Re: to be fair to Reagan
What they're doing to Reagan's memory, making him into the patron saint of extremism, reflects badly on them, not Reagan.
I didn't point out Reagan's restraint using military force to damn him. It damns his successors that they were a lot quicker on the draw while trying to wrap themselves in a thin veneer of "Reaganesque" to justify their wars.
Um...nobody's painting that picture of Reagan except you. Much of what Reagan accomplished against the Soviets was due to diplomacy, and there is some interesting reading in letters I have seen between him and various Soviet leaders.
Me, I remember eight years of liberals being the ones screaming that Reagan was going to start WWIII any second.
What Reagan did that no modern Democrat would have done is create a paradigm change, describing communism for what it is, and even shocking the liberals with that outdated word, "evil." He said it was something that could be defeated, not a fact of existence requiring permanent "detente." Have you ever read how this affected the people in the Gulags when they heard about it?
Compare to today's themes of moral equivalence, continuous apologies for America, and essentially radiating indecision and weakness. "Ta ta, ta ta, ta ta" (talk talk, talk talk, talk talk).