The Day After - Was Reagan too successful?

The last 24 hours have been very depressing. I have spent the day trying to wrap my head around what happened last night....I never thought I would see the day when a majority of Americans would vote willingly for socialism. To paraphrase 'someone' I heard recently, for the first time in my adult life, I am really scared for my country.

I grew up in a different time. I was 11 years old when Ronald Reagan was inaugurated. For some reason, I was fascinated with him immediately. My earliest memories are of the Carter presidency, and how it seemed to me that everyone around me was worried about everything. I rarely heard anything good about the country. At the time, I had no idea what patriotism even was. Then, along came President Reagan, and even at my young age, he made me realize how special it was to be an American. Due to his leadership, and the events of the time, I came to realize what it was to be 'free' and how MANY other nations in the world did not enjoy the freedoms that we did. Communism seemed to be everywhere then, and President Reagan made it quite clear that this was bad. I spent my teenage years watching as this man confronted the spread of communism every chance he had, and also duly noted how he was opposed every step of the way by the Democrats of the day. I came to realize very early which 'side' I was on.

As I grew older, my interest in politics grew. As I studied the various political positions of the parties, it was obvious to me that everything President Reagan and most Republicans stood for just made good common sense. It was very clear to me that most democratic positions were nothing but gateways to socialism, which fortunately, due to all those years of getting to watch President Reagan stand up against those very policies around the world, I knew to be a bad thing....

Now that I am grown with children of my own, and watching the events of yesterday, a thought came to me that perhaps President Reagan may have actually been TOO successful. His leadership and fervent belief in capitalism led directly to the collapse of the Soviet Union and the communist regimes of eastern Europe, when their economies simply could not keep up with ours. Consequently, there are far fewer such regimes left in the world today. This is a good thing, to be sure, but as a result, now there are fewer examples of just where extreme socialism can lead.

The last few weeks, I have watched as people do not seem to understand just why 'sharing the wealth' is bad. I have heard others interviewed on the radio who cannot explain who Karl Marx was. For a long time, I have noticed Che Guevara shirts being worn everywhere by young people who surely cannot realize just who this man was, the evil acts he perpetrated, and what he represented...Do people understand or care that within the last 60 years, a socialist government, taken to extremes, built a wall to keep its people IN, and KILLED people who desperately tried to cross this wall? During the time this was happening, socialism, communism, and marxism were all 'bad words' in America. People saw what was happening in Europe, and understood where such a government could lead. Anyone running for office who was even remotely associated with any of these philosophies would have surely gone down in flames.

This lack of understanding is the only way I can explain the election of Obama. There is no way America could have elected this man if the majority of people today really understood where views such as his can lead this country. It was once said by Norman Thomas, a presidential candidate from the Socialist Party of America that "The American people will never knowingly adopt socialism, but under the name of liberalism, they will adopt every fragment of the socialist program until one day, America will be a socialist nation without ever knowing how it happened." I am afraid this has actually came to pass, but not just under the name of 'liberalism', but ignorance. Many people voted for Obama's liberal policies because they 'sounded good', to be sure, but if people really understood the true nature of socialism, and there were more examples of just where it could lead, I feel his message would not have sounded quite as good. This coupled with the fact that the warning signs about Obama and his views were right there for anyone to see. This is a man who turned to marxists and communists at every point in his life for friendship and advice. But again, if people do not understand what this means, is it any wonder we got the election results we did?

Do not misunderstand what I am saying. Ronald Reagan is my hero. I was extremely lucky for him to have been president at a time when I was so impressionable, and America and much of the world is still MUCH better off to this day due to his leadership. I feel that we simply MUST find a leader who can inspire people and have the backbone to follow through with things as he did. In the meantime, we as Conservatives must do a better job of explaining who we are, and why our way is better. We must explain to our children just WHY socialism is bad, where it has led in the past, and what it can mean for their future. It is obvious the public school system will not do that job for us... We are heading down a road now that could wind up disastrous for this nation if we do not step forward and not only oppose the policies of this coming administration, but make people understand WHY they should be opposed.