Americans want Reagan right now. Poll....

“While Reagan extolled the virtues of free enterprise in front of the logo, G.E., along with Westinghouse, Allis-Chalmers and other giant corporations, was habitually controlling the market by clandestine price fixing and bid rigging agreements, all of which led, in 1960, to grand jury indictments, in what was characterized by the Justice Department as the largest criminal case ever brought under the Sherman Anti-Trust Act,” Doctorow noted.

As a child I watched Reagan pitch the joys of 20-mule team Borax on Death Valley Days, two reoccurring themes on the Old West show were the joys of imperialist conquest and genocide against indigenous people. All of it was served up by the smiley-faced Gipper. Bertrand Gross would later assess the Reagan administration as “friendly fascism.”

Caught up in the Goldwater conservative movement, Reagan realized that he could deliver the right-wing reactionary script better than the much more intellectual Senator from Arizona. Thus, in 1966, Reagan took his highly-honed hokum and became the ultimate shill for the far right. As the New Republic pointed out during his 1966 campaign for Governor of California, “Reagan is anti-labor, anti-Negro, anti-intellectual, anti-planning, anti-20th century.” Reagan campaigned against the civil rights movement, the peace movement, the student rights movement and the Great Society. In his fantasy world, Reagan equated giant price-fixing corporations with small town entrepreneurs. As every long-hair in the late 60s knew, Ronald Reagan was “the drugstore truck-drivin’ man, the head of the Ku Klux Klan.” He said if the students at Berkeley wanted a bloodbath, he would give them one. James Rector was shot dead soon after.

http://freepress.org/columns/display/3/2004/912

 

The exemplars of right wing American thought.
God, don'tcha just love 'em.