Reagan as Skim Milk, Cream in America's Coffee

Politech's Declan McCullagh points to this mondo negatory 1987 summation of Reagan's legacy by Murray Rothbard, which has been posted by MR's posse over at The Mises Institute. Rothbard, in his own words, comes to "bury Reaganomics, not to praise it." He does a pretty good job, though anybody who closes with a Gilbert and Sullivan line (rather than a Gilbert O'Sullivan line) is suspect:

This, along with the universal misperception of Reaganomics, illustrates once more the wisdom of those incisive political philosophers, Gilbert and Sullivan: "Things are not always what they seem; skim milk masquerades as cream."

Whole thing here. (As a side note, I much prefer the way the late, lamented band The Godfathers rewrote that G&S line in their great song, "If I Only Had Time": "Things ain't what they used to be/Cary Grant's on L.S.D.")

Former Reason editor Virginia Postrel has written an insightful obit for Reagan, one that focuses less on economics and more on the role RWR played in shaking off those lazy, hazy, malaise-y days of the '70s. She also helps to explain how Reagan--a Republican, fer chrissakes, and an ancient, old man, to boot!--attracted young people.

Whatever impressions nostalgic TV shows may leave with those too young to remember the real decade, the late 1960s and 1970s were a scary time to grow up. The world just kept getting worse and worse, and nobody seemed to know why….

The policies Nixon and Ford tried didn't work, and Carter told us that was just the way the world was. We should get over our selfishness, our materialism, and make do with less. The problems of the world were our fault, a sign of our fallen nature, as individuals and a nation. Oh yes, and while we were addressing our crisis of meaning, we needed oil import quotas and a SynFuels Corporation.

No wonder Reagan attracted the young….

The president took a bullet and lived and told jokes on the way to the hospital.

In some ways, surviving that assassination attempt in good health was the most important thing Reagan did. It robbed history of its inevitable tragic ending. (Remember, too, that the pope similarly survived a bullet, and Margaret Thatcher made it through an IRA bombing.) Reagan became living proof that things do not have to end badly.

Many of his conservative allies, taught by the terrors of the 20th century, firmly believed that history is a tragedy, that the best we can do is to fight a long, twilight struggle. They believed that evil is as strong as, perhaps stronger, than good, and that tyranny is more powerful than freedom. At the time, I believed them too.

Reagan believed in the triumph of good and the strength of freedom. He acted on those convictions, and he was right.

Whole thing here.