FROM THE US:  Residents of Britain and Western Europe in the early and mid 1980s and beyond were treated to a non-stop diatribe about President Reagan’s’ “failings.”  He was a warmonger, a dangerous idealog, an idiot, an uneducated “B” movie actor.  According to the wisdom of newspapers, television and comedy shows he was risking World War III.  Thirty years later he his honored with statues in both Budapest and London.  Sweet vindication.

Ronald Reagan was a Conservative by any definition.  He espoused freedom of choice and self determination.  He championed individual rights and challenged the status quo of the Cold War.  Reagan refused to accept the Soviet Union as a legitimate government for hundreds of millions.  In return he was vilified by Progressives, Liberals and Socialists as an unqualified spokesman for human rights.  He was demonized.

Americans recognized a different man.  Certainly he was unfairly criticized by the US media but they could not dent his popularity.  Reagan was a true American.  He understood the Constitution and he could communicate his idealism and beliefs in ways that made people feel good about themselves and their country.  Democrats voted for him in their millions.

It is not hard to understand why Reagan is so honored in a country like Hungary.  The West watched impotently as Russian forces brutally suppressed a freedom movement in 1956.  The 1980s Solidarity movement in Poland could not have succeeded without the knowledge that America, through Reagan, supported it.  Reagan would not back down to the Soviets and they broke.  But what might be happening in Britain that earns Reagan a statue?

Britons were led to hate Reagan.  He risked their comfortable peace with a despotic and brutal dictatorship that was the Soviet Union.  It is to hoped that the lessons of Reagan are taking root.  Government oppression is never to be accepted and accommodated.  Oppression can be brutal or benign.  The restrictions on human activity as legislated by the European Parliament have never been popular with the British.  Can it be true that Britons are coming to the realization that more government, not less, is a desirable goal?

The answer is probably not.  Talk to a Briton about a problem and the response is likely to be “the government should do something.”  Reagan succeeded the hapless Jimmy Carter and was able to reverse his damaging Presidency.  The far more disastrous Barack Obama will be succeeded by someone we can hope will have learned from Reagan.  But the Europeans seem enamored with Obama.

While Western Europeans will grudgingly give Reagan his due but probably learn nothing, at least it is possible Americans will relearn the forgotten lessons of thirty and forty years ago.  Socialism does not work.  It is both repressive and oppressive.  Obama might be a superstar in Europe but a statue would be a cruel joke.

Klein is a 26 year old with no recorded job history other than serving on Howard Dean’s Presidential primary campaign in 2003.  A failure of huge proportions.  Klein was (and is) a prolific blog writer who caught the attention of the Washington Post editors.  They hired him as a “blogger” on economics and politics in 2009.  His articles are now carried by newspapers across America.

It is the miracle of America that young people with vision and purpose may create their own career paths.  That Klein could make a living expressing his views and politics is a marvelous wonderment and a tribute to the capitalistic Republic that is the United States.  That he is hired by a newspaper to espouse his views is dangerous.

Ezra Klein had early ambitions to be a politician.  He changed his mind: “I think the creation of a media environment that can sustain and propel progressivism is more important than any single elected official.”  In other words, the manipulation of news and information to support a single political cause.  And a major US newspaper hired him.  Why?  Perhaps in a young Klein they can influence political change?  There is not a totaliritarian dictator in the world who would find fault in this arrangement.

In 2007 Klein created a group called Journolist for discussing politics and the news media.  This was a closed and secretive group limited to “several hundred left-leaning bloggers, political reporters, magazine writers, policy wonks and academics.”  It was a successful conspiracy until it was exposed in 2009.  Klein justified excluding Republicans from participating as the group was “not about fostering ideology but preventing a collapse into flame war.  The emphasis is on empiricism, not ideology.”  Given his ambition to create a media environment to promote progressive ideas, this is an outrageous lie.

Klein is a clever and manipulative writer.   He supports his agenda in quoting “experts.”  For example, in an article published carried by the Tampa Tribune on February 3^rd he quotes a Stanford University professor who is upset that Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell called for Obama to be a one term President.  Essentially the professor implied the President was a company CEO and that it was everyone’s responsibility to ensure his success.  Overlooking, of course, the efforts to demonize, defeat and undermine Republican Presidents Reagan and Bush.

In the same article, Klein claimed we have a legislative system “built for a political system for another time.”  “We are going to need one adapted to the realities of our present.”   This is code language to bemoan that Congress will not, or cannot, enact change fast enough.  It refuses to accept the brilliance of the Constitution.  Designed to ensure that the majority cannot inflict harm on the minority.

Klein is deserving of any reward his writing can bring.  That he is employed by a newspaper to cover economic and political comment is an affront.  His articles are not accompanied by the disclaimer “the writer’s views are his own.”  So we must assume the Washington Post no longer believes the Constitution is relevant to current social and political discourse.  If this is true a major media outlet has become the enemy within.