Taking Bearings

October 5, 2020

We were a force for good.

Well, mostly good, some scandals here and there, sometimes sideways good, a few times short-sighted good.

President Reagan is demonized by modern leftists because of his full-throated advocacy for capitalism, smaller government, unapologetic posturing of America as a beacon of freedom, his espousing an ethos of rugged individualism, and his desire to build a truly inclusive society based on capacity and merit.

Leftists with a strong Marxist or socialist bias now snidely deride Reagan. Many young people — easily influenced by predominantly leftist pseudo intelligentsia in the humanities and social sciences who dominate education outside STEM  — are often unaware of Reagan’s immense popularity and the enormous number of people his policies help liberate from tyranny.

On the other hand, Reagan is also overly deified by many conservatives who fail to see that, absent the context of the times, continued blind adherence to his policies can promote inequalities instead of alleviating them.

Regardless, Reagan took a floundering country and reenergized it.  By the end of his presidency, America enjoyed levels of global respect, goodwill, and influence not seen since the post-WWII Marshal Plan era.

America’s strength, values, and global dominance helped collapse the Soviet Union, free Eastern Europe,  and render western socialism the relatively benign indulgence of small homogeneous states protected  by U.S. blood and treasure.

Regrettably, there were many compromises with authoritarian regimes during the Cold War that subordinated human rights toward the greater cause, and our subsequent failure to actively work to dismantle those regimes and more broadly advance democracy and human rights (especially for women and others marginalized or persecuted) were part of a bipartisan squandering of the opportunities America enjoyed as the world’s lone superpower with a capacity to project force globally.

One of the greatest tragedies is that we allowed international terrorism to grow and then allowed murderous   terrorists to distract us  from our noblest ideals into an un-winnable “war” on terrorism. Terrorism can never be expunged, only limited by intelligence and precise –often best covert– operations. The use of blunt instruments (invasions, occupations, overbroad reliance on drone strikes and sanctions) often serve to suppress threats at the expense of recruiting additional generations to terrorism.

Moreover, as a result, we  now readily accept an open doctrine of “over-the-horizon” military suppression of terrorism that differs little philosophically — and often legally — from the contentious doctrine of pre-emptive war.  We have tortured and allowed torture in our name. In the case of Afghanistan we have abandoned allies in the field and surrendered a country to a barbarous theocracy.

Arguably a far greater tragedy is our paralyzing internal partisanship facilitated (and now driven) by exploitative factions on both the left and right that seek only power. Both extremes betray America’s ideals and promise.

In their myopia, both extremes distort and revise history and equally betray science, reason, civil discourse.

Self-serving partisan factions and interests are given amplified voice and influence both by social media mobs and traditional media’s widespread abandonment of objectivity in the pursuit of survival, relevance, and profitability in a news and opinion saturated word.

Since President Reagan, we have shifted from constructive self-doubt —  the kind that inherent in scientific thought that fosters a greater pursuit of common truths —  to destructive self-doubt that is partisan and paralytic.

President Reagan’s sold optimism in the American experiment. Yes, at times it was a optimistic view of flawed America possible only with blinders, but it was en enabling optimism that contrasts starkly with a deep cynicism — promoted by cynical deconstructive derivatives of postmodernism — that now rends the world’s last globally capable defender of democratic and enlightened values.