I come to bury Reagan...

For once I disagree with Greg Palast, in tone at least. No president lives but has done some evil. It comes with the magnitude of the job. Let's see if we can vent our rage toward those who, living, exploit the myth of the Reagan years for their own benefit, and leave the dead in relative peace.

I agree that the canonization process has been distasteful over the past couple of days, yet I disagree with some of my liberal friends, for example, that Reagan had no regard for the poor.

Although I disagree strongly with the Reagan- and neo-conservative viewpoint that helping the poor through federal programs lets local communities off the hook. In Reagan's bio, his father was a local government welfare official, and when welfare was federalized, young Ron saw an inefficient bureaucracy with no ties to local communities or histories.

Now, some of us lauded the federalization of social programs because they removed local prejudices from the eligibility equations, but there is a baby-with-bathwater factor here, also.

Many of my friends are true old-fashioned conservatives. They saw Reagan as the last gasp of old-style conservative paradigms in DC, holding the breach against FDR-JFK-LBJ-... social experimentation that played theory against reality without a view to unintended consequences.

It's unwise for liberals to turn a blind eye to these factors. In doing so we look like damn ignorant fools, and we don't build any bridges.

For example, almost a third of the households with children in Oregon (including my own) are single parent households today, a proportion unthinkable before no-fault divorce was wedged into law. Do we want to go back to the bad old days of even more women trapped in abusive situations because of horrid divorce laws? But could there have been a third way? Who could say.

It is questions like these that conservatives and liberals don't seem to be able to address on an open and candid rational basis.

Reagan appealed to a majority of conservative voters who -- whether realistically or not -- saw him as a crusader for their values. Regardless of the corruption of his presidency or his staff or his greater administration, I will not smack his reputation upon his death, any more than I would expect my more conservative friends to be wondering if Clinton will be buried in a little blue dress. It's not seemly, civil, or gracious, and we need more of that in the world.

We do not build bridges by attacking the dead. Let's wait a seemly time, and history will sort it all out.

Likewise, I am disturbed at the ploy to canonize Reagan at this point because I see it as a graceless ploy by the neo-cons to glorify the connection (however tenuous) between the best and/or mythical aspects of the Reagan era with the Shrub. This sort of smarmy sentimentality is horrible.

Reagan was an ambitious man. "I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him."

You all did love him once, not without cause:
What cause withholds you then to mourn for him?
O judgement! thou art fled to brutish beasts,
And men have lost their reason…. Bear with me;
My heart is in the coffin there with Caesar,
And I must pause till it come back to me.

...well, maybe not. I had no special love for Reagan, but I see no need to tear him down. Rather, devote your efforts perhaps to expose the smarminess of the Bush administration as they capitalize on his death. Bush is not half the man of character as was Reagan, whether or not you honor either of their policies.

I don't want to wait until I'm dead to see my country at rest, in peace. Let us honor the dead in proportion, and castigate the living -- to the end that we improve our country. Let us build dialogue and respect.