I don´t know where Richman gets his numbers, but they are contradicted by the Internet sources I find, for example the Cato Institute and the Urban Institute. Federal spending has never been near 28,7% of GDP after World War II, and decreased from 23% in 1981 to 22% in 1988-89. Looking at only domestic spending it fell from 15% to 13% during Reagan. Richman claims Department of Education budgets were doubled during Reagan yet according to Cato Institute its real (inflation-adjusted) budget fell by 21%.

http://www.urban.org/urlprint.cfm?ID=6388

http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa-281.html

Whatever the numbers – whether tax and spending were slightly increased or slightly decreased – Reagan seems to have been very far from the “ultra-liberal” figure portrayed in Europe (where “liberal” means “in favor of limiting government intervention”).

As an “ultra-liberal” (the worst insult in social-democrat-egalitarian Europe), Reagan is -under the myth- supposed to have been responsible for the vast enrichment of the wealthy and a sharp increase in the number of poor Americans (to 40 million, a popular figure under the myth). Like Thatcher (the other “ultra-liberal” myth), he is often cited -even by the mainstream “right”- as the example to be avoided at all costs, a reminder to anyone suggesting laissez-faire of why state intervention is so crucial. Very ironic indeed!

Ronnie Bonzo Rayguns did more to discredit true conservatism than any other president. He campaigned against big government and continued his rhetoric all the way through his administration, all the while signing huge budget increases and extolling the virtues of a free market. Recall that it was only after the election that he assured the faithful that when he spoke of spending cuts, he wasn’t actually intending to cut spending, but only the increase in spending that Carter would have made.

He was also a murderer, cold bloodedly killing (among others) the infant child of Qadafi in his symbolic bombing of Tripoli.

His heroes were Lincoln and Roosevelt. Fortunately for us, he was never able to cause the level of death and mayhem his heroes caused, but I believe that was only due to his being limited to two terms in office. When he entered office, there was a strong sentiment in the US against militarism, as a result of the glorious defeat of leviathan in Vietnam. But Reagan changed all that, rousing the rabble to new heights of belligerence and vastly increasing spending on military hardware. Without the huge increase in weaponry, there would have been no first Gulf War, and the US would never have invaded Iraq.

We have Reagan to thank for all the body bags coming home from Iraq today, and the 10,000 dead Iraqi civilians. And we have Reagan to thank for subverting the movement toward freedom that began with the disillusionment with government brought about by Vietnam and Richard Nixon.

“Taxes by the end of the Reagan era will be as large a chunk of GNP as when he took office, if not larger: 19.4%, by ultra-conservative estimate of the Reagan Office of Management and Budget. The so-called historic average is 18.3%.”

Does anyone have the percentage of GDP when RR took office? Also, 19.4% was an estimate for 1989 — what was the actual figure that year?

thank you to Mr.Richman, i like reading your articles and other articles on Mises.org and in other online org,s. It has helped me in economics and i am very grateful to know more now than years ago in economics.

As for Mr.Whites diatribes i think in some way are disgraceful as Mr.Reagan is gone now and now in the presence of God. And yes i think the man is a Christian and maybe i am wrong but i will one day find out. Hmm so where what is mr.whites view of ww2? hey my dad was one of the soliders that would have invaded Japan if he had to go into the war. as he was in Korea at the end of ww2 and at least he got there just after ww2 ended.

In the interest of full disclosure I will report that I e-mailed a budget person at the Department of Education, who sent me constant-dollar figures for the FY 1981 and FY 1989 education department budgets. I figure they are Carter’s and Reagan’s last budgets. Her figures show that, in constant dollars, Reagan’s last budget request was 19 percent higher than Carter’s last request. If we look at actual appropriations, Reagan’s last budget was 15 percent higher than Carter’s last.

Peter,

I think in a more sober period you wouldn’t resort to misappropriated operatics in support of what is basically an acceptable point, viz., that America meddles too much and much too often and has not always been the noble superpower its citizens want it to be. But since we’re on the subject of numbers, the largest I saw you mention was the not-too-well-researched “many hundreds of thousands” in what I guess was a reference to Nagasaki and Hiroshima.

Now I’m not too sure how far back you’re willing to go in Russian or Chinese history in order to make that point true in your favor, but you’d have to stop well before the time that the Evil Americans’ bomb was dropped in WWII. Courtois’ numbers in his little “Black Book” should get you started in the right direction here. Or, if you want a slightly more conservative survey Applebaum’s “The Gulag: A History” or Rummell’s chilling reminders in “Death by Government” might help along the way.

“If present trends continue, as Ronald Reagan clearly hoped they would, America will eventually surpass the Soviets and Chinese Communists in causing more misery than any other regime in history.”

Whoa. Cummon guys, lighten up. Jeez. Of course, since due to my age I don’t have a lot of speech recollection from Ronald’s oratory, I can’t say for sure, but I’m going to go out on a limb and say that he didn’t have quite the ambitions of murder, genocide, mayhem, oppression, slavery, and depredation of a dispersed, impoverished, jealous, and scared people that the Chinese, Germans, or Russians were able to so gloriously obtain and that you attribute to him. If I’m wrong, where’s the beef? Show me textual support and then we can talk.

This is off the subject of the post so I’ll leave it at that but let it suffice to say that if something that outrageous were said about any of the folks associated with and dedicated to this website, they’d be deleted faster than a Lemmer in the Gulag. Have some respect.

Good luck.

See yas!

Mr. Olson,

The thought of being a “world leader” is quite repugnant to me, and ordinarily I would take the mere suggestion that I might be a world leader as an insult. But I understand that you’ve simply raised a hypothetical here, so please be assured that there’s no offense taken.

Hypothetically, I would have ignored Herr Hitler. As has been made abundantly clear by historians without axes to grind, Hitler first wanted to undo the injustices placed on Germany by the Versailles treaty, remove non ethnic Germans from Germany, and then he wanted to do what every other world leader wants to do; increase his sphere of influence, and attempt to insure that Germany was never again threatened by its neighbors. Remember Napoleon? France and Britain declared war on Germany at a time when Hitler had merely undone the Versailles treaty, a treaty that any fair minded person must admit was a gross injustice.

France and Germany pointedly did not declare war on the Soviet Union, even though Stalin was doing the same thing to Poland that Hitler was, and even though it was well known that Stalin had murdered millions of Ukrainian and Russian citizens and had invaded Finland, while Hitler was responsible for a few thousand deaths.

People like to forget that Great Britain had an enormous world empire; an empire created by brute force. They had viciously invaded lands all over the globe, murdering any local inhabitants who put up the slightest resistance to their tyranical rule. France had similar colonial holdings, and was equally brutal in keeping the locals docile. And people also seem to forget how the Soviet Union/Russia got to be so large. They all did it the same way, brutally subjugating other people, killing all that opposed them, and forcing them to accept the way of life of their rulers. What Hitler was attempting to do, as was Tojo, was no different from what all of the “great” European powers had been doing for centuries. For anyone to suggest that it was imperative for the United States to go to war to preserve these viscious regimes lest they be defeated by viscious German or Japanese regimes is absurd

The only possible threat to the United States from Hitler was as a result of Roosevelt’s military aid to Britain. Had the US remained neutral, there is no conceivable way that Germany would have ever threatened the US.

So, in answer to your question, I would have done nothing, unless of course I had done the only truly ethical thing a “world leader” can do, resign.

While estimates of Hitler’s concentration camp victims vary widely, all estimates of when virtually all of the victims were victimized place the time after Roosevelt’s alliance with Stalin; an alliance that Reagan wholeheartedly approved of. And as is well known now, and as was well known and documented at the time (except for the New York Times’ curious reporting on the subject by the Pulitzer Prize winning Walter Duranty), Stalin had already murdered many millions of innocent civilians, many by starvation as in the Ukraine, and had in full operation a vast system of concentration camps, far more extensive than anything constructed by the SS. So, unless Roosevelt was able to predict the future, his alliance with Stalin against Hitler was probably not due to what later occured in Hitler’s concentration camps.

As to whether Hitler’s murders were worse than the murders committed by Roosevelt’s allies Britain, France and the Soviet Union, I don’t think a murder victim is any less happy that his murderer is acting on behalf of one government verses another. And as a libertarian who believes in self ownership, I believe there is only one person who can place a value on any particular person’s life; himself.

Mr.White thank you for writing back. I agree with Lawrence. And i am going over to Malaysia in a little over a month, and yes Malay was a part of the British empire. But you should talk with the Lady i know over there and looking to marry, and talk with her mom and dad, they lived thru the time of when the Japanese were the rulers when they caputured the islands back in ww2. they are quite glad the americans came there to drive back the japanese.

as i have said before we, the USA, was going to be pulled into ww2 no matter what. IF Hitler was smart he would have invaded Britian just as soon as he could have after the British troops were pushed out of France. and He commited a big screw up by invading Russia.

I will agree with you Mr.White in that Governments can become very dangerous very quickly if some jerk becomes a head leader. And i do wish the USA government was much smaller. So i am glad that at least we have 3 branches of gov.

Lawrence,

I agree with your scale of degrees of wrongdoing. And that just further illuminates my point. In the winter of 1941-1942, when Franklin Roosevelt allied himself with Stalin, Stalin had murdered tens of millions, and Hitler had murdered a few thousand.

Even after Hitler was dead, the body count was still heavily in favor of Stalin, even if you accept the most extreme estimates of Hitler’s atrocities. And of course, after Hitler died, Stalin’s killing didn’t stop. He continued to murder ethnic Germans all over eastern Europe. And if Ronald Reagan ever raised an objection, I haven’t read of it.

Great discussion! I am enjoying reading the varying views on history.