debt as a percentage of the Gross Domestic Product rose from 40 percent to 70 percent.  After Clinton lowered it, Bush II took to it 80 percent. (Source: http://zfacts.com)

But none of this mattes as much as the historical context.  The United States had huge debts after World War II.  It was worth getting these debts through high spending (namely, World War II) because the spending brought on a dynamic economy, which lasted from the late 1940s until the early 1970s.

With critical thinking, we could see the whole picture that the United States needs a healthy economy to pay off its debts and may have to engage in spending that will help the economy to be able to make the payments.  Without critical thinking, we are left with bumper sticker messages with which to engage a war of words.

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