Chapter 1 | Part 1 | Reagan | American Experience | PBS
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 25 ส.ค. 2024
- Reagan led a revolution based on a few simple ideals: to free Americans from big government and the world from communist oppression.
Learn more about REAGAN including where to watch the documentary: www.pbs.org/wg...
On the eve of his election, Ronald Reagan was asked, "What is it, governor, that people see in you?" He responded, "Would you laugh if I told you that they look at me and they see themselves?"
Ronald Reagan was America's most ideological president in his rhetoric, yet pragmatic in his actions. He believed in balanced budgets, but never submitted one; hated nuclear weapons, but built them by the thousands; preached family values, but presided over a dysfunctional family. His vision of America divided the nation, yet no matter what people thought of him politically, Reagan always won them over personally. A seemingly simple man, Ronald Reagan was consistently underestimated by his opponents; one by one, he overcame them all to become a president who always preferred to see America as a "shining city on a hill."
A look at Reagan's life through the testimony of family, friends, historians, biographers, Reagan was produced with unprecedented access to the Reagan family, including Nancy Reagan and three of Reagan's four children, biographer Edmund Morris and members of Reagan's inner political circle -- his "California Cabinet" -- and his counterparts on the world stage, including former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev.
I love this and all these presidential documentaries. But as I watch this I find it so hard to believe PBS won't go back and re-edit them. The world has become so polarized. Even historians now find it impossible to take a balanced appraisal, as this documentary does. I hope it never changes and they continue to produce these!!
He was the ultimate leader during a time when we absolutely needed one…LIKE NOW!
"He wrote checks to poor people while cutting benefits t millions." That is EXACTLY what he should have done, what we ALL should be doing. Charity is a local and private matter, not a matter of government entitlement. The welfare state has destroyed more families than drugs and crime.
and then gave those benefits to the richest people. its called wealth redistribution.
shut up bozo
You nailed it. This is virtually unrecognized and yet fundamental to so many problems today.
Even liberal American Experience can’t rip the man, Dutch Reagan was a Patriot!
The 3rd greatest president in American history after Lincoln and Washington🇺🇸
Lmaooo
@@fadethechannel it’s the truth
@[unavailable] actually I’m right
Benjamin Franklin was the Best, that's why he's on the 100$
@@thegoodpimps not really, dig a little deeper. He’s not even half the man Lincoln was
Reagan was a giant.
GOD BLESS HIM BORN IN 1965 HE WAS AMAZING
Amazing for neglecting HIV -AIDS.
@@pt-7890 , maybe he didn't understand it. It was new back then and he was not a doctor.
I would say that this was a perfectly objective documentary. No veneration, no vilification, a fair look at Reagan's Presidency.
Within in two minutes in you have Anthony Lewis of the NYT commenting Ricardo. Mr. Lewis was his greatest critic.
@@traderjts It was five and before that, you hear the comments from his greatest supporters. I have seen the entire thing and this was not a hit piece.
I miss president Reagan.
I sure don't
Tbh I think this general feeling is half the reason Trump was elected.
I never realized how lucky we were to have him.
Unless you had AIDS
Oh Christ? AIDS, that's his fault? Looks like left wing ideas of sex education didn't work. Neither did the war on drugs, which each party endorsed, worked. Both that cause the spread HIV.
How we could use this man now
he was trump with a smile.
Good.
They couldn’t figure him out….because he was a stoic old school man, not a complainer
I have mixed feelings about him. He was a great defender of freedom & contributed to the end of the cold war. He was also corrupt (iran contra) & deliberately ignored the AIDS crisis.
I don't think it was so much that he ignored it, but that no body really knew. He wasn't a doctor so naturally he passed the ball on to the Surgeon General, and from then on it was his responsibility. Reagan raised what awareness he could, but keep in mind that presidents had a lot to do other than take pictures for a disease that was still a mystery to doctors (I mean do disrespect, that's just putting it bluntly).
The Iran-Contra Affair was different. I have two different opinions that I'll share with you. My father (who lived through the whole thing) thinks that Reagan wasn't smart enough to have orchestrated a diversion of funds. I disagree. I think it's more of a morality issue, but that's not the entirety of what I think. The way I look at it is this: if two investigations (with whom Reagan completely complied) couldn't dig up anything on him, was there really anything there? Furthermore, if one of those investigating groups was made up entirely of democrats who hated Reagan's guts couldn't manage to get something or fabricate something, was there really anything there. The most Reagan did, and he admitted to, was the dealing of arms between America, Israel, and Iran. He did publicly apologize and take responsibility for the whole thing, which is more than we'd see any president do today, sadly. I watched the hearings, hundreds of hours of them, and I saw no loops in his stories, no cut backs, nothing in his testimonies. Whenever the congressmen discussed Reagan's role they couldn't dig up a shred of evidence and they made that quite clear. Some people think he destroyed evidence, and some members of the cabinet did, but looking at the timeline we can see that what evidence that was destroyed was destroyed a few weeks after the investigation into Reagan's role had ended.
His administration had it's fair share of mistakes and flaws, but these two are highly misunderstood. And please don't think in any way that I approve of his passing AIDS in its entirety on to the Surgeon General, nor his involvement in the "Iran" half of the scandal.
What about the War on Drug's
Also the deficit
@@neecicoleman1690 No, he ignored it. There were a lot of people beating the drum when it came to AIDS during his presidency. There were plenty of people who knew what has happening. I like the man, but many of this polices were abhorrent. He is also responsible for the GOP of today. They all use him as their standard carrier. If the GOP was more in line with Nixon, the USA would be better off (He wasn't nearly as partisan, still had respect for the environment didn't kowtow to the religious right, etc.) . I don't think that he was the architect of these policies, but he was the champion of them. Also, he was an FDR democrat when he was younger. I don't understand how you can go from that to cutting social programs, taking the AX to government spending, putting the noose to labor unions, handing the keys to Wall St and everything else he did. He didn't seem to change his mind until the 50's, during the McCarthy scare. That started to turn him into who he finally became. There was no real communist takeover in the US back then, but he drank the kool-aid and continued that, less than optimal, thinking, until the end of his days.
Very possible he was unaware of the true extent of Iran Contra until it hit the news.
As far as his slow response to AIDs, you should look at how our leaders have faired on curing cancer which has killed 5 times the people aids has since 1981. In most cases AiDS can be avoided by practicing safe sex... ECT but cancer can strike anyone at any age.
Also. The CDC tried to close the bath houses in San Francisco when Aids first hit in 1981 but gays and liberals objected on the grounds that it violated their civil rights and so on. Now those same people say that AIDs could've been contained had that happened and the AIDs crisis of the 1980s could've been avoided entirely in the United States.
Btw. No Administration ... Democrat or Republican could've handled that situation any better. It was this disease that came like a bolt from the blue that medical science had never seen before. Just look at the stupid guide lines on covid and the failed vaccine that couldn't even stop two American Presidents from getting Covid19 even though they both got the shots.
He was a genius..... and mortals could not understand him.... LOVED him....
He wrapped the Religiously Insane around his finger to get Votes. mcg-truth blog Reagan never provided any legislation for the Religious, he just wanted their votes.
Fantasy World of Religious Insanity, a group that is easy to influence = trump.
He believed trees are causing pollution. Same genius as the current us president/clown.
He ignored the problems of real Americans by living in his own “city on the hill.”worst of all he allowed corporations to ruin the middle class.
@@dafrasier1 He won 49-50 states in 1988. He was loved and respected by the vast majority of America.
@@georgemckeon6710 and a two faced lying sack
I was born in 1988 and I consider Reagan top 3 best Presidents in American history.
Best president in my lifetime, and it isn't close. The US established military and economic dominance in the 1980s. The debt is regrettable, but that was the price to pay to rebuild the US military, which had grown inferior to the Soviet Union in the 70s, and maintain Democrat domestic spending (for six of his eight years the House was controlled by the Democrat Party). Under his leadership the West reasserted itself as a beacon of freedom, drove the USSR economy and the state off the rails, communism became a joke internationally, and his domestic policies redefined wealth in America. Inflation and unemployment was cut in half from 1979-1988, and poverty in America was reduced by one third.
The left uses Iran Contra as a stick to beat over Reagan's head, but they refused him the funds to fight against the sandinistas in Nicaragua, all the while their leaders (such as Edward Kennedy) openly praised the Soviet Union. Like Reagan I wouldn't have let the leftist vermin allow communism to take control in central America, and I don't blame him or anyone in his administration for finding alternative funding streams to fight communism in the Western hemisphere. You'll also notice complete silence when these leftist vermin say nothing about the gun running scheme out of Benghazi into the hands of ISIS (cough cough Free Syrian Army cough cough), Fast and Furious, Waco, etc.
In other words, you can judge a president by the screeches of his opposition, and their phony and disingenuous wailing about Iran Contra, the debt, etc. are only because they didn't like his politics, his policies, his ability to call them out ruthlessly (with a smile), and to unabashedly believe, state and reassert that America is the greatest nation on earth, a shining city on a hill. Say that to a leftist and they will repel like a cat being doused with water. He brought America out of the doldrums of the 70s and the Carter years and reasserted it as the superpower and beacon of liberty worldwide.
Are you fuckin stupid? his administration trained the 9/11 terrorists in Afghanistan (operation cyclone) and his administration also perpetuated civil wars in El Salvador, Guatemala, and Nicaragua. And you idiots wonder why there are so many migrants harassing the Mexican/American border. Reagan’s foreign policy was so bad it’s still hurting the world 40 years later:
Also you conveniently don’t mention his shifting of the tax burden from the wealthy to the middle class/poor. Raising taxes on cigarettes, gas, telephone lines etc.
It will always haunt me that I never voted for Reagan. Youth and inexperience, alas. Fortunately I’ve learned much since then....
Never too late to do the right thing. And don't be too harsh, because, of what the "media" does in terms of manipulation. I know from personal experience, because, I used to be an Obama supporter back in the 2009-2014 period or so. You know, before eventually starting to connect the dots and doing my own critical research to find out he's not a saint. It's a process that takes time. To each their own.
Is this a new episode or is it the same as the Reagan documentary that aired in 1998?
My thoughts exactly. I have to think NO.
@@justlooking2007 It's the same one
America First! As it should be.
Greatest president of the 20th century.
Talk about Central Casting...
a lot of dumb comments for such a smart and balanced documentary
I and one of my eye tri he good for his contry
Can you make a documentary of his assasination?
September, 1981
Love the subtle leftist vibe. 🤣
Dao là gì ? Ông nhin ăn mà mặc / ông nhịn mặc mà ăn
Chữ rằng đồi núi hoang vu / cao bồi thắng trân kinh sư sang giàu
Until now didn't know he was actually a Looney.
Hayes dew ? Lol
This America is GONE, all you have left is Trump's America, how sadly Sad.
We’re still paying for Reagan’s stupidity.
I am not an American but why you're telling that ? What damage he did to US ?
@@raghul0078 Trump damaged more than Ronald.
as a demrat.... you can't comprehend anything
@atheist anarchist, yeah, lowering inflation, cutting unemployment, bankrupting the Soviet empire, and winning the Cold War. Yeah, tons of damage--to Democrat ideology.
@atheist anarchist, yes and no. Unemployment 1980 7.2%, 1981 8.5%, 1982 10.8%, 1983 8.3%, 1984 7.3%, 1985 7%, 1986 6.6%, 1987 5.7%, 1988 5.3%. It cannot be argued that the US economy was in worse shape when Reagan left office than when he took office.
Reagan was a horrible president
how so? His leadership helped facilitate end of the cold war. Under his leadership we tamed inflation etc.
Nope. You were.
He wouldn’t be allowed into today’s GOP.
Time to grow up America and close the book of fairytales. The myth of Reagan needs debunking.
He did a lot of good
Did you cry when the USSR collapsed? I bet you did.
@@FervAnimalLover There are things I criticize Reagan for, but I still prefer him over Carter or Mondale.
This world system is shutting down.
JESUS is Returning SOON to carry HIS Precious BRIDE away in the RAPTURE! ALLELUIA!
"EVEN SO, COME, LORD JESUS." 🙏🙌
Revelation 20:15!
"And whosoever was not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire."
JESUS took our punishment to keep us out of there! Receiving Him as your Lord and Saviour secures your name in His Book of Life! HALLELUJAH!
Reagan = trump
Uhm, no. Reagan appealed to people's hopes, was classy, witty, kind. Trump appeals to people's fears, is classless, dull, and harsh. Reagan won in landslides. Trump? No.
@@ijiwarusensei89 Thank you. I get so tired of people equating Trump to Reagan.
as oversimplified and innacurate as that is, it could be both a compliment and an insult depending on who you ask
Not even..