Ronald Reagan yearned so much for freedom and democracy in Soviet-bloc nations showed limited concern for democracy and human rights in other parts of the globe. After Democrats and Republicans in Congress passed sanctions against the apartheid government of South Africa, Reagan vetoed the measure. His Administration cuddled up with the fascistic and anti-Semitic junta of Argentina and backed militaries in El Salvador and Guatemala that massacred civilians. It moved to normalize relations with Augusto Pinochet, the tyrant of Chile. Reagan sent George Bush the First to the Philippines, where the Vice President toasted dictator Ferdinand Marcos for fostering "democracy." Pursuing a quasi-secret war against the Sandinista government in Nicaragua, the Reagan Administration violated international law and circumvented Congress to support contra rebels engaged in human rights abuses and, according to the CIA's own Inspector General, worked with suspected drug traffickers. Reagan covertly sent arms to the mullahs of Iran and courted Saddam Hussein, even after his use of chemical weapons. He appointed officials who claimed nuclear war was winnable, thus raising the chances that miscalculations by the Soviet Union or the United States would plunge the world into chaos. On the home front Reagan was almost as divisive and disingenuous as the second Bush, his deficit-causing supply-side tax cuts (derided by the elder Bush as "voodoo economics") were sold with phony numbers and sleight-of-hand accounting. These "trickle-down" tax cuts--coupled with a tremendous boost in military spending--were designed to bankrupt the government, pressuring it to reduce government spending and thereby justifying draconian cuts in social programs. He presided over an S&L scandal that stuck taxpayers with a bill approaching a trillion dollars. He appointed Antonin Scalia to the Supreme Court. He tried to gut the Civil Rights Commission, and his Administration waged a relentless series of attacks on affirmative action while trying to grant tax-exempt status to private schools that engaged in racial discrimination. But he won two presidential elections commandingly, and over the course of several decades inspired a devoted following that now wants to etch his name and image on currency, public buildings and monuments across the land. He won by displaying an optimism about his ideology that most right-leaning politicians before him had lacked; voters, even when they didn't particularly like his ideas, liked Reagan himself, because he convinced them he believed in these ideas and in a noble vision of America. Reagan once stated, "Facts are stupid things." He meant "stubborn." His presidency was no morning in America; it empowered and enabled some of the worst elements of public life in our country: greed, arrogance, neglect and hypocrisy. This Reagan legacy, unfortunately, survives its namesake, and, worse, it has been enhanced by the son of his Vice President.

WE DON"T NEED ANY MORE MENTALLY INCOMPETENT CLOWNS RUNNING OUR COUNTRY!