printAt Beliefnet.com, Jack Kerwick rips into a certain elephantiasis to have plagued Ronald Reagan—the Gipper’s penchant for “gargantuan government.” So far, I have only 4 comments, all of them positive, on “The ‘Reagan Revolution’: A Myth Exploded” by Jack Kerwick:
With rare exception, virtually every “star” in the movement is a neoconservative. From the personalities on Fox News to the shining lights of “conservative” talk radio, from “conservative” politicians to the most well known “conservative” writers, there is scarcely an intellect to be found that isn’t indebted to the neoconservative worldview.
[Jack Kerwick, Dec. 26, 2012]
1) Technically, Jack may be right to invoke the word “intellect” with respect to the perpetual parade of mega mouths seen on Fox News, CNN, MSNBC, PBS, etc. But there must be a better way (a word combination that triggered my musical memory: Watch what passes for pop music in Israel. It’s v e r y g o o d. More solid stuff from “Noa” here. And more about Mira Awad here).
How about “intellectuals who are not intelligent”?
2) Republican Ann Coulter has fleetingly voiced this “Reagan Epiphany,” saying that “Ronald Reagan should not be held up as ‘the touchstone for every [other Republican] candidate.’” But that’s as far as Ms. Coulter’s philosophical integrity went.
3) In fairness, and unlike almost all other Republican candidates, Reagan had the ability to brilliantly enunciate the principles of liberty. Judging from his soaring rhetoric about our (small “r”) republican liberties, Reagan understood these freedoms both viscerally and intellectually. This goes to the Gipper’s innate intelligence, which is forever disputed by the pinko pukes on the left. Intelligence why? Because the argument from liberty is a rational argument; the argument for collectivism an emotional one.
4) In some measure, Ronald Reagan’s affinity for freedom in words but not deeds bolsters another of Jack Kerwick’s brutally honest observations. This one pertains to the “inexcusable” nature of any “ignorance of the immensity of our national government, say, and ignorance of the sheer powerlessness of any one person or even group of persons to scale it back to so much as a shadow of its counterpart from the eighteenth century. …”