{"id":1404,"date":"2015-10-26T12:50:21","date_gmt":"2015-10-26T16:50:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/?p=1404"},"modified":"2015-10-26T12:50:21","modified_gmt":"2015-10-26T16:50:21","slug":"ronald-reagan-no-conservative","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/2015\/10\/ronald-reagan-no-conservative.html","title":{"rendered":"Ronald Reagan: No Conservative"},"content":{"rendered":"

On October 21, Bill Bennett and Sean Hannity had a somewhat feisty exchange<\/a> during a segment on the latter\u2019s television show.<\/p>\n

Bennett made two remarks that are worth focusing upon. First, when asked whether he is \u201cok\u201d with a Trump candidacy, Bennett replied that he\u2019s \u201cnot OK at all\u201d with it. Given \u201cthe totality of his acts and his record and the things he has stood for,\u201d Bennett said, it\u2019s clear that Trump\u2019s \u201cnot very principled in terms of his convictions [.]\u201d Trump has \u201ca record\u201d that\u2019s \u201clonger than your arm\u201d of being \u201cwrong on all of these things [.]\u201d<\/p>\n

Trump, that is, is not a real conservative.<\/p>\n

This is Bennett\u2019s first point. He then went on to say that \u201cReagan would be thrown out by this caucus [the Freedom caucus that\u2019s resisting Paul Ryan\u2019s move to become House Speaker].\u201d<\/p>\n

Bennett, Hannity, and many other self-avowed media and Washington \u201cconservatives\u201d may be unaware of this, but Bennett\u2019s invocation of Reagan as the emblem of conservatism actually reinforces<\/em> Trump\u2019s candidacy.<\/p>\n

It isn\u2019t that Trump is conservative. The point, rather, is that, for all of the rhetoric to the contrary notwithstanding, Reagan was not <\/em>a conservative\u2014at least he wasn\u2019t if we judge him according to Bennett\u2019s benchmark of \u201cthe totality of his acts and his record and the things he has stood for.\u201d<\/p>\n

And, unlike Trump, who has never actually governed in a way to contradict the GOP\u2014the \u201cconservative\u201d\u2014party platform, Reagan as both governor of California and president of the United States undermined it every step of the way.<\/p>\n

While he\u2019s widely heralded for having slashed taxes, as Alan Simpson<\/a>, a former Republican senator from Wyoming and friend of Reagan, confirmed, Reagan went on to raise<\/em> taxes eleven <\/em>times during his two terms. Moreover, in 1983, he raised payroll taxes<\/a> to pay for Social Security<\/em> and Medicare<\/em>, i.e. \u201cgovernment-run healthcare.\u201d<\/p>\n

Reagan eliminated not a single government program, much less an agency. Instead, he strengthened those agencies\u2014like the Departments of Energy and Education\u2014that he originally pledged to abolish, and he even strengthened the profoundly intrusive Occupational Safety and Health Administration. Reagan created <\/em>the Secretary of Veterans Affairs. As Murray Rothbard writes<\/a>, \u201cThe Gipper deregulated nothing, abolished nothing.\u201d<\/p>\n

He concludes: \u201cOverall, the quantity and degree of government regulation of the economy was greatly increased and intensified during the Reagan years.\u201d<\/p>\n

Indeed it was. The federal government grew exponentially under Reagan\u2019s watch.<\/p>\n

As recently as 2014, Mother Jones, <\/em>a leftist journal, commended <\/em>Reagan for advancing the cause of Big Government. Alex Park<\/a> remarks: \u201cIf you judge him [Reagan] by the uncompromising standards of today\u2019s GOP, Reagan was a disaster.\u201d During Reagan\u2019s eight year tenure, the national debt almost tripled from $907 billion to $2.6 trillion. The federal workforce increased to 324,000 people (of whom only 26% consisted of military personnel). In fact, Park observes that as of 2012, <\/em>nearly a quarter of a century after Reagan left office, the federal government has nearly a million fewer<\/em> people working within it. In contrast, under the \u201cliberal\u201d Democrat, Bill Clinton, \u201cthe federal workforce was at its smallest size in decades.\u201d<\/p>\n

Implicitly, even Reagan\u2019s biggest devotees admit that he presided over a substantial enlargement of the federal government, for they continually declare, against \u201cliberal\u201d Democrats who suggest otherwise, that government revenues increased courtesy of Reagan\u2019s income tax cuts.<\/p>\n

Thanks to Reagan\u2019s economic policy, then, the federal government now had significantly more <\/em>of citizens\u2019 monies to do with them as it pleased.<\/p>\n

In 1986, Reagan granted amnesty to some three million or so illegal immigrants that were then residing within the United States, a move that only exacerbated this country\u2019s illegal immigration crisis.<\/p>\n

Regarding gun-control, Reagan\u2019s actions too frequently conflicted with his pro-Second Amendment rhetoric. He promoted and signed into law the \u201cFirearm Owners Protection Act of 1986,\u201d legislation that the NRA favored. Yet Reagan signed it<\/a> after <\/em>a Democratic congressman from New Jersey, William J. Hughes, slipped in a provision that criminalized ownership of fully automatic firearms that weren\u2019t already purchased before the date that the Act became law.<\/p>\n

After Reagan left office, he came out in support of \u201cthe Brady Bill,\u201d even going so far as to say in a New York Times <\/em>editorial that had this piece of federal legislation existed in 1981, the assassination attempt on his own life may have never occurred<\/a>! Reagan as well cited gun death statistics that, he contended, could be reduced courtesy of such federal legislation as the Brady Bill.<\/p>\n

In 1994, Reagan, along with Jimmy Carter and Gerald Ford, endorsed a federal ban on \u201cassault rifles<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

Of course, no one should\u2019ve been surprised by any of this. As governor of California, Reagan\u2014an FDR Democrat for over three decades who never abandoned either his admiration for FDR or the New Deal\u2014foreshadowed how he would govern as president.<\/p>\n

While campaigning for the governorship of California, Reagan pledged to not raise taxes. Once he was elected, however, he not only reneged on his promise; he slammed Californians with the largest tax increase in their history. And it wasn\u2019t just incomes that<\/a> he taxed. Reagan proceeded to tax sales, cigarettes, alcohol, banks, and corporations.<\/p>\n

He also acquiesced in legislation requiring tax payers to conserve three of California\u2019s rivers\u2014after he had promised to fight it.<\/p>\n

Reagan legalized<\/em> abortion. Though Reagan (supposedly) came to regret this, his biographer, Lou Cannon<\/a>, writes that Reagan \u201cknew that the California law was overly restrictive,\u201d and he \u201cwas particularly bothered that it made no exception for rape or incest.\u201d<\/p>\n

Like such \u201cpro-life\u201d Republicans as, say, Paul Ryan<\/a>\u2014Reagan\u2019s rightful heir, according to Bennett<\/a>\u2014Reagan was against abortion except for when he was for it. The politically-convenient (but logically and morally untenable) position to which virtually every Republican subscribes is that abortion is immoral except for when the human victim is the product of rape or incest, or when that unborn human being threatens its mother\u2019s life.<\/p>\n

It is obvious, though, or at least should be so, that this point of view is indeed a cop-out, for if abortion is immoral, it is immoral because it consists in the unjustified killing of an innocent, defenseless human being. This innocence is in no way compromised by the circumstances within which that human being was conceived. Thus, if Republican conservatives are \u201cpro-life\u201d even though they allow exceptions that are morally irrelevant to the innocence of the unborn, then liberal Democrats are also \u201cpro-life,\u201d for most oppose abortion as well under some circumstances (second and third trimesters, etc.).<\/p>\n

Conversely, if liberal Democrats are \u201cpro-choice\u201d for allowing circumstances for abortion, so too are conservative Republicans \u201cpro-choice\u201d for allowing circumstances under which women can choose <\/em>to abort their offspring.<\/p>\n

In summary, if Trump is no \u201cconservative\u201d because of his past support for Democrats and some of their positions, then neither was Reagan a conservative for the same. (In fact, Reagan appears far less \u201cconservative\u201d than Trump by this measure, and there is no denying that, because he actually held office, that Reagan did far more damage to the \u201cprinciples\u201d for which \u201cconservatives\u201d claim<\/em> to stand.)<\/p>\n

On the other hand, if Reagan remains, not only a \u201cconservative,\u201d but the poster boy for \u201cconservatism,\u201d then so too does Trump fit this description.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On October 21, Bill Bennett and Sean Hannity had a somewhat feisty exchange during a segment on the latter\u2019s television show. Bennett made two remarks that are worth focusing upon. First, when asked whether he is \u201cok\u201d with a Trump candidacy, Bennett replied that he\u2019s \u201cnot OK at all\u201d with it. 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