All it took was this one short ad.
It ends, “Ron Reagan, lifelong atheist, not afraid of burning in hell.” To my surprise, I’ve been contacted by a lot of people who are really, really happy with that ad: the idea that atheists are unafraid seems to resonate. But there are also people who are freaking out over it.
Ron’s brother and conservative wingnut, Michael Reagan, is very unhappy.
For Ron to do the ad is one thing, but the way he ends the ad was, ‘I’m Ron Reagan, I’m not afraid to burn in hell,’ just slaps our father in the face in a terrible, terrible way,Michael Reagan told J.D. Hayworth and Miranda Khan on "America’s Forum" on Newsmax TV on Wednesday.
Why? He doesn’t say anything at all about his father, Ronald Reagan. Was his father so confident that Ron Reagan would burn in hell that denying him is an insult? Is he supposed to grovel and say he’s damned out of respect for one of the worst presidents in American history?
And Michael goes on.
Fine if you want to be an atheist, but you are the son of Ronald Reagan and you do have an obligation, so you’ve got to understand that as you walk through life,Michael Reagan told Newsmax.There’s a place where you have to stop and say no, ‘I’m not going to do it in that way.’
That is horrible. Children are obligated to serve their fathers’ ideas for the whole of their life? That’s just nuts. I expect my kids to be independent and think for themselves, and if they disagree with me, that’s OK (as long as they eventually pay my nursing home bills, that is.) Again, Ron Reagan said nothing about his father; why is he supposed to stop and say “I can’t have my own ideas”?
And then, my gob, Michael says something that increased my respect and sympathy for Ron Reagan a hundred-fold.
I remember having dinner with my father . . . and he was talking about atheism at dinner one night and my dad leaned over to me and grabbed my hand and said, ‘My only prayer is that my son becomes a Christian’ like him, like our father,he said.That was his prayer.
Also, my contempt for President Ronald Reagan has vastly increased. What a cruel and terrible thing to say to your child. And how ghastly of Michael Reagan to now play the “Dad liked me best” card.
It’s a win-win for the FFRF: Ron Reagan endorsing them while being brave and likeable, and Michael Reagan representing Christian hatefulness in contrast.
Rule #1: Do not read the youtube comments. I did, and you would not believe how many angry tears Ron Reagan’s one line about not fearing hell has provoked.
Ah I guess this explains the sound of an explosion and the flash of light in the west this morning.
Of course, if atheists are not afraid of burning in hell (and why would we be if we don’t believe in it?) it takes away the trump card Christians like best. Believe like I do, or burn, baby, burn.
Maybe I’m mistaken, but I’ve always thought that the transformation of Republicans into Wingnuts started under Reagan.
?
This person’s thinking skills need to be sorted out.
@brianpansky(#5):
Well it is typical of the authoritarian mindset that seems to pervade conservative brianpansky thinking. How does he, Ron, dare to go against the authority that is invested in his father.
WTF. Who replaced wingnut with brianpansky after conservative.
Really!? All it takes is ONE LINE for us to headsplode the Christianistismists!? ASSEMBLE THE TROOPS! I’m available Saturday. Unless, of course, morning cartoons. . .
Erik
There might not be a better way to get me to read the comments than saying, “don’t read the comments.”
My personal favourite (they’ve been posting this repeatedly throughout): “This guy obviously believes in hell because he mentioned hell in his sermon that he just preached so if he believes in hell then he must believe in God so why is he trying to turn you against God?”
“This guy obviously believes in hell because he mentioned hell…”
The mind: it boggles.
Well, you see, Ronald Reagan was a saint. How can a saint’s son be an atheist? That might get Ronnie demoted to merely dead human.
The idea that, if your father is famous for something, you have to either support it or shut up? Hmm. I wonder how that would work if, say, JFK Jr. became a born-again libertarian? Would Michael Reagan say the same thing? Or is this yet another rule that is only for non-Republicans?
rietpluim @4:
Ronald Reagan was the first national success of the new right. The new right has multiple roots, though. The extreme anti-communism of Birchers was mainstreamed by Barry Goldwater in ’64. Nixon, in ’68, embraced the Southern strategy — blatently racist in exploiting the dark reaction to the civil rights movement. After Roe v Wade, the GOP was able to copmlete the trifecta by selling anti-abortion planks to the new religious right, especially the Moral Majority (which was neither). These three threads, all three of them built on hate, lies and fear (just like most organized religion), added to the economic insecurities caused by oil prices surging )in and economy in which oil was a much bigger slice of the pie), were combined by the monied interests to elect Reagan. Who payed lip service to the religious right and showered money and deregulation and tax breaks on the already rich and the already powerful. While the rest of us got the golden showers of trickle-down economics.
@9: And I believe in the existence of Middle Earth, a vampire-infested town called Sunnydale, CA, a spaceship called Serenity, multiple spaceships called Enterprise, a consulting detective called Sherlock Holmes (who was active starting in the 1880s, and at intervals ever since, while never seeming to age — hmmm, perhaps he’s a vampire?), and a whole bunch of other stuff. Who knew?
Ogvorbis @11: Yeah pretty much. I got to watch all that from here in the north-side bleachers (and was just old enough to take an informed interest). And it put paid to my sympathy for American-style Evangelicalism (I was an evangelical at the time).
@4:
It was during the Eisenhower administration that “under God” was added to the Pledge. I’ve always tagged that as the beginning of today’s Republican threat.
And one commenter at the Newsmax site, by the name of ‘love america,’ believes that:
(Gawd knows what Terry Pratchett would say about twenty one exclamation marks. Possibly it’s a salute of some kind?)
He should change his name? Sure, maybe he should go by “Ronald Reagan” from now on while making these statements. :)
Sure, he’s unafraid of burning in hell, but what about chafing in Neverland, or a head cold in Narnia?
What isn’t Ron telling us?
Not reading YouTube comments is a blanket rule every intelligent person should follow. What a cesspool of stupidity, regardless of the topic of the given video.
Michael, this may come as a shock, but …
He can neither figuratively nor literally, be slapped in the face,.
@15 & 16
Yeah. He should change his name. Because then he’d no longer be Ronald Reagan’s son, apparently.
He can neither figuratively nor literally, be slapped in the face,.
He can, but it would be a lot of work and probably kind of nasty.
Michael is a perfect example of the religious mindset. Exalt some random figure to sainthood and get on your knees. Ronald Regan is his golden calf.
It started under Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt. The reason we keep hearing the “FDR knew all about the attack on Pearl Harbor” meme is that anti-FDR, pro-military Republicans have been pushing that silly conspiracy theory since the 1940s. FDR Derangement Syndrome was comparable to the Obama Derangement Syndrome we see today.
Adblock filter ‘youtube.com###watch-discussion’ works a treat.
What about anti-FDR, anti-military-industrial-complexian progressives?
There isn’t evidence that FDR knew in advance about Pearl Harbor. There’s abundant evidence, however, that he intentionally provoked the Japanese into furnishing a pretext to enter the war against the will of the majority of Americans, and contrary to his campaign promises. One of those provocations was moving the Pacific fleet from San Diego to Pearl Harbor, knowing it would be received by the Japanese as telegraphing an intent to attack them.
I think it’s possible that FDR was looking at Japan’s military aggression in Asia and enacting defensive measures. I have to ask: Was it really provocative to Japan to move war ships to Hawaii when Hawaii is still closer to the continental US than it is to Japan? Is that provocative enough to justify the attack on Pearl Harbor?
The idea that FDR was deliberately provoking Japan is ridiculous when you look at Japan’s aggression in the 1930s. It’s as if you want people to believe that Japan was innocently minding its own business, and then that mean FDR sent some war ships to a US base in the middle of the Pacific. What choice did the poor Japanese have? Because of that mean FDR, the Japanese had to mount a coordinated attack across huge areas of Asia and the Pacific, including Pearl Harbor.
I don’t buy it. It doesn’t even make sense.
They first ran this one around a year ago (see the post date on YouTube), but I only recently started seeing it on The Daily Show online stream player again after a long break (that’s also where I first saw it, and it delighted me at the time, as I’m a fan of Ron Reagan’s use of his famous name to help promote good things). FFRF must have gotten some more cash for advertising recently, or it could just be that the budget year changed. I’m not totally sure why the response this time around is different.
@A Masked Avenger #25:
Did FDR also attempt to provoke the Nazis into war by stationing troops in Iceland in July 1941?
*ducks*
Hey, if burning in hell is good enough for Ronnie, it ought to be good enough for Ron…
Paul @ 14:
“It was during the Eisenhower administration that “under God” was added to the Pledge. I’ve always tagged that as the beginning of today’s Republican threat.”
That is probably as good a milestone of the first nationally effective action in politically mixing religion and anti-communist zeal as any, better than most.
@Ogvorbis #11 – @Paul #14 – @Hoosier #23 – Reagan was president when I was in my teens and developing a sense for politics. This undoubtedly colored my view on the rise of the right. Reagan in the US, Thatcher in the UK, the atmosphere sure was cold back then.
I love the irony of calling the conservative’s triumph the Reagan Revolution. It was of course a counter revolution being that it involved the turning back of all of the gains of the American Revolution. It used to be that America was the personal property of the Lords in London that evolved to a short interval where Enlightenment values were, well, valued and then shifted back to where we are today where America is the personal property of the Wall Street Lords.
The reason why Michael Reagan is so annoyed at his brother is that being Ronald Reagan’s son is Michael’s main claim to fame.
@26 Hoosier X:
It is possible that FDR was taking the long view. After the tri-partite agreement, Japan was a formal ally of Germany and Italy. Since FDR was working on getting supplies to England with Lend-Lease and other programs, he would need to consider Japan as a potential threat. Other provocations were the limitations of the Japanese fleet sizes by the US, France and UK. Considering that Japan was at least a non-hostile during WWI, they felt slighted.
FDR did get through and oil and steel embargo, which would have been more provocative to the militaristic government in Japan at that time. When they looked for alternative sources of oil, in particular, they saw the Philippines across their potential supply lines. Japan’s goal, IIRC was to create a sphere of influence (military, economic) which they, of course, would control. They saw war with the US as inevitable. They thought they could get the US to the bargaining table quickly (Yamamoto supposedly warned his superiors that they had about 6 months’ time before the US had converted to a war time production, which Japan could not match).
The attacks on US interests (Philippines, Wake, Pearl Harbor) were intended to knock out as much of the US presence in as short a time as possible, and would (most likely) have happened even if the Pacific Fleet was still in San Diego (which might have been struck as well, given that that would be where the ships were).
Ogvorbis @ 11 —
The “supply side” economic agenda of the American right has roots that go back even further than Nixon and Reagan (I remember reading about it in some anti-communist tracts I found in the high school debate club library in the ’50’s, complete with a metaphor based on the overflow from a fountain). But the “trickle-down” nonsense was still controversial enough that, before he became Reagan’s VP running mate, the notion was dubbed “voodoo economics” by none other than George Herbert Walker Bush — but it very soon became part of the right-wing canon as “Reaganomics”. Before that, it was still possible to find a Republican who might think there was some other purpose for government than to make the rich richer.
Shadow@34. “Considering that Japan was at least a non-hostile during WWI, they felt slighted.”
Japan was an ally of the UK in WWI.
Perhaps Ron Jr is afeared on buddhist hell?
As for Pearl Harbour ; consider it blowback from the US attack on Tokyo Harbour.
I’ve put a post about the reasons for how and why the Japanese started the Pacific war on Thunderdome.
Cry moar, I say.
Actually, I’m quite content with most of the YouTube comments. There are many good secularist contributions.
This was so benign and the smile at the end sold it. There must be some incredibly thin-skinned folks around, if *that* clip creates such a big buzz.
Michael Reagan has had an interesting life (if Wikipedia can be trusted on him) — a life that includes a conviction for financial shenanigans.
Which prompts the comeback, “He’s a fine one to talk.”
People who think that “not afraid of burning in hell” is offensive should ask themselves who introduced fear of hell in the first place.
“This guy obviously believes in hell because he mentioned hell”
Valhalla Flatlandia Tatooine Mongo Aquilonia “Vatican State”
Also, for no particular reason:
– anagram: Ronald Wilson Reagan = A Long Insane Warlord
– When his mandate ended, left-leaning Italian satirical newspaper “Tango” published a picture of him and Nancy so captioned:
Nancy: “Dear, You have been the greatest president of the United States!”
Ronald (thinking): “Ah! It was the U.S. then!”
FlatlandiaFlatland!Sorry!
-Sleepy 3D Italian Guy
If anyone would be burning in hell, it would be Ronald Reagan. Christians can be very glad such a place does not exist.
Just following his father’s fine example in Iran-Contra, surely?