Gimme more of that pro-appeasement triumverate

OK, so I had to look up the word  "triumverate" but nevertheless, it's a great title (but not of my origin)

So I watched a PBS a show called "TURMOIL AND TRIUMPH: THE GEORGE SHULTZ YEARS" which was actually pretty good.  Regan was President during my non-attention years.  I didn't like him, but did not really know why.  Most likely It was because he was a Republican, but some of it had to do with this conservative nonsense that was starting to swell.

I don't know what exactly bothers me so much with the term "conservative".  I think a lot has to do with the attitude of those who wrap themselves in it.  Also, I think there are more than two types of view points out there which is how people who subscribe to this dogma seem to believe.  But mostly it is the fervent adherence to a view of the world that is misguided, narrow-minded, and in most cases wrong.  Still they hold to their rhetoric unwilling to see the world for what it really is.

Regan is given a lot of credit for ending the cold war with the Soviets.  I was told, and believed, that he did this by outspending them on a military buildup.  This is somewhat true, but I heard recently, and this PBS show has now confirmed, that the end of the Cold War had more to do with Mikhail Gorbachev and George Shultz then the gipper himself.  Make no mistake that Regan's ability to trust Gorbachev and listen to his "triumverate" was key to the success.

So the question I have is "are we better off now because of what Regan did with the Soviets? 

I went searching for the George Will comment that was made on the show and in my search I found this on another blog called fabiusmaximus:

 On 8 December 1987, at Reagan’s third summit with Mikhail Gorbachev, they signed the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (Wikipedia).  This marked the beginning of the end to the cold war, a major step to lifting the threat of global annihilation that had existed for 3 decades.   How did conservatives react to this bold step by their leader?

Excerpt from “The Treaty: Another Sellout”, Howard Phillips (Chairman of The Conservative Caucus; see his bio at Wikipedia), op-ed in the New York Times, 11 December 1987:  America has never been in more danger than now, during the final 13 months of the Reagan administration.  Although neither Ronald Reagan nor George Bush could have come to power without strong conservative support, conservative influence is absent from the top decision-making councils of the executive branch, and conservative policies have been comprehensively abandoned.  President Reagan is little more than the speech reader-in-chief for the pro-appeasement triumverate of Howard Baker, George Shultz and Frank Carlucci.

The center of the administration’s policy is the president’s unfounded assertion that Mikhail S. Gorbachev is “a new kind of Soviet leader” who no longer seeks world conquests. The summit meetings and so-called arms-control treaties are a cover for the treasonous greed of those who manipulate the administration.

And from another.........

Excerpt from George Will’s 1988 book The New Season: “Historians may conclude that it was during this administration that the United States conclusively lost the Cold War.”

So they were wrong, Regan was right to trust Gorbachev.  That's why this conservative nonsense is so wrong.  It leaves no room for anything other than a strict concurrence of ideology, dogma, and orthodoxy to one - and only one - view of the world.

If you tell me we are not better off because of what these men did, then I have a wall I'd like to show you, but i can't, cause it's no longer there.

Me n' Bill Moyers

I noticed I have written 129 posts. 129 random bits of stuff I felt compelled to put down and made available for all to see. No one reads this blog except two of my "family" members and they only do it so I don't feel bad.

I continue to write it because it gives me something to do and it allows me to synthesize my thoughts on a topic. Because I force my self to cite the information I use to counter something, I become better informed. Case in point was my post on "cop killer bullets."

I think there is a need for all different takes on things, especially from honest brokers which is what I am trying to be. I have no self-serving agenda - no dog in any one particular hunt. I am pro humanity, against torture, and think we have both a moral and social obligation towards one another.

You can call me a parent, a husband, a teacher, a mentor because I want to be those things, even though I fall short. I am not a conservative but neither do I want to be called a liberal. I am not idealogical except on two points - I believe that man can be better and you can engineer out most problems. My views are changeable based on where the data takes me unless they conflict fundamentally with what I am.

When it's all said and done I want to be remembered in a similar manner as Bill Moyers who will be retiring this year:

Assessing Moyers' work in the L.A. Times recently, Neal Gabler wrote: There's no shortage of loudmouths on television. There is, however, a very short supply of soft-spoken moralists: exactly one. Moyers can speak truth to power precisely because his motives are unimpeachable, his independence firmly established, his respect for ideas and thought amply demonstrated.

Hopefully "being remembered" wont be for 25 or more years, but that's what I want my rambling to be seen as.

Cheers!