The King Is Dead, Long Live The King

Reagan died.

When I was young and stupid, I worshipped Reagan.  I even spent my hard-earned paper route money on one of those Franklin Mint gold medal thingies commemorating his Second Inauguration (still have it in my coin collection).  Given that January 20th fell on a Sunday, the public ceremony was on Monday, which would've been a school day for me if I'd not been ill.  I remember watching the whole affair from the sofa in our living room, sick as a dog, but I really wanted to see it--I'd made my mom get wake me up from a nap so I could.

Frankly, I didn't really remember a damn thing he said, but as an adult looking back I've often found this passage in his inaugural address to be curious:

Now, for decades, we and the Soviets have lived under the threat of mutual assured destruction; if either resorted to the use of nuclear weapons, the other could retaliate and destroy the one who had started it. Is there either logic or morality in believing that if one side threatens to kill tens of millions of our people, our only recourse is to threaten killing tens of millions of theirs?

Of course this formed the underpinnings of his rationale for Star Wars, but still, the logic is interesting in the context of our current struggles.  When thousands of our people are killed by terrorists, our recourse has been to kill thousands of other innocent civilians in Afghanistan and Iraq.  Have we revived MAD, just on a smaller, non-nuclear (for now) scale?

Eventually I grew up (though my wife disputes that) and grew out of my love affair with Ronny Raygun.  And yet, I miss him.

ntodd