Yeah, I've heard critiques like this before and understand where you're coming from. Reagan was a National Review-style William F. Buckley Jr. libertarian-conservative anti-Communist.
And was this movement wrong on the Civil Rights Movement? Yes.
Were they wrong to ally with Southern Segregationists as part of the Cold War coalition? Yes.
Yeah, I've heard critiques like this before and understand where you're coming from. Reagan was a National Review-style William F. Buckley Jr. libertarian-conservative anti-Communist.
And was this movement wrong on the Civil Rights Movement? Yes.
Were they wrong to ally with Southern Segregationists as part of the Cold War coalition? Yes.
I've read the writings from these guys during that period - terrible stuff.
Do these failings mean that all the men involved in the movement including WFB and Reagan should/could most accurately be described as racists? I think that's going a bit far and not taking in the whole picture of the men, how they changed over time, and the broader complexity of it.
I mean, technically, Abraham Lincoln was a racist. But is it really all that accurate/useful to boil him down to that oversimplification.
Yeah, I've heard critiques like this before and understand where you're coming from. Reagan was a National Review-style William F. Buckley Jr. libertarian-conservative anti-Communist.
And was this movement wrong on the Civil Rights Movement? Yes.
Were they wrong to ally with Southern Segregationists as part of the Cold War coalition? Yes.
I've read the writings from these guys during that period - terrible stuff.
Do these failings mean that all the men involved in the movement including WFB and Reagan should/could most accurately be described as racists? I think that's going a bit far and not taking in the whole picture of the men, how they changed over time, and the broader complexity of it.
I mean, technically, Abraham Lincoln was a racist. But is it really all that accurate/useful to boil him down to that oversimplification.