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Originally Posted by The One and Only...
Quote:
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Originally Posted by KevinTheOmnivore
Simply politically speaking, he was the yin to FDR's yang.
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No, he wasn't. Both were interventionists. |
Yes junior, that's why I put emphasis on "simply politically speaking." I understand that Reagan was more rhetoric than policy, but that's aside from the point. Politics is often about perception, not reality (if I only had a dime.....).
This is why some douche bag, duckling Republican in the House just this past year wanted to replace FDR on the dime with Reagan. He did that because he could get away with it, as long as it was Reagan. He couldn't have made the same case for Richard Nixon or Gerald Ford. Conservatives wanted Barry Goldwater, but they got Ronald Reagan, and whether or not he was 100% ideologically consistent, he is still the symbol for what is now modern conservatism (as indiscenerable as that may be in this day and age).
Furthermore, to call Reagan an "interventionist" would require setting a strict definition upon conservatism. Which is it, the "progressive conservatism" of Disraeli and Churchill, the traditionalist conservatism of Maistre, the liberal conservatism of Burke, or the "conservative socialism" of perhaps the first neo-con, Clemens Von Metternich....? Are we talking strictly in terms of American conservatism? Are we talking Peter Viereck or William F. Buckley? Irving Kristol and his "populist conservatism"? This debate could spin around forever and ever, which leads me back to my first point-- it's impossible for anyone to be the president of this country and remain completely ideologically consistent. The guy you call an interventionist would be called a passive, reactionary moralist by another.
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