John Patrick Diggins: Reagan's misunderstood
[John Patrick Diggins is a professor of history at the City University of New York Graduate Center. This essay is adapted, with permission of the publisher, from Ronald Reagan: Fate, Freedom, and the Making of History, to be published next month by W.W. Norton & Company Inc. Copyright © 2007 by John Patrick Diggins.]
... In a curious way that is still not accepted by skeptics, the presidency of Ronald Reagan revived the study of intellectual history, for the historical era of the 80s so overflowed with think tanks and ideas it seemed there could be no policy without a set of beliefs or doctrines, no politics without a political theory. An obvious idea of the Reagan era was the idea of the free market. Conservatives, however, are also said to believe in authority, truth, virtue, order, religion, and the hallowed institutions of the past. One might think, then, that Reagan would have honored conservatism and returned America to its roots in religion and to the conservative ideas of the founding.
Reagan's orientation, however, was always toward the foreground, not the background, to what lay ahead and not what had gone before. He did read some of America's founding political and religious leaders, and he shared their conviction that the basis of a free government is liberty; but he would have grimaced on hearing their thoughts about the human condition. The Puritans and the framers of the Constitution maintained that we must see our errant selves as the problem, whereas Reagan inevitably saw government as the problem. Although many conservatives see religion, especially Christianity, as the bedrock of morality, Reagan's thoughts reveal no suggestion of the doctrines of Calvinism and original sin and the ideas of the framers and their sense of evil. James Madison told Americans that government is essential because not all men are "angels." Reagan told Americans that each and every one of them was a "hero." His own hero was Thomas Paine, the blasphemous rebel (Theodore Roosevelt called him a "filthy atheist") and popular writer of the Revolutionary era. Paine saw freedom as the birth of the new and the death of the old. Valuing authority less, Paine loved liberty more. And Reagan never stopped admiring him for it.
When preparing for the Geneva summit conference in 1985, Reagan and his aides composed a speech to deliver to the Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev: "One of the early leaders of the revolution that gave birth to our country — Tom Paine — said, 'We have it in our power to begin the world over again.'" Gorbachev could well have thought that the quasi anarchist Paine sounded a tad like Vladimir Ilich Lenin. In The State and Revolution,the Bolshevik leader promised that the realization of freedom would bring forth the "withering away of the state." Reagan accepted completely the libertarian argument that the state poses a threat to liberty. Throughout his presidency, he wrote letters to private citizens telling them that people do not start wars, only governments do.
As the cold war was winding down, Gorbachev remarked that until he dealt with Reagan, he had had no idea how much "the personal" mattered in world politics. Inculcated in the Marxist tradition, he believed that history happens "behind the backs of people," made by changes in the structure of society and driven by historical necessity rather than moral activity. Some American conservative thinkers also played down the role of the personal in history. Henry A. Kissinger, for example, thought Reagan was naïve to assume that it would take only "conversation" between the leaders of countries espousing two rival ideologies to reduce tensions and even alter the course of history. To many conservatives, history is determined by the struggle for power among forces aiming to dominate and prevail. Reagan, however, persisted in defying fate and taking control of events, in forcing history to fulfill its promise of freedom without going to war. "History is not predetermined," he told reporters when leaving for Geneva. "It is in our hands." His new diplomacy aimed to challenge a cold war stuck in endless stalemate. He felt the same way about domestic policy as he did about foreign policy. In his first Inaugural Address, he declared: "We are not, as some would have us believe, doomed to an inevitable decline. I do not believe in a fate that will fall on us no matter what we do. I do believe in a fate that will fall on us if we do nothing." In an age darkened by the shadow of fate, Reagan gave history a bright new birth of freedom.
One of the most inspiring political leaders in the second half of the 20th century, Reagan was also one of the three great liberators in American history. Abraham Lincoln helped emancipate African-Americans from slavery; Franklin D. Roosevelt helped wrest Western Europe from fascism; Ronald Reagan helped liberate Eastern Europe from communism. Each realized that the goal of freeing others jeopardized domestic priorities. Lincoln had to keep in mind the preservation of the Union, Roosevelt the reform legacy of the New Deal, and Reagan the conservative aim of reducing the national government and reaffirming state sovereignty. In the pursuit of victory, Lincoln was forced to wage "total war" in an effort not only to defeat armies and devastate economies but also to undermine the popular will in the South. Roosevelt similarly had to allow the aerial destruction of Berlin and Dresden; and Harry S. Truman approved the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Reagan alone succeeded in liberating people from tyranny without going to war, and he did so through conversation and dialogue.
Yet with his Paineite passion for liberty, Reagan rarely appreciated that political life required authority as much as liberty and needed the state as an instrument of power and justice. While he employed the statecraft of realpolitik to bring the cold war to a close, big government remained the bugaboo of his lifetime, even as he did as much as any president to make it bigger. Under Reagan the original sin of liberalism and the Democratic Party, a gargantuan government and a huge national debt, became the perpetual curse of conservatism and the Republican Party.
In historical memory, the uses and misuses of the Reagan presidency constitute a chapter in American mythology. The legend involves five claims. The first depicts Reagan as a religious moralist who asked Americans to do their duty by making sacrifices in the name of God and country and to submit to Christianity as the national religion. The second assumes that the Reagan presidency solved the problems it set out to address and thereby "remade" America. The third implies that the words Reagan uttered sounded the horns of Jericho, starting an emotional earthquake that so shook the world that the Berlin Wall came tumbling down. The fourth would have us believe that America "won" the cold war through armed might and that Reagan himself was at heart a militarist. And the fifth clings to the conviction that America was right to have supported the Afghan mujahedin as "freedom fighters" in the war against communism.
Those claims call for clarification....
Read entire article at Chronicle of Higher Education
... In a curious way that is still not accepted by skeptics, the presidency of Ronald Reagan revived the study of intellectual history, for the historical era of the 80s so overflowed with think tanks and ideas it seemed there could be no policy without a set of beliefs or doctrines, no politics without a political theory. An obvious idea of the Reagan era was the idea of the free market. Conservatives, however, are also said to believe in authority, truth, virtue, order, religion, and the hallowed institutions of the past. One might think, then, that Reagan would have honored conservatism and returned America to its roots in religion and to the conservative ideas of the founding.
Reagan's orientation, however, was always toward the foreground, not the background, to what lay ahead and not what had gone before. He did read some of America's founding political and religious leaders, and he shared their conviction that the basis of a free government is liberty; but he would have grimaced on hearing their thoughts about the human condition. The Puritans and the framers of the Constitution maintained that we must see our errant selves as the problem, whereas Reagan inevitably saw government as the problem. Although many conservatives see religion, especially Christianity, as the bedrock of morality, Reagan's thoughts reveal no suggestion of the doctrines of Calvinism and original sin and the ideas of the framers and their sense of evil. James Madison told Americans that government is essential because not all men are "angels." Reagan told Americans that each and every one of them was a "hero." His own hero was Thomas Paine, the blasphemous rebel (Theodore Roosevelt called him a "filthy atheist") and popular writer of the Revolutionary era. Paine saw freedom as the birth of the new and the death of the old. Valuing authority less, Paine loved liberty more. And Reagan never stopped admiring him for it.
When preparing for the Geneva summit conference in 1985, Reagan and his aides composed a speech to deliver to the Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev: "One of the early leaders of the revolution that gave birth to our country — Tom Paine — said, 'We have it in our power to begin the world over again.'" Gorbachev could well have thought that the quasi anarchist Paine sounded a tad like Vladimir Ilich Lenin. In The State and Revolution,the Bolshevik leader promised that the realization of freedom would bring forth the "withering away of the state." Reagan accepted completely the libertarian argument that the state poses a threat to liberty. Throughout his presidency, he wrote letters to private citizens telling them that people do not start wars, only governments do.
As the cold war was winding down, Gorbachev remarked that until he dealt with Reagan, he had had no idea how much "the personal" mattered in world politics. Inculcated in the Marxist tradition, he believed that history happens "behind the backs of people," made by changes in the structure of society and driven by historical necessity rather than moral activity. Some American conservative thinkers also played down the role of the personal in history. Henry A. Kissinger, for example, thought Reagan was naïve to assume that it would take only "conversation" between the leaders of countries espousing two rival ideologies to reduce tensions and even alter the course of history. To many conservatives, history is determined by the struggle for power among forces aiming to dominate and prevail. Reagan, however, persisted in defying fate and taking control of events, in forcing history to fulfill its promise of freedom without going to war. "History is not predetermined," he told reporters when leaving for Geneva. "It is in our hands." His new diplomacy aimed to challenge a cold war stuck in endless stalemate. He felt the same way about domestic policy as he did about foreign policy. In his first Inaugural Address, he declared: "We are not, as some would have us believe, doomed to an inevitable decline. I do not believe in a fate that will fall on us no matter what we do. I do believe in a fate that will fall on us if we do nothing." In an age darkened by the shadow of fate, Reagan gave history a bright new birth of freedom.
One of the most inspiring political leaders in the second half of the 20th century, Reagan was also one of the three great liberators in American history. Abraham Lincoln helped emancipate African-Americans from slavery; Franklin D. Roosevelt helped wrest Western Europe from fascism; Ronald Reagan helped liberate Eastern Europe from communism. Each realized that the goal of freeing others jeopardized domestic priorities. Lincoln had to keep in mind the preservation of the Union, Roosevelt the reform legacy of the New Deal, and Reagan the conservative aim of reducing the national government and reaffirming state sovereignty. In the pursuit of victory, Lincoln was forced to wage "total war" in an effort not only to defeat armies and devastate economies but also to undermine the popular will in the South. Roosevelt similarly had to allow the aerial destruction of Berlin and Dresden; and Harry S. Truman approved the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Reagan alone succeeded in liberating people from tyranny without going to war, and he did so through conversation and dialogue.
Yet with his Paineite passion for liberty, Reagan rarely appreciated that political life required authority as much as liberty and needed the state as an instrument of power and justice. While he employed the statecraft of realpolitik to bring the cold war to a close, big government remained the bugaboo of his lifetime, even as he did as much as any president to make it bigger. Under Reagan the original sin of liberalism and the Democratic Party, a gargantuan government and a huge national debt, became the perpetual curse of conservatism and the Republican Party.
In historical memory, the uses and misuses of the Reagan presidency constitute a chapter in American mythology. The legend involves five claims. The first depicts Reagan as a religious moralist who asked Americans to do their duty by making sacrifices in the name of God and country and to submit to Christianity as the national religion. The second assumes that the Reagan presidency solved the problems it set out to address and thereby "remade" America. The third implies that the words Reagan uttered sounded the horns of Jericho, starting an emotional earthquake that so shook the world that the Berlin Wall came tumbling down. The fourth would have us believe that America "won" the cold war through armed might and that Reagan himself was at heart a militarist. And the fifth clings to the conviction that America was right to have supported the Afghan mujahedin as "freedom fighters" in the war against communism.
Those claims call for clarification....