Your “liberal” blogger is a typically brain dead bigot. The descriptions given in the New York Times and on the Drudge website were more than sufficient to allow the conclusion that the show was a crude leftist attempt to falsify history, a la the Soviets. Given what was published, saying that one had to see the whole show to form any judgment is laughable. Saying that objection to falsification of history is the same as demanding hagiographic treatment is another piece of neo-Leninist argument that is beneath contempt. I suppose that it is revealing of the collapse of public education that people such as your blogger imagine that such arguments would carry any weight with intelligent people. Perhaps it is because the Left has become used to agitating the democrat party constituencies that seem to be made up largely of the poorly educated who don’t know the difference, and the over educated, for whom political expediency trumps truth and honesty every time, and who only appeal to it on a selective basis to try to further an argument.

It is interesting to hear all this talk about Reagan as a “conservative icon,” and so forth. While I admire Reagan heartily (and expect that most VFR readers do as well), it is obvious that he was hardly perfect. Authenic conservatives will recognize this immediately.

I think Reagan’s greatness flows primarily from this: that he was simultaneously right and implacable about a couple big questions. Combine this with some real rhetorical talent and natural charm, and you have a commanding presence.

I don’t think of Reagan as “great” per se, particularly from a conservative point of view, since his conservativism was far from complete. (Think Sandra Day O’Connor, not to mention immigration.) Yet I think he had true greatness. He saw things that other people—people considered much smarter then he—did not see, and he took a stand on those things despite the tremendous opposition and contempt of his “betters” and changed the world. For example, he never accepted detente, the policy of those two foreign policy geniuses Nixon and Kissinger. He saw that the USSR was both evil and vulnerable—if its evil was exposed as such and its vulnerabilities exploited. And that’s what he proceeded to do.

I think Reagan was the most important political figure in the world in the second half of the twentieth century.

A correspondent wrote:

“Good point. Too much energy into Reagan hagiography, in my view.”

To which I replied:

Yes, you’re right. I hadn’t thought of it in exactly those terms. Today’s conservatism means being “rah rah” about America, or simply rah-rah about conservatism itself. Reagan is the symbol of conservatism. So, when Reagan was attacked, that spurred a conservative protest strong and widespread enough to have an actual effect on the dominant liberal culture. But meanwhile, over all these years, conservatives have never shown a fraction of the same passion regarding the continual cultural/moral atrocities being done by television and the liberal culture generally. If conservatives had employed the same kind of mass clout on the lying leftist news media, or the transgressive filth that is all over tv, or PC and multiculturalism in the schools and universities, or our immigration policy, or on affirmative action, these things could have been changed.

The point is that this successful protest against the Reagan movie is a symbol of both the strengths and the weaknesses of modern conservatism.

I made a similar point about the unused power of conservatives in the following article written during the Florida post-election crisis, when a spontaneous protest by Republicans in a Florida court house prevented officials from doing something improper in the vote recount:

http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2000/11/27/91323.shtml

” … when a spontaneous protest by Republicans in a Florida court house prevented officials from doing something improper in the vote recount … “

I still vividly remember seeing those well-groomed, well-behaved middle-class protestors dressed in suits and neat, correct casual wear, men and women both, and youngish, looking well-educated, intelligent, and honest as ever was, crowding around the doorway which they’d just been barred from entering, sincerely shocked at what the other side was suddenly trying to pull before the eyes of the whole country, chanting politely, firmly, insistently, indignantly, “SHAME on you! The WORLD is WATCHING! SHAME on you! The WORLD is WATCHING!” over and over again, while conservatives and Republicans felt for once a lump in their throats of pride, and the left got the scare of their lives. And the world WAS watching — watching with extreme attentiveness and interest. And after the other side had recovered from the fright of their lives, they tried to claim the demonstration wasn’t spontaneous but had been planned (because all of theirs are planned, probably). Then that was totally debunked, as in the days that followed it was proven beyond doubt that it had been a completely spontaneous expression of righteous indignation, not planned in the least.

Yes, there we caught but a glimpse of the untapped power most on our side don’t even know they have, and rarely erupt into revealing as they did there because they are too busy trying to play by the rules against street fighters who don’t acknowledge any rules — opponents for whom the “rules” are: “No holds barred and anything goes.”