The "excesses of the '60s and '70s."

[JDPriestly]

So Obama thinks that Reagan's election was a response to the "excesses of the '60s and '70s."

Just what "excesses" was Obama referring to?

Was it the assassinations of John F. Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Medgar Evers, James Cheney, Michael Schwermer, Andy Goodman and the countless other martyrs to the cause of civil rights and justice of that era? Was it the illegal, unwinnable, purposeless and endless War in Viet Nam? Was it the killing of innocent students in the war protest at Kent State? Was it the illegal surveillance of peace activists including no less than John Lennon? Was it the Watergate burglary and the subsequent cover-up?

Many or, depending on your opinion, all of these crimes were committed by right-wing extremists or their agents. All of these crimes were motivated by hatred, prejudice and disrespect for the rule of law and the rights of others. They usurped a vibrant, democratic movement and replaced it with the politics of fear and despair. Reagan's election was not a response to these crimes although they were the true excesses of the '60s and '70s. It was merely the continuation of them by "legal" means.

Reagan's inauguration signaled the end of the era of change that Jimmy Carter's administration promised to begin. Reagan's removal of the solar panels that Carter had placed on the roof of the White House symbolically aborted the birth of environmentalism as government policy. Similarly, Reagan's reduction in the funding for social reform ended the dream of the Great Society. Reagan made it impossible for millions of disabled Americans, particularly mentally ill Americans, to obtain Social Security benefits and eventually forced them to sleep in cardboard boxes in the coldest of winter in back alleys and under the bridges of America. Reagan began the assault on Social Security. Reagan fomented wars in Central America resulting in a flood of Central American refugees across into Mexico and the U.S. Reagan began the bankrupting of our treasury with his borrow and spend economic strategy. Reagan attacked unions and set off the downward spiral of American wages. Reagan introduced the idea of free trade which led to the exodus of American manufacturing jobs and the downfall of the American working class. Reagan was a colossal mistake. He was the beginning of the end of our democracy and our country. He brought us Bush.

Obama is a moving orator, but he is not ready to be president of the United States. It isn't his chronological age that is a problem. It is his lack of knowledge about the past of America. It is his lack of humility and appreciation for the horrible price that heroic Americans had paid for two centuries to keep the American dream alive. Obama owes an apology to all the heroes of the '60s and '70s. They made it possible for him to live the life he enjoys.

Reagan was no hero. He came to office, not on a wave of hope and optimism, but on a tsunami of crime and fear.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/18/us/politics/18edwards...
http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0503-22.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medgar_Evers
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mississippi_Civil_Rights_W...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vietnam_War
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kent_State_shootings
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watergate_scandal