Actors From Illinois

"During the arduous period of the Cold War, President Reagan showed great leadership and contributed tremendously to the advancement of democracy and free-market economy. In addition, President Reagan always placed a top priority on the maintenance of a sound Japan-U.S. alliance."

"Ronald Reagan was a transformational president who made an enormous difference in our lives by leading the West to victory in the Cold War and allowing all free peoples to watch the disintegration of the Soviet Union."

"The dialogue that President Reagan and I started was difficult. To reach agreement, particularly on arms control and security, we had to overcome mistrust and the barriers of numerous problems and prejudices. I don't know whether we would have been able to agree and to insist on the implementation of our agreements with a different person at the helm of American government. True, Reagan was a man of the right. But, while adhering to his convictions, with which one could agree or disagree, he was not dogmatic; he was looking for negotiations and cooperation. And this was the most important thing to me: he had the trust of the American people."

"Reagan made it fashionable to be indifferent to the poor and gave permission to be greedy with little or no conscience."

"It took several years before the American public turned against the Vietnam War. When the war began in 1965, two-thirds of the American people supported the war. Three years later, two-thirds of the American people opposed the war. That was a very dramatic turnaround. So the government decided that we're going to have short wars. We are going to have "splendid little wars"-and what could be shorter than President Reagan's war in Grenada? It was almost laughable that this tiny Caribbean island was perceived as a threat to the United States. All sorts of propaganda disseminated by the United States said it was going to be used as a Cuban or Soviet military base. Alternatively, the invasion was explained as a way to save Americans who were in the medical school and had to be evacuated, and so on."

"President Reagan was the Churchill of his era. His commitment to the principles of freedom and democracy and his boundless optimism for humanity will remain an inspiration for us all."

"He was great president who led the Cold War against communism to the victory of freedom and democracy... He was a good friend of the Japanese people as he respected Japan and its culture. The foundation of the Japan-U.S. alliance that now serves as a driving force to solve international issues with other countries was built during President Reagan's era."

"I understand and embrace the wisdom of Ronald Reagan's big tent within the party, big, big tent, remember? Ronald Reagan, great man, great guy. Remember he included Reagan Democrats and Independents and Republicans, a lot of people. We're going to have the same thing. There a lot of Democrats perhaps in this room, are there a lot of Democrats? Raise your hands. I mean, I don't think we need too many to be honest with you, but -- so I embraced the wisdom that my 80 percent friend is not my 20 percent enemy, Ronald Reagan. Stated by Ronald Reagan, pretty good."

"Poor dear, there's nothing between his ears."

"When talking about Ronald Reagan, I have to be personal. We in Poland took him so personally. Why? Because we owe him our liberty. This can’t be said often enough by people who lived under oppression for half a century, until communism fell in 1989."

"What do you do when your President ignores all the palpable, relevant facts and wanders in circles?"

"Republicans in Washington love to talk about "welfare reform." They like to cite examples of low-income people without jobs who are "mooching" off the taxpayers of this country. In the 1980s, Ronald Reagan focused on a "welfare queen" driving a Cadillac-who, it turned out, simply did not exist."

"[the proposal [would force literally hundreds of thousands of students to disrupt their graduate education."

"In America the 1980s were supposedly a rightward lurch, yet Reagan signed social security into law, established MLK day as a national holiday, heavily strengthened firearm restrictions, and did not curtail America’s public spending—choosing instead to use military spending as a form of economic stimulus. By standards of the previous era, Reagan was a consensus liberal—hardly a conservative. He shifted the Republican party towards the centreline of “acceptable politics,” and as such, narrowed what was and was not permissible on the political right."

"The 1980s were a curious time — a time of realization that a new age was upon us. Now, from the perspective of our time, it is obvious that like the pieces of a global chain of events, Ronald Reagan, John Paul II, Margaret Thatcher and even Mikhail Gorbachev helped bring about this new age in Europe. We at Solidarity like to claim more than a little credit, too, for bringing about the end of the Cold War. In the Europe of the 1980s, Ronald Reagan presented the vision. For us in Central and Eastern Europe, that meant freedom from the Soviets. As I say repeatedly, we owe so much to all those who supported us. Perhaps in the early years, we didn’t express enough gratitude. We were so busy introducing all the necessary economic and political reforms in our reborn country. Yet President Ronald Reagan must have realized what remarkable changes he brought to Poland, and indeed the rest of the world. And I hope he felt gratified. He should have."

"There was a time when the women of Afghanistan-at least in Kabul-were out there. They were allowed to study; they were doctors and surgeons, walking free, wearing what they wanted. That was when it was under Soviet occupation. Then the United States starts funding the mujahideen. Reagan called them Afghanistan's "founding fathers.""

"I have a pet theory, only somewhat in jest, that someday Donald Trump will become as respected as Ronald Reagan through this same process. Reagan, after all, illegally funded Latin American death squads, supported the racist apartheid regime in South Africa, and ignored AIDS as thousands of people died. (Asked about the epidemic, Reagan’s press secretary indicated that Reagan hadn’t paid the disease any attention and then began cracking jokes about it.) For all of this, Reagan is now voted in many public opinion polls as the greatest president in American history, possibly even the greatest American, period. The only way to keep future monsters from behaving as they please, knowing they will be eulogized as heroes, is to resist propaganda and tell the truth."

"I am old enough to remember the presidency of Lyndon Johnson, when the government fought a "war on poverty." In recent years that war has been transformed by representatives of both major parties into a war on the poor. More important yet, but less reported, is that in the years since Ronald Reagan was elected president, corporate America has waged war against this nation's workers."

"After carefully watching Ronald Reagan, he is attempting a great breakthrough in political technology. He has been perfecting the Teflon-coated presidency. He sees to it that nothing sticks to him."

"[A] lapse into fiscal indiscipline on a scale never before experienced in peacetime."

"nothing but a bag of hot air."

"He won the cold war without firing a shot."

"The concept of Ronald Reagan as a master Mole for the Aryan Nation has not taken hold yet, in the centers of political power. Even his closest people still see him as a profoundly talented old man from Hollywood who will go down in history as perhaps the greatest salesman of his time.... But not as a philosopher-king or a serious political think, like all of those other presidents that he frequently quotes. They view him more or less as they would view Willie Loman if he had wandered through the looking glass and became president of the United States."

"The epitaph of the Reagan presidency will be: "When Ronald Reagan became President, the United States was the largest creditor nation. When he left the presidency, we were the world's largest debtor nation.""

"Emerging from a particularly credulous Southern California culture, Nancy and Ronald Reagan relied on an astrologer in private and public matters — unknown to the voting public. Some portion of the decision-making that influences the future of our civilization is plainly in the hands of charlatans."

"The biggest threat to America today is not communism. It's moving America toward a fascist theocracy, and everything that's happened during the Reagan administration is steering us right down that pipe … I really think that. … When you have a government that prefers a certain moral code derived from a certain religion and that moral code turns into legislation to suit one certain religious point of view, and if that code happens to be very, very right wing, almost toward Attila the Hun..."

"This is a sad hour in the life of America … Ronald Reagan won America's respect with his greatness, and won its love with his goodness … he leaves behind a nation he restored and a world he helped save … because of his leadership, the world laid to rest an era of fear and tyranny."

"Hillary and I will always remember President Ronald Reagan for the way he personified the indomitable optimism of the American people, and for keeping America at the forefront of the fight for freedom for people everywhere. It is fitting that a piece of the Berlin Wall adorns the Ronald Reagan Building in Washington."

"Ronald Reagan, in my view, was the greatest of post-World War II American presidents. More than anybody else, he followed the policies that led to the collapse of the Soviet Union, the end of the Cold War and the final victory of a more free-market approach to the management of economies over the centrally planned approach in the old Eastern states. … His greatest legacy will be the end of Soviet communism."

"This is an enormously sad day. President Reagan was one of the towering figures of our time, and the man who, with Margaret Thatcher, won the Cold War for the West... We, in Great Britain, as in so many other places around the world, owe him an everlasting debt."

"First of all, I should like to express from the very bottom of my heart condolences for the passing of President Ronald Reagan who was deeply respected by the people of the United States and who left many important achievements."

"President Reagan's leadership served to define an era of sweeping geo-political change … He helped lay the foundations for the end of the Cold War … His wit, warmth and unique capacity to communicate helped to make him one of the most influential figures in the second half of the 20th century."

"Virtually every major move and decision the Reagans made during my time as White House Chief of Staff was cleared in advance with a woman in San Francisco who drew up horoscopes to make certain that the planets were in a favorable alignment for the enterprise."

"The frustration of dealing with a situation in which the schedule of the President of the United States was determined by occult prognostications was very great — far greater than any other I had known in nearly forty-five years of working life."

"He will be missed not only by those who knew him and not only by the nation that he served so proudly and loved so deeply, but also by millions of men and women who live in freedom today because of the policies he pursued. Ronald Reagan had a higher claim than any other leader to have won the Cold War for liberty and he did it without a shot being fired. ... a truly great American hero."

"President Ronald Reagan will be remembered in the hearts of all Latvians as a fighter for freedom, liberty, and justice worldwide."

"It's ironic that the... one President the Democrats love to hate more than George W. Bush -- Ronald Wilson Reagan -- was actually the most responsible President we've had regarding nuclear weapons since Eisenhower. He sat down with Gorbachev and we got incredibly close to eliminating all nuclear weapons. We got rid of two classes of nuclear weapons and were moving in the direction of greater arms reduction... In terms of sheer numbers our nuclear arsenal kept growing. We'd eliminate one thing then make more of something else. It was a shell game.... Have we ever actually significantly reduced the number of nuclear arms with intent to permanently shrink the arsenal? Well no, not yet. But Reagan was at least moving in that direction. He's the only president who considered going down [in number of nuclear weapons]."

"For many years, worker ownership enjoyed the support of both Republicans and Democrats. As Ronald Reagan said in 1987, "I can't help but believe that in the future we will see in the United States and throughout the Western world an increasing trend toward the next logical step: employee ownership. It is a path that befits a free people.""

"While Reagan was willing to improve relations with the Soviet Union, George Shultz must be given credit for the hard work and skill that was required to bring it off, in the face of much opposition from hard-liners within the administration. Yet it was neither Shultz nor Reagan, but rather Gorbachev, who made the major concessions that were needed to achieve success. The INF negotiations, for example, were concluded successfully primarily because of the concessions Gorbachev made, in the face of considerable opposition from hard-liners within his own government and military. (p. 261)"

"Others attribute the end of the Cold War to Reagan's desire to prevent a nuclear conflagration. This view asserts that the president never liked nuclear weapons as offensive instruments and that with his SDI program he demonstrated his disdain for deterrence, at least deterrence based on the mutual assured destruction doctrine (MAD). Reagan's goal to eliminate all offensive nuclear weapons, his supporters argue, made possible the INF treaty. Reagan failed to conclude a START treaty before he left office only because the Soviets refused to accept a defensive deterrent strategy, the basis of SDI, as a better alternative to MAD. However, not everyone, including this author, accepts the argument that the Reagan administration was primarily responsible for the end of the Cold War. In fact, probably no one, especially the president, expected that the administration's policies ultimately would cause the disintegration of the Soviet empire, at east not as quickly as it occurred. Said Reagan: "We meant to change a nation [the United States], and instead, we changed a world... All in all, not bad, not bad at all." More important as the cause of the Cold War's demise was the internal weakness of the Soviet Union, which, to be sure, the policies pursued by the Reagan administration exacerbated. By the time Reagan entered the White House, the Soviet economy had sunk into such a state of stagnation that it was obvious that communism had failed and a radically new approach was required. (p. 260-261)"

"Reagan may have had a genuine revulsion for nuclear weapons, but it was not at all obvious in the policies he adopted and pursued during his first and much of his second term. His disinclination to embrace détente was due to his own limited knowledge of nuclear weapons technology and strategy as well as his reluctance to offend the hard-liners in his administration, who had the expertise that the president lacked but not the same revulsion for nuclear weapons. Reagan had to be encouraged into running the risks of negotiating with the Soviets by his wife, Nancy Reagan, and by Secretary of State George Schultz. Public and congressional opinion also had much to do with Reagan's turnabout. The Democratic-controlled Congress made its continued support of pet administration military programs contingent on Reagan's willingness to negotiate seriously with the Soviets. The Congress, in turn, was influenced by an American public that was increasingly susceptible to the warnings of the anti-nuclear weapons movement about the perils of the Reagan military buildup. Neither Congress nor the American people gave much support to Reagan's crusade was weakened even more during his last two years in office by waning public and congressional support for large-scale defense increases and, above all, by the Iran-Contra affair, which threatened to destroy Reagan's presidency. In other words, Reagan needed a new approach to the Soviet Union. While he did not need a new U.S.-Soviet relationship as much as Gorbachev did, the revival of détente late in his presidency did win Reagan public accolades he sorely needed in the aftermath of the Iran-Contra affair. The Reagan-Gorbachev love-in was, in fact, an example of how necessity can make the strangest of bedfellows. Thanks to détente, and the unwillingness of Congress to press ahead with impeachment proceedings, Reagan left office as one of the most popular presidents in this century. (p. 261-262)"

"Like the overwhelming majority of America's Cold War presidents, Ronald Reagan entered the White House in January 1981 with almost no background in national security affairs. Before entering the political arena, he had been in movies and in television. His only direct military experience occurred during World War II, when he served in the armed forces making training and documentary films. His first and only elected political position prior to the presidency was the governorship of California, a position he held from 1966 to 1974. However, unlike most of his predecessors, Reagan was not particularly eager to master national security issues. This was demonstrated repeatedly during his presidency by his inability to explain them in any detail. (p. 231)"

"Reagan...was most definitely a global empire builder, a servant of the corporatocracy. At the time of his election, I found it fitting that he was a Hollywood actor, a man who had followed orders passed down from moguls, who knew how to take direction. That would be his signature. He would cater to the men who shuttled back and forth from corporate CEO offices to bank boards and into the halls of government. He would serve the men who appeared to serve him but who in fact ran the government — men like Vice President George H . W. Bush, Secretary of State George Shultz, Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger, Richard Cheney; Richard Helms, and Robert McNamara. He would advocate what those men wanted: an America that controlled the world and all its resources, a world that answered to the commands of that America, a U.S. military that would enforce the rules as they were written by America, and an international trade and banking system that supported America as CEO of the global empire."

"The fact that, for all practical purposes, the Cold War ended during Ronald Reagan's presidency has led some to conclude that he was primarily responsible for the U.S. "victory" over the Soviet Union. The so-called Reagan victory school holds that his administration's military and ideological assertiveness during the 1980s was primarily responsible for the end of the Cold War, the demise of Communism in Europe, and ultimately the collapse of the Soviet Union itself. As the president put it on December 16, 1988, the changes taking place in the Soviet Union were in part the result of U.S. firmness, a strong defense, healthy alliances, and a willingness to use force when necessary. Moreover, as he boasted, he had been more than willing to point out the differences in the American and Soviet political systems at every opportunity. In addition, his supporters have asserted that the "full-court press" launched by the administration during Reagan's first term, which included a military buildup capped by SDI, the denial of technology to the Soviet Union, and the administration's counteroffensive in the Third World, delivered the "knock-out punch" to a system that was internally bankrupt "and on the ropes." (p. 260)"

"Still, the price the United States paid during the Reagan years to "win" the Cold War was high. His decision to cut taxes while initiating the largest and most expensive peacetime military buildup in U.S. history, combined with Congress' refusal to cut domestic spending, contributed to an enormous increase in the national debt. Moreover, pressing domestic problems- the decline of the nation's infrastructure, the increase in crime, educational inequity, and others too numerous to list here- were ignored. Future generations will have to pay the bill for Reagan's "victory" in the Cold War. (p. 262)"

"It is a national tragedy that the number of incarcerated Americans has more than quadrupled since Ronald Reagan first ran on a "get tough on crime" platform-from about 500,000 in 1980 to more than 2.2 million today. And we spend $80 billion a year in federal, state, and local taxpayer dollars to lock them up."

"If Reagan becomes President, it will be my father's fault. If J.L. had only given Reagan better pictures, he'd have never left the movies and gone into politics."

"Pride in our country, respect for our armed services, a healthy appreciation for the dangers beyond our borders, an insistence that there was no easy equivalence between East and West — in all this I had no quarrel with Reagan. And when the Berlin Wall came tumbling down, I had to give the old man his due, even if I never gave him my vote."

"I would think to myself [...] that the battle for the mind of Ronald Reagan was like the trench warfare of World War I: Never have so many fought so hard for such barren terrain."

"He knows less about the budget than any president in my lifetime. He can't even carry on a conversation about the budget. It's an absolute and utter disgrace."