Garden State Patriot

When this…

Led to this…

It’s amazing what can happen when you have a President who actually promotes the cause of liberty, isn’t it?

45 years ago today, Ronald Reagan delivered perhaps his most famous speech on behalf of the Barry Goldwater campaign. Now known as his ‘A Time For Choosing’ speech, it could not be any more relevant then as it is now. In the speech Reagan draws clear and distinct difference between conservatives and liberals – warning us in no uncertain terms of the dangers of socialism. While I’ve posted this before, it never gets old. Here is the speech in its entirety.

On ‘Hannity’ last night, Sean compared the meek response of Obama vis-a-vis Iran to Reagan’s strong and principled stand against communist oppression in Poland. Check out this telling video here. Now if only Mr. Hannity would take my calls!

By the way, here’s what I wrote back in January regarding the Obama approach to Iran:

Herein lays the problem with Obama’s approach toward Iran. One can not engage in diplomacy – which entails negotiation, finding common ground and compromise – when the ‘partner’ at the table is an opponent of the convictions and values your nation stands for. To do so would be pacifism. And as history has taught us pacifying enemies of freedom only leads to more violence, war and tyranny, not less. One can only hope that history isn’t about to repeat itself.

Proven right? Pretty much, I think. Although the one thing that has become more clear to me now is that Obama has also completely ceded our moral authority as the leading promoter of freedom and democracy in the world. With his constant apologizing for America and willingness to cut deals with dictators he’s boxed himself in. He put himself in a position of not being able to support the Iranian protesters for fear that it would damage future negotiations with the evil mullocracy. In essence, his approach legitimized an evil regime.

Well, we can’t say you weren’t warned.

Obama was out on the stump today beginning to make the case for socialized health care. As is typical for our new president/CEO of GM, his words are meaningless. He claims that a public plan would not mean the end of private insurance. Of course, once a public plan is in place more and more people will be pushed into it as private insurers won’t be able to compete.

Interestingly, the battle over socialized medicine is nothing new. Most of us recall the 1993 battle over HillaryCare. Certainly, that was the biggest battle to date. But the fight dates back to well before this. It’s a fight that Ronald Reagan himself enjoined. He saw how socialized medicine was by its nature an anti-freedom, pro-socialism agenda. He saw that those who wanted socialized medicine would never win the day by passing it in one fell swoop. Rather, they would do so in incremental steps. This is exactly what is going on now. Obama claims a public plan won’t mean the end of private plans, but ultimately that’s what it will in fact result in.

With this huge battle looming, I can think of no better place to look to in order to prepare for this fight than Reagan himself. His message in this video couldn’t be any less relevant now than it was at the time he delivered it. It’s a message we need to heed and utilize in order to stop socialized medicine from becoming a reality in our nation. 

Cross-posted at Conservatives with Attitude!

A few days after the inauguration, our intelligence agents obtained firm and incontrovertible evidence that the government of Nicaragua was transferring hundreds of tons of Soviet arms from Cuba to rebel groups in El Salvador. Although El Salvador was the immediate target, the evidence showed that the Soviets and Fidel Castro were targeting all of Central America for Communist takeover. El Salvador and Nicaragua were only a down payment. Honduras, Guatemala, and Costa Rica were next, and then would come Mexico.

The plans had been in the archives of Communism for a long time. I had been told Lenin once said, “First, we will take Eastern Europe, then we will organize the hordes of Asia…then we will move on to Latin America; once we have Latin America, we won’t have to take the United States, the last bastion of capitalism, because it will fall into our outstretched hands like overripe fruit.” –Ronald Reagan, An American Life

Following up on my post from last evening, I thought it was important to remind people just who Daniel Ortega is. Daniel Ortega is nothing less than a Marxist who brutalized his own people. If Daniel Ortega had his way, he would have created a second Communist satellite in the Americas; subjecting the Nicaraguan people to the same kind of tyrannical, oppressive regime as Castro’s Cuba.

As leader of the Sandanista rebels, he worked in concert with and drew support from the Soviets and Castro as they looked to spread Communism throughout Latin America and ultimately to America itself.

In An American Life, Reagan describes the barbarism of the Ortega-led Sandanistas.

…the brutal pro-Marxist rebels…were slaughtering innocent peasants, burning and pillaging their crops, destroying electrical power lines, and blowing up dams in their campaign to wrest control of the country… Unable to win the hearts of the people, they were depriving them of food, water, electricity, and the ability to earn a living and feed themselves.

Thankfully, Ronald Reagan understood the Communist threat in Latin America and stopped Ortega by funding the Contra freedom fighters (overcoming opposition from Congressional Democrats, as well as an unsupportive and gullible press at the time, I might add). But make no mistake; this is a man who has no moral standing whatsoever to critize our country in an way, shape or form. And for Obama to sit there and not defend America against the likes of Ortega is beyond deplorable.

President Obama, history does matter…even if it happened when you were in your crib.

Cross-posted at Conservatives with Attitude!

It’s hard to believe but Ronald Reagan would have been 98 years of age today. As someone who came of age during the 1980’s, my fondness for him as a man, and appreciation for the leadership he brought to our nation only grows with the passage of time. Lord knows we could use his wisdom today during these trying times.

As we celebrate Reagan’s life on this day, let us never forget what he did for our country. Despite efforts by liberals to this day to rewrite history and disparage Reagan’s accomplishments, these facts are incontrovertible. Ronald Reagan:

1. Won the Cold War
2. Ushered in an unprecedented era of American prosperity
3. Uplifted the nation’s morale and restored the people’s pride in America; morale and pride which had been severely shaken post-Watergate, post-Vietnam and after the malaise of the Carter years

Of course, the other quality Reagan possessed that endeared him to so many and also made him one of our greatest Presidents was his unique wit. So, in remembering Reagan today I wanted to leave you with some classic Reagan humor. Enjoy – and God bless the Gipper! We miss you, Dutch!