President Ronald Reagan acted against conservative ideals . . . And he did so more than once. In recent years, many conservatives have elevated Ronald Reagan to a defacto saint of conservativism. Well, Let me be the bearer of bad news. On at least three major issues Reagan acted like a “pinko” liberal. The worst part of it is no one that I am aware of – conservative or liberal – has set the record straight. Let us do that now.
Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 Many times U.S. Presidents are blamed for things that happen under their “watch”. For many things that occur underneath the American sun, the president has little to no control over. Such is not the case with this piece of legislation. Ronald Reagan signed this act into law. What is so “not conservative” about that? Well, this piece of legislation “waved the wand” so to speak and granted amnesty to approximately 3 million people who were in the United States illegally. This piece of legislation is often referred to when people say “we tried amnesty and it did not work”. You have Ronald Reagan to thank (in part) for it becoming law.
Explosion of National Debt and Spending Under Ronald Reagan’s two terms as president, money (money which we did not have a.k.a. “debt”) flowed to all parts of the federal government and especially the Department of Defense. Reagan passed the budgets allowing this windfall for bureaucracy and the industrial military complex. The rationale that Reagan, and many others, had (or still have) was that we were in the midst of the Cold War and we needed every weapon system under the sun to combat the communist threat. While I agree to a degree with this assessment, Reagan and his hawkish generals inflated Soviet numbers and capabilities. Reagan gave himself, and this nation, over to runaway spending that we are still feeling the effects of today. He did not invent this problem but he made it much worse.
Machine Gun Ban: The Hughes Amendment There is a reason why Uzi’s that would normally cost under 1,000 USD routinely go for well over 6,000. Any machine gun manufactured after the Hughes Amendment (1986) cannot be sold to civilians. Forget background checks and a paper trail a mile long, no civilian in the United States can own a weapon that fires in bursts or full automatic. Government entities can get all they desire for a much cheaper price. Civilians still can and do legally own “machine guns” but the ones they own were manufactured before 1986. Some may think this is a good thing, but let it be known that since the National firearms Act of 1934 and The Hughes Amendment very few (like you can count them on one hand) convictions for crimes committed with legally owned machine guns have taken place. Infringing on the rights of Americans to own weapons may be many things but it is not “conservative”.
To be fair, “Ronny” did some good and conservative things. He projected power, and had a regal air about him; many people like that in a president – especially after the disaster that was Jimmy Carter. However, his actions make him less than a model for conservative ideals.