Trump Has Won. Let's Hope He Does Better than Reagan
The Courage It Takes to Exercise the Power of the Presidency
This week, I decided to try something new. I created a video subject on this same subject, though it is broader than just reading off the article, for the paid subscribers, and this shorter article than normal for everyone. I’ll get back to the in-depth article next week, but wanted to try this new format out, potentially to roll out for Monday content. Please let me know what you think, either as a comment or in a message; I want to make sure the content I come up with and how I structure it is the sort of thing you find informative and enjoyable.
The Reagan Disaster
Today, Reagan is thought of, at least by most of those who lived under his administration, as a sort of savior. He’s known for defeating the Soviet Union, getting America’s culture and economy back on track, and otherwise turning the depressing malaise of the Carter presidency into “Morning in America.”
To some extent that’s true. As I’ve written about before, I absolutely despise Carter for what he did to Rhodesia alongside Andy Young, and consider him one of the most evil men of the late 20th century because of it.1 Similarly, the economy over which he presided was a wreck, though much of that was due to LBJ’s spending and Nixon’s taking America off the gold standard. Reagan is remembered as rectifying much of that, and the spirit he filled America with, one of glory and pride colors our view of his administration.
But while Reagan did a great deal of good, from supporting the South Africans over the objections of a pinko-filled Congress to slashing taxes and regulation enough to reinvigorate the American economy, the cost of his bad decisions, now that they’ve come to full effect in our era, in some ways outweighs to the present the good he did. Whether that is because he took the advice of CIA stooge George HW Bush while wounded from the assassination attempt and when he became senile, or because he simply remained the man who voted for FDR four times is unclear. I lean toward the former explanation. Regardless, he’s responsible for the actions of his administration and governorship, actions that were, over the long term, disastrous.
There are three awful Reagan policies/decisions worth considering. Of course, there are other issues with his presidency, from gun control to MLK Day, that are infuriating. However, those pale in comparison to the wreckage inflicted by the worst of his decisions.
Watch this episode here:
The Divorce Debacle
Reagan, before serving eight years as president, served as Governor of California. At that time, the Golden State was still a ruby red state when it wanted to be, and so Reagan won handily in 1966 when he ran against incumbent Pat Brown.
His time as governor had a mixed record. On one hand, he was generally popular, balanced the budget, and California, with his deregulation, remained a beacon of American success and innovation thanks to her superb agricultural sector and unparalleled aerospace and defense industry. On the other, he raised taxes, signed the Lanterman-Petris-Short Act, a bill that ended the practice of institutionalizing mental health patients without their consent (this bill is blamed in large part for California’s homelessness problems, as many of the homeless are crazy but can no longer be institutionalized), and changed divorce law dramatically.
That divorce law is one of the biggest problems of Reagan’s legacy, as it opened the floodgates to a marital law that is probably responsible for much of our current marriage and divorce woes. That law is no fault divorce, made law in California via 1969’s Family Law Act, the first no-fault divorce law in the United States.
Before Reagan, one had to show fault to get divorced. Whether neglect, abuse, infidelity, or something similarly awful, fault needed to be shown for the courts to allow divorce, and the offending spouse would be penalized for being at fault in the divorce proceedings, generally in that they would receive a smaller share of the assets. Then Reagan changed that dramatically. Under his no-fault divorce regime, all the spouse who wishes to get divorced need do is show “irreconcilable differences,” which generally just means wanting to get divorced, and fault isn’t considered in the distribution of assets. So, thanks to Reagan, as other states followed his lead, a stay at home mom can cheat on her non-neglectful, non-abusive husband and still come away with the kids and house, a sad state of affairs that often happens.
What that means is that much in contrast to the past, now it’s a rare person now who sees marriage as sacrosanct. In the eyes of the many, it’s just a different tax status and can be left the moment it becomes unpleasant or a better opportunity presents itself. It is no longer respected, largely, nor seen as a religious state that ought be taken seriously because God takes it seriously. That is a sad change effected by no-fault divorce, which Reagan implemented.
Perhaps that seemed justifiable at the time, though it is impossible to imagine a Christian thinking it a good idea. Regardless of intent, however, the policy that Reagan legitimated has turned into a large debacle for the United States, which is now suffering under the burden of the consequences.
For one, it led to a massive rise in the number of divorces. While the country has since recovered, more or less, in terms of the divorce rate (though there was a huge upsurge in the 70s and 80s and no-fault divorce became law), marriage rates have plummeted. Who would get married when they know their spouse can just leave, often taking the kids with them, for no reason and at the drop of a hat? Very few people. Both trends are shown below. The divorce rate (in red) spikes in 1969, when no-fault divorce became law thanks to Reagan, and continued rising and rising for about a decade, until finally things began to change in the late 80s. Meanwhile, marriage rates (in green) fall significantly shortly after no-fault divorce became law, and they have never recovered. The lag indicates that, once marriage was no longer seen as sacrosanct, marriage rates dropped like a rock.
![Marriage and Divorce rate trends per 1000 people in the United States [OC] : r/dataisbeautiful](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ffe3d32f5-ee8c-40c6-bd5a-be141f463486_1080x1080.jpeg "Marriage and Divorce rate trends per 1000 people in the United States [OC] : r/dataisbeautiful")
Together, the fall in marriage rates and increasing prevalence of divorce, particularly compared to the era of Western glory, the late 19th century and early 20th century, are concerning enough on their own. Kids are much more likely to be physically or sexually abused by a stepparent than a parent,2 grow up and develop much better in two-parent homes,3 and married couples with kids are likely to be much more conservative than single people.
But the vaguer, more secondary effects might be even worse. For one, marriage went from being seen as sacrosanct, and thus respected, to be seen as merely a way to be in a lower tax bracket. Secondly, the crash in birth rates has coincided with the crash in marriage rates. I think status changes in our DEI and anti-male world play a larger role (I will be doing an article on this soon), but the fact remains that birth rates were reasonably high and had stabilized until 1970, the year after Reagan’s no-fault divorce law. Then, they crashed like a rock. Fertility is an existential issue: humanity will not exist if humans aren’t born, and the wealth of the nation is hard to maintain if there are few to no new workers, innovators, leaders, and so on.
It is unfair, of course, to lay all of that blame at Reagan’s feet. He didn’t want the US to fail to breed itself to the point of non-existence, nor did he, presumably, want young people to stop getting married. But such were the consequences of his actions. He led the charge on no-fault divorce and legitimated it in the eyes of many, as he was a high-profile conservative and governor of one of the most important states in the union, one that everyone wanted to emulate. And so now we have no marriages, no kids, and no sacrosanct view of a marriage supposed to be seen as such.
The Illegal Immigrant Amnesty that Turned California Blue
The divorce issue is bad, but others were involved, and it happened when he was governor, not during his presidency. So, did he get better? In some respects. He cut taxes rather than raising them as president, though he blew out the national debt rather than balancing the budget (more on that below). He deregulated the economy, building on that success as governor, took a firm line with the Air Traffic Controllers union, and played dirty to defeat the communists in Central America, Angola, and Afghanistan.
But when it came to embarking upon policies with devastating long-term results, he had evidently learned nothing, as he made one of the worst decisions ever in Republican politics. That came in 1986 with the Immigration Reform and Control Act, also called the Simpson–Mazzoli Act. This was the bill by which Reagan gave amnesty to three million illegal immigrants, a decision that turned California permanently blue and brought tens of millions more illegal immigrants to America.
Before Reagan, Republicans had been willing to get tough on the illegal immigration problem. Dwight Eisenhower, for example, put his military mind to use and deported well over a million illegal immigrants in under a year in Operation Wetback.
Then came Reagan. He wanted a tougher policy on immigration, but was unwilling to use executive power to follow in Eisenhower’s footsteps while the Democrats wailed. Instead, he wanted to cut a deal with them. Playing along, the Democrats agreed, and the tentative deal was giving amnesty to the 3 million illegal immigrants in the country in exchange for punitive penalties on employers who hire illegal immigrants and tougher border defense measures. Reagan accepted, as he was in favor of amnesty anyway. "I believe in the idea of amnesty for those who have put down roots and lived here, even though sometime back they may have entered illegally,” he said in 1984 when debating Mondale.
Naturally, however, the tit-for-tat negotiation failed thanks to leftist perfidy. The Democrats broke their oaths at the last moment and yanked out all the provisions that would have defended the border. As NPR admits, “The law granted amnesty to nearly 3 million illegal immigrants, yet was largely considered unsuccessful because the strict sanctions on employers were stripped out of the bill for passage.”4
Reagan signed the bill anyway, with whether because the Republicans had accidentally done an abysmal job negotiating or because that’s what he wanted all along hotly debated, and America got 3 million new Democrat voters as citizens. Meanwhile, the population of illegal immigrants rose from somewhere in the range of 5 million in 1986 to over 30 million today (Yale found there were 20 million in the country before Biden, and over 10 million entered during his presidency).5
There have been a host of consequences of Reagan’s amnesty bill. For one, it has attracted ever more illegals to the country, as they think they’ll get amnesty too; Kamala would have given it to them. In the meantime, any kids they have here are US citizens, further swelling the number of Democrat voters, and the massive number of illegals working while waiting for amnesty has driven up the price of housing and driven down American wages.
Altogether, those changes mean that California, which has received the brunt of the illegal immigrants and “new Americans,” whether by birth or grant, has turned permanently blue, handing a massive number of electoral votes to the Democrats in every election and turning the state into one of the most dysfunctional in America.
Reagan could be governor because California was in its natural state: full of generally conservative, quite prosperous and innovative, American citizens. That is no longer true. While some of those people remain, now it is full of immigrants from the Third World, many of them illegal, who are not prosperous, innovative, or conservative. Much of that is thanks to the amnesty bill that gave them citizenship and encouraged many more to pour in while neither tightening border security nor punishing those who break the law to hire them.
The Debt Blowout
Before Reagan, debt, whether the national debt or debt incurred by individuals and companies, was still taken seriously as an issue. WWII was expensive and mainly debt-funded, but that was because it had to be fought after we were attacked and was far too large scale, and thus expensive, to fund through taxes. The same was true for much of history: debt was occasionally incurred in wars, such as the massive debt accumulated by the British during the French and Indian War, but was avoided during peacetime.
So, then, before Reagan, the national debt was seen as a necessary evil during wartime that should, when possible, be paid off or at least held steady in peacetime. Otherwise, it was worried that the debt would rise too high, and naturally, disastrous consequences would ensue, such as inflation and a loss of faith in the state. Corporations retained a similarly healthy skepticism of large amounts of debt, only taking it when necessary for productive enterprises.
Then Reagan became president.
The National Debt Disaster
The national debt advanced the most under him on a percentage basis than it has ever advanced under a president. With no real wars to fight and no major recession, and with interest rates at usurious levels to fight inflation, he still managed to triple the national debt. Back when a trillion dollars was still seen as an unbelievably large number, he ballooned the national debt from $738 billion to $2.1 trillion and turned America from a net international creditor into the world’s largest net debtor.
That policy largely amounted to rejecting his gubernatorial strategy of balancing the budget for the good of the future by taxing the present. Instead, by slashing taxes in the present and dramatically ratcheting up indebtedness, Reagan began the process of pulling gains from the future into the present and leaving the present with a mound of debt to pay off.
While that was still possible at the $2.1 trillion debt burden level in which he left the country, the bigger problem was that his blowout spending ensured the national debt was never again treated as a serious subject. Politicians saw the popularity that would come their way if they spent gobs of money in the present by taxing the future with a national debt burden, and so both left and right got on board with spending as much as possible on anything that might make re-election more likely. Now, in short, a massive increase in the national debt is seen as inevitable rather than a great shame that should be avoided at all costs.
Financialization and Usury
While the nation’s debt ballooned, private-sector credit followed a similar trajectory. Whereas American companies had, in the past only taken on debt when necessary and, if necessary used reasonable amounts of it obtained on reasonable, generally lower interest rate terms from respected bankers, the Reagan presidency saw the rise of junk bonds.
Those instruments were highly risky forms of debt with an exceedingly high yield attached that were generally used by a corporate raider to take over a new company. Once that company was taken over, it was stripped of its assets, which were sold off along with its component parts. The proceeds were used to pay off the usurious debt and make a tidy profit. In the process, profitable and job-producing companies were destroyed and many jobs lost for no real reason. The companies, without the attached high-yield debt, would have remained profitable and prosperous, providing stable and well-paying jobs to the communities in which they had set up shop. But, thanks to junk bonds and obscene financialization of a sort Reagan encouraged, that was wiped away in the name of financial scheming that delivered short term profits.
When the Federal Reserve tried to curb the use of those dangerous instruments and the highly destructive process, Reagan rebuked the Fed and ensured the high-yield corporate shopping spree continued.6 That led to a massive number of companies bought up, chopped up, and sold off, all at immense cost to normal people who were just trying to live life and feed their families. The financiers, meanwhile, made a tidy profit.
This trend has continued, growing particularly problematic in the case of private equity companies that have bought up everything from children’s little league teams to hospitals using gobs of debt and then, to pay off that debt, dramatically raised prices. As always, the result is squeezing normal people for a bit more present profit, with no regard to what happens the day after tomorrow.
Trump Must Follow a Different Course
Trump is, of course, divorced and was in his private life enamored with using leverage “debt” to produce a seemingly more profitable outcome. Such is the mindset of a billionaire real estate developer. That carried over into his presidency, and the massive spending became a problem during Covid; however, that and a great deal of the other debt-enable spending was mostly out of his hands, as the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget notes.7
But he has good qualities, and obviously cares a great deal about the average American; otherwise, he wouldn’t be risking his life and fortune to fight our evil regime.8 To fight it, however, and put policies into action that lead to good results over the long term rather than disastrous ones, Trump must reject some of his inclinations and the legacy of Reagan.
Namely, people must be protected rather than liberated, and no compromise can ever be made with those who hate normal Americans, namely the neocons and leftists.
As the divorce and junk bond disasters show, paternalistic policies that keep people from making bad decisions, rather than pushing them into some disaster of their own making but which they don’t understand, is much better over the long term. We were a better country when people got married and stayed married, when debt was abhorred rather than beloved, and when companies served shareholders and employees rather than freebooting financiers. Mass consumer debt is a relatively recent phenomenon, for example, and probably bad for people on net; there’s a reason usury is a sin, and usurers were to be kept out of communities, after all.
Similarly, the immigration fiasco shows that no compromise is possible. Reagan was promised a slammed-shut border and harsh penalties on those who hire illegal immigrants in exchange for amnesty. Foolishly, he trusted the Democrats, and what he got for that was California made a permanent stronghold of the far left, massive numbers of “new Americans” and illegal immigrants, and no border security measures of note. The other side has to be defeated, not compromised with, because its “compromises” are always betrayals rather than good-faith deal-making.
Finally, the national debt blowout shows that the long-term must always be kept in mind. Trends set in motion will invariably pick up steam, particularly if they’re of the sort that, like using debt that is paid off in the future in exchange for benefits now, is highly addictive. That must be remembered, and anything of that sort that exists should be slashed (namely entitlement spending) when doing so is politically possible, while any further steps along that path should be avoided at all costs.
Reagan had his positive qualities, certainly. But much of what he did, the things accomplished that were permanent rather than fleeting, were disasters for America over the decades that followed his presidency. Trump must avoid such things now that the electorate has given him another opportunity.
