1. repealing the fairness doctrine
2. war on drugs
3. blew up the national debt by 180%+
4. iran contra affair
just a few issues i have with reagan.
1. Agree with him on this…less regulation is just about always better, if not always. People should be trusted they are intelligent enough to hold broadcasters accountable via ratings. Unfortunately because things are so corrupted due to lobbying influence, poor education, and the general trend of removing individual accountability in society, people are more susceptible to biased opinions which incentivizes biased and divisive reporting. Instead of less regulation leading to greater freedom of expression held to account by viewers, were now seeing growing censorship as govt and corporations dictate who and what ideas are just too dangerous for individuals to consume.
2. war on drugs was a disaster, and reagan should be held to account. Morally i do think there was intent to prevent them in the country. Too much latitude was given to intelligence agencies, again on him, and he was sold on ideas that backfired because of the anti-communism dogma. Again, still on him at the end of the day, but he did actually want to keep people off drugs. Weve progressed in a lot of ways with sentencing and i 100% agree nonviolent drug offenders should see little to no jail time. Now our policy is enabling - literally nothing to do with rehab or truly seeking to incentivize health and people rebuild their lives. In that way weve gone backwards as addiction, homelessness, and crime surge.
3. He did and this was what ike warned us about with the military industrial complex. We always want to be team america world police. That said, and i wasnt alive then so its harder to truly understand the climate of the cold war. But russia had missiles in cuba, i believe there was real possibility of conflict. Building up out military while russia collapsed internally won that war without firing a shot…so while degree can be argued there is an argument to be made for the increased military spending being what needed to be done in that sense. He also inherited a broken economy that he turned into a booming one. And the growth was far more broadly distributed across the population than we see today. So the debt was far more sensible in terms of repayment than todays method of well thats a tomorrow problem while growth is pathetic and income distribution is far more narrow.
4. yea that was a total mess. Mccarthyism 2.0 that the dems have now adopted with all things russia. The only positive was back then at least we held some high ranking individuals accountable and reagan publicly acknowledged the failure it was and accepted ultimately he let the country down. Conversely what we get today is: we made a complete and utter disaster of the afghan withdrawal. I mean absolute trainwreck. No one owns it. We get marines killed, no one owns it. We drone a van full of kids and say it was the person responsible until oops no we didnt. No one is responsible. At least then there was some dignity in the office. And thats just one example of humiliating leadership, whether its illegal or just making a mockery of the position theres not a hint of accountability. Thats not biden alone to be clear. Its been consistently getting worse, the war on drugs at least got exposed in a lot of ways. The war on terror and expanded intelligence autonomy with bush was where govt became totally unaccountable, and each admin has said “hold my beer” to the lasts most egregious failings
