Right on cue, the liberal news media in our area has checked in
with their own revising of U.S. history as it unfolded during the
Reagan presidency.
Dear Editor:
Right on cue, the liberal news media in our area has checked in with their own revising of U.S. history as it unfolded during the Reagan presidency. Daniel Sneider of the San Jose Mercury News, acting as a water carrier for the New York Times, disingenuously proclaims in his piece of June 13, that Ronald Reagan had nothing whatever to do with the fall of the Soviet Union. He is merely echoing a popular ultra-liberal theme prompted by the death of our fortieth president.
Between 1974 and 1980, no less than 10 countries fell to Soviet-style communism. That would be Cambodia, South Vietnam, Laos, South Yemen, Angola, Ethiopia, Mozambique, Grenada, Nicaragua, and Afghanistan. President Jimmy Carter had given up on the concept that communism in the Soviet Union would ever be diminished, much less eliminated. Carter’s Secretary of State Cyrus Vance implied that Marxist revolution is historically inevitable when he stated “we can no more stop (revolutionary) change than Canute could still the waters.” Jimmy Carter was the only president in the last half of the 20th century to run on a policy of anti anti communism. The electorate responded by giving Carter only one term and electing – surprise, Ronald Reagan – who won 44 of 50 states in the 1980 election. The electorate repeated this endorsement of his policy of strong defense by giving him 49 of 50 states in 1984.
But I would ask Daniel Sneider, and all of the liberal revisionists, this question. If the Soviet Union was so obviously weak and about to fall, as liberals claim it was, can you produce even one article or piece of evidence, either written or filmed, by anyone on this entire planet, other than Ronald Reagan, that asserts that the Soviet Union was about to fall?
Did you write such a piece, Mr. Sneider? Anyone from the New York Times? Washington Post? If there is such a piece, bring it on. Hindsight is easy. Of course, there is no such piece.
No, it was only Ronald Reagan that believed that Soviet Communism could be made to collapse and the meaning of his presidency is that it was his policies that hastened that demise. Even the always liberal Senator Ted Kennedy called President Reagan just last week “the president that won the Cold War.” Mikhail Gorbachev himself, also said that President Reagan was a key figure in the collapse of the Soviet Union. The outpouring of admiration and affection by the millions of average Americans that we saw this past week – none of whom were liberal newspaper pundits – is testimony of President Reagan’s central role in ending of the Cold War. No amount of leftist revisionism will change this.
Al Kelsch,
Hollister
