RateItAll: The Opinion Network

Considering the obvious slide into senility and diaper-wearing, the right could use a more coherent idol who perhaps didn't keep the company of more than one third-world dictator. . .

A great man who said it best:I did not leave the Democratic party.It left me.

Updating: Sorry E.O., but he did name names, and much worse, he allowed SAG to become an instrument of the blacklists, as summarized nicely here: http://www.cobbles.com/simpp_archive/linkbackups/huac_blacklist.htm And yes, he was given an FBI informant number, T-10 http://www.debcentral.com/education/archive22.html http://www.reference.com/browse/wiki/Ronald_Reagan That's just from a quick googling. You can also read about it in a book entitled Naming Names by Victor Navasky. Updating further: No, the above links are not "news" sites, nor really academic sites. They do however reference scholarly materials, and I never said he "publicly" named anyone - he did it in closed session per the committee's modus operendi. T-10 is an informant number E.O. You have one of those numbers because you are informing. Navasky's bookcontains many details I couldn't begin to type in here. Moreover,I doubt they were discussing the filming of Bedtime for Bonzo in closed session. As with every other person brought before the inquisition, he was given a list of names. Based on his responses they would then determine whether he was "trustworthy" in their eyes. Usually the mere act of selling out friends for the "greater good" was enough. You may argue that he was the one person who wasn't forced to prove himself that way, but you have so far cited no evidence. In his initial testimony, he refers to a "small group" of "communists or fascists" who have caused trouble for him in SAG. You really think he didn't provide names in the closed session? http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/6458/ tbonya - communists have never been a threat to our "way of life." During the depression they numbered maybe 100 thousand, and they mostly organized around labor unions, tenants rights, advocacy for social security and other federal programs. While there may have been a few spies at the time in question, they did not have government "infiltrated." The FBI and other agencies had their plants throughout the movement, and they would have nailed anybody who was actually a member. You're talking about a small group with all of the police forces looking at it through a constant microscope. What the Soviet archives reveal is that most of the spies were apolitical, which is how the Soviets preferred it. Moreover, the Democratic Party has moved steadily to the right since the New Deal. So Reagan's comment makes absolutely no sense. Ironically, Kennedy was probably the most conservative Democrat in office until Clinton, and he was completing his switchover and planning to run for governor as Kennedy was elected (Reagan switched parties in 1962). FDR was by far the most left wing president this country has ever elected. genghis - most of the actual communists got off scott free. The people who suffered were liberals who had attended meetings or rallies in their youth. The red scare was aimed at suppressing liberalism, discrediting labor, and providing a foundation for the early incarnation of the culture war. And for anybody curious as to the transition from snitch to pol, the SF Chronicle did a piece a while back which chronicles his collaboration with the FBI towards political ends - specifically attempts by the FBI and Reagan to slander UC president Clark Kerr because he refused to mandate loyalty oaths for the professors. http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/chronicle/archive/2002/06/09/MNCF3.DTL From the above article, Reagan would also participate in the illegal use of police forces to destroy opposition movements (barred for years under the Levy Guidelines set by Carter and recently undermined by the Patriot Act which has essentially revived cointelpro). The Reagan administration "will attack these groups" through several methods, Ellingwood said. These included "hounding the groups as much as possible by bringing any form of violation available against them." For example, he said, "If any of these groups has a bookstore on campus they will bring building code violations against them." Reagan officials also may refer "tax violations (of the dissenters) both to the Internal Revenue Service of the State of California and to the Federal Internal Revenue Service." Finally, the administration would mount a "psychological warfare campaign," said Ellingwood, adding that he would "confer with Department of Defense officials today to get ideas from those individuals as to how to conduct campaigns of this nature."

I debated giving him a three meaning that he really didn't move that much. The Democrats moved left. Poor old Joe McCarthy had just been sworn into office on January 3, 1947, and was a freshman senator. I don't think he had much to do with the House hearings held the same year. He did not become a committee chairman until January 3, 1953, so unless Ronnie Reagan used a time machine a la George Orwell, I doubt seriously that Reagan ever appeared before the McCarthy committee, naming names. At least that is what I gleaned from the published history on the subject. As to the Stalinists who got caught up and hoisted on their own petard, I say "good." I remember reading how Lillian Hellman and Dashiel Hammett excoriated France, England and the other allies fighting Hitler while Uncle Joe Stalin and Adolf Hitler were still pals before the attack on the USSR in June, 1941. The other Stalinist lefto sheep in Hollywood followed right along. You can say all you want about Whittaker Chambers, at least he had enough sensitivity to be sickened by the Stalinist Purges and the Nazi-Soviet Pact to leave the party. The Hollywood leftos stuck with Uncle Joe all throught the war and even after. Then they got caught. Well that's too bad. Bad acts deserve consequences and traitors get little sympathy from me.

(Yawn.) Drummond's comment is typical weak, left-wing tripe, "snitching out his friends in the Screen Actor's Guild at the McCarthy hearings . . ." Reagan testified, as President of the Screen Actors Guild, as a friendly witness (there actually were some of those) before the HOUSE Un-American Activities Commission (I believe McCarthy was a SENATOR) on October 23, 1947, naming NO names of Hollywood actors or "big shots" whatsoever, snitching out on nobody. His political epiphany, which was the result of a gradual ideological awakening, resulted in a monumentally successful presidential campaign against Jimmy Carter, who all but ceded the Presidency to Reagan in 1980. Remember him for his accomplishments, his speeches, his undying belief in the American Spirit. Not for some imagined snitching on his friends on the part of a misinformed detractor. UPDATE: Thanks for the further cure for my insomnia, more left-wing slanted "news" but even in your reference sources (who, by the way, are able to distinguish the difference between the McCarthy hearings in the Senate and the House Un-American Activities Commission, though nothing you've cited has lent any support to Reagan's publicly testifying and naming ANY names) the closest they will come to an unsubstantiated accusation is that Reagan "cooperated with the FBI, under code name T-10" naming names to them (again, no documentation like, for instance, whose names were named?) . Cobbles.com is not a universally acknowledged "news source, neither is debcentral, neither is popstarsplus. Repeating an untruth, over and over, helps it to become pop culture, but5 it cannot make it true. Neither does it make it wrong that Reagan maintained a hostility toward communists, be they Hollywood stars or national dictators, regardless of the postion he held.

Reagan was an open advocate of the New Deal in his earlier years, and even in his later years, did seem to have a great respect for FDR. In fact, in accepting the nomination as the Republican candidate for presidency in 1980, he quoted the former president. In this context it seems particularly bizarre that Reagan then proceeded to attack so fervently the benevolent social institutions and system of progressive taxation which FDR had largely created.

He's a better conservative than Dubya. He was a better president than Dubya. Let's hope that our next president matches the Reagan ideal.

I'm tearing up...