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Posts Tagged ‘Reagan Centennial’
February 18th, 2011 at 12:18 am
Noam Chomsky Helpfully Explains the Reagan Legacy
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As commemorations and retrospectives continue to accompany the centennial of Ronald Reagan’s birth, the far left is taking its chance to recycle the anti-Reagan propaganda it’s had to keep on ice for the last quarter century. And when it comes to radical revisionism, no one’s better that MIT linguist Noam Chomsky, the dean of wise old leftists insulated from reality by the tenure system.

In an appearance on the program “Democracy Now”, Chomsky offered this summation of the Reagan Legacy:

 “What happened after Reagan left office was the beginnings of an effort to carry out – this Reagan legacy to try to create from this really quite miserable creature as some kind of deity and amazingly it succeeded,” Chomsky said. “I mean, Kim Il-sung would have been impressed. The events that took place when Reagan died, the Reagan legacy, this Obama business – you don’t get that in free societies. It would be ridiculed. What you get it is in totalitarian states.”

Apart from the fact that this world-renowned linguist has all the syntactical finesse of a five year old, what’s most telling is Chomsky’s bogeyman invocation of totalitarianism. Remind us again, Noam, what was your role in bringing down the Soviet Union? And what is it exactly that Hugo Chavez finds so appealing about your books?

January 18th, 2011 at 7:44 pm
Ronald Reagan’s Unlikely Defender: Barbara Walters
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With the 100th Anniversary of Ronald Reagan’s birth approaching next month, Reagan supporters and detractors alike are looking to cash in on our 40th President’s legacy. Sadly, it’s not clear which of those categories his son, Ron Jr., falls into.

In a new book, “My Father at 100”, the junior Reagan claims that his father was suffering the effects of Alzheimer’s Disease during his second term. This is not a new allegation, but it’s one that has usually been limited to liberal innuendo in the past. No publisher worth his salt is going to let a book like this go to press without a pre-release date press bombshell, however, and Reagan’s closeness to his father (genetically speaking, at least) gives this claim more credence than it would otherwise enjoy.

Remarkably, a defense of the Gipper is coming from an unexpected corner of the media. On today’s episode of “The View”, Barbara Walters — who moderated the 1984 presidential debate that the younger Reagan cites as evidence of his father’s deteriorating mental state — came out hard against the allegations. As noted by the Daily Caller, she said:

“Ron, Jr.’s half-brother Michael said this is not true. This didn’t happen,” she continued. “I’m going to say something that I probably saw more of President Reagan in those years than either of his sons. He was not really close to them. And I did interview after interview. I didn’t see any signs of dementia or Alzheimer’s or whatever until after he left office.

After all these years of Joy Behar, Whoopi Goldberg, and Rosie O’Donnell, this is hardly penance for all of “The View’s” shots at conservatism. But it’s not a bad place to start.