Ronald Wilson Reagan was born in an apartment in Tampico, Illinois to Nelle Clyde Reagan (nee Wilson) and Jack Reagan.
Reagan family, Ronald Reagan is the youngest.
His mother was a devout member of the Disciples of Christ while his father was a Catholic and they were married in the Catholic Church. The couple's older son, Neil, was baptized as a Catholic, but raised as a youth in the Disciples of Christ before switching over to being a practicing Catholic. Ronald was baptized in he Disciples of Christ Church. This sort of compromise wasn't uncommon in American families of mixed religious background, but it would have been problematic for Jack. I note all of this as Reagan himself made some life and political compromises that perhaps somewhat reflect having grown up in a household of problematic compromise, although that is speculating a lot.
His entry into media came initially as being a sports broadcaster. By 1937 he was acting. He was an Army Reserve cavalryman starting in 1937, and would serve in the Army during the Second World War in the branch that made films and did pubic relations work.
Like his father, Reagan was initially a Democrat and switched to the GOP in the 1950s. By the time he ran for office in California he was solidly a Buckleyite conservative and has the status of the last real conservative to hold the Oval Office. While a hero to conservatives, it was his Southern Strategy that would ultimately destroy the GOP.
At the time of his first election to the Presidency, there were real questions on whether Americans would vote for a divorced man, showing how much higher standards were at the time.
Reagan was leagues superior to the current illegitimate occupant of the White House, and as a real conservative he had real merit from the perspective of conservatives, including myself . The hero worship of Reagan is, however, unwarranted. By his second term the signs of Alzheimer's was appearing, although nothing to the degree which dementia has best the current putative chief executive.
Last edition:
No comments:
Post a Comment