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Ronald Reagan: Fate, Freedom, and the Making of History

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In this book, a distinguished professor of history examines the education and fundamental beliefs of Ronald Reagan; the liberalism and conservatism of his time; and his goals, objectives, accomplishments, failures, and triumphs as President of the United States of America. In the process, he makes some profound observations and comes to some rather surprising conclusions.

Three such observations stand out: 1) Reagan's formal education and religious upbringing pre-dated the radical liberalism of his time in office, i.e., he wasn't an "intellectual"; 2) his brand of Conservatism was remarkably close to the Liberalism of an earlier time; and 3) Reagan won the battle with the student activists in the 1960s but may also have lost the war, since those radicals went on to become the university professors who were, and are, his most vocal political critics.

The author contends that Reagan's major flaw, as president, was that, as a result of his early encounters with communism in the 1950s, he became obsessed with communism, which he perceived as truly evil, and came to interpret every action of the Soviet Union in that light. This, the author contends, caused him to misjudge and misunderstand much of what was happening in South America and in the Middle East. For example, he failed to realize that those fighting the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan weren't "freedom fighters," but were, in fact, the zealots who would go on to become today's Islamic terrorists.

The author further contends that it wasn't until Reagan came to the profound conclusion that the greatest threat to America and to the world at large was nuclear annihilation, for at that time both the United States and the Soviet Union had the capability to destroy the world. This was a threat which had hung over the world like the sword of Damocles for almost forty years. It was then that Reagan saw the folly of Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD) and made the elimination of nuclear weapons his highest priority. That realization led him to become an enlightened statesman and a leader unique in world history. In the author's opinion, not only did he succeed in bringing an end to the "cold war," in eliminating the threat of nuclear annihilation, and in facilitating the break-up of the Soviet Empire, but he did something unprecedented in world history. He ended a long-standing confrontation with an avowed enemy state without resorting to war and for the first time in world history an empire collapsed without war or revolution.

I don't agree with everything Professor Diggins contends in this book and sensed an underlying theme of radical liberalism throughout much of it. But all things considered, this may well be the most important book about Ronald Reagan, and his life and times, that has been written to date. As a minimum, it is the most complete and comprehensive study of Reagan's political life that the reader is likely to find. It makes the reader think and makes him wonder, and may change his mind a time or two. But what makes the book truly remarkable is that the author, an admitted liberal (of unknown persuasion) freely admits that he misjudged Ronald Reagan during his presidency and now, after studying his subject, ranks him alongside Abraham Lincoln as one of America's greatest presidents.

(But please, Professor Diggins, Vince Lombardi wasn't the coach of Notre Dame's "Fighting Irish.")

In this illuminating book "Ronald Reagan: Fate, Freedom, and the Making of History," John Patrick Diggins shows clearly that Ronald Reagan was a believer in the American dream and Emersonian in his optimistic belief in self-reliance and emphasis on individual freedom. Reagan worried about the danger of government as strong as totalitarianism. Reagan was ideological for libertarianism (often called liberalism in the old sense of that word). Reagan was not a social order conservative like Edmund Burke, who believed government was needed to restrain the dark side of people or impose an unfair social order. Instead, Reagan was optimistic about human freedom, like Jefferson, and not pessimistic like Alexander Hamilton. This split in ideology between liberty and order goes back to the early days of the American republic and way before that. Reagan was for liberty.

The history of Reagan's time in California is engrossing. Reagan adored FDR and was a staunch New Dealer. Then communists tried to infiltrate Hollywood and used lie after lie to do so. Reagan felt he was defending American became an anti-communist crusader, still as a FDR-loving Democrat, and then registered one day as a Republican and he never turned back. He then advocated free markets, freedom and the danger of government making bad mistakes with too much power. The story of Reagan's life before he became president is very important for understanding Reagan as a person and what he really believed. Reagan's extensive writings, speeches and political career show Reagan to be a thoughtful advocate of individual freedom. Therefore, he was a staunch enemy of communism or any form of totalitarianism. Indeed, the author argues that Reagan was in some ways anti-establishment in his optimistic belief in individual freedom. This may go back to his early years growing up with an alcoholic father. Reagan was leery of freedom being subjected to a fallible power.

Reagan's spirit was deeply shaped by his mother, a member of the Disciples of Christ faith (related to Unitarianism), which espoused an optimistic view of nature and personal responsibility.

Reagan's proactive optimism helped bring liberty to Eastern Europe. Reagan and his Secretary of State George Schulz reached out to USSR leaders and negotiated arms reductions and a peaceful end to the cold war. Reagan believed in other people. He saw institutions and government as the problem -- not people. Very few people, other than Reagan, believed that Communism would collapse. Yet Reagan saw it coming, because he viewed communism as an unnatural system. Contrary to what neo-cons falsely claim, Reagan's charm and sincere diplomacy with Gorbachev achieved the end of the Cold War peacefully. (Read Reagan's autobiography to hear it from Reagan himself.) Reagan pivoted from confrontation to a peaceful unraveling of USSR due to Perestroika and the fatal flaws of communism, with a push from Reagan. This is an important book about the Cold War.

The book says that Reagan (the Cold War), Abraham Lincoln (American Civil War) and Franklin Roosevelt (World War Two) were the three greatest liberators, and that Reagan deserves to be recognized as a great president. Reagan's can-do optimism led him to negotiate a peaceful end to the Cold War.

I would like to add that Reagan's burial site is inscribed with these optimistic words: "I know in my heart that man is good. That what is right will always eventually triumph. And there's purpose and worth to each and every life." Reagan spoke these optimistic words at the opening of the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, and these optimistic words express what Reagan wanted to be remembered by. They express his optimistic belief in individual liberty. Reagan optimistically wrote in his autobiography "An American Life" that "every individual is unique, but we all want freedom and liberty, peace, love and security, a good home, and a chance to worship God in our own way; we all want the chance to get ahead and make our children's lives better than our own." He wrote that "my mother always taught us: 'Treat thy neighbor as you would want your neighbor to treat you,' and 'Judge everyone by how they act, not what they are.'" Reagan believed in individual freedom. Reagan optimistically told Americans to believe in themselves and reach to an optimistic future.

This book is great at accurately explaining Reagan's outlook, but I think this book should be supplemented further with An American Life, Reagan's Autobiography and The Crusader: Ronald Reagan and the Fall of Communism.

This book is one of the maybe five or ten essential books about Ronald Reagan.

Dr. Diggins seems to be an erudite, intelligent man who put some serious time into researching his book. The other reviewers have rightly praised his efforts to look at Reagan through the lense of history and not idealogy, and for his ranking of Reagan with Roosevelt and Lincoln among our greatest presidents.

At the same time, I must confess that having recently read the Reagan Diaries as well as other books dealing with the Reagan legacy like Victory, Bill Bennett's recent second history volume, Reagan "In His Own Hand" etc., I must find that some of the conclusions drawn in this book diverge from the facts and tread familiar academic paths of thought about our great President.

The final negotiations that ended the Cold War occured PRECISELY because Reagan worked on every front to thwart the Soviets. This included Bill Casey flying all over the world covertly, actions to stop Soviet technology acquisition, efforts to make them spend money they didn't have on defense, and a lot more. Reagan mentions anti-communist efforts on a daily basis in the diaries. Also, the preposterous comment that Reagan did nothing to support Solidarity is false on its face - not making speeches about something (even though he did) does not mean inaction. Again, his diaries reveal many efforts on behalf of Solidarity, and Walesa himself gives Reagan great credit for his support. The fact remains that Reagan didn't alter or change his demands on the Soviets when Gorbachev came to power - the final agreement reached was the US STARTING POSITION on disarmement years earlier. His strong stance in negotiations and the arms build up (laughably described as starting under the Carter administration in the book - are you kidding?) drove the Soviets to the table because they literally could not afford to fight anymore. Fighting them on every front was intended from the beginning to realize this result. It is as Reagan described before he became President - his view of the cold war was "we win and they lose".

On a philosophical point, Diggins rightly remarks that Reagan often acted against the conservatives of his time's wishes. This does not make him somehow "less" conservative - just proven right in the argument. All idealogies are constantly in these debates, and Reagan comments on his reviews on the right constantly in his diaries as well, since he was such an avid reader of their writings. Just because the greatest conservative of the last fifty years didn't agree with every midget wonk at National Review or in congress is a comment on the midgets, not him. The line between "classical" and contemporary liberalism also seems to blur in his discussions. Yes, many current conservative thoughts on freedom and liberty are classicly liberal views (as many liberal statist views are classicly conservative), the modern distinctions are all that really matter in current discussion.

I started to read this book with great enthusiasm, as its take on Reagan seemed fresh and interesting, but as I saw conclusion after conclusion follow other tired academic views on Reagan and contradict what I had read him say in his own hand were his views and thoughts, I found it ultimately unhelpful.

For the most part, the biographies that have been written about Ronald Reagan in the years since he left office have suffered from one of two defects. Either they have been overly critical and dismissive and failed to grasp the truly revolutionary aspects of the Reagan Presidency, or they have been overly worshipful, something more akin to adulation than real scholarship. In both cases, the differing interpretations of Reagan have likely been based on ideological differences and political resentments of the 1980s and beyond.In Ronald Reagan: Fate, Freedom, and the Making of History, John Patrick Diggins takes a worthy first step toward moving beyond either the worshipful or the hate-filled evaluations of the Reagan Presidency and gives America's 40th President the respectful, if not always positive, evaluation that he deserves.

Reagan's singular achievement, Diggins argues, was the role he played in bringing a peaceful end to the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union. Though he came into the White House with a promise to rebuild the American military and confronted what his advisers contended were Soviet-sponsored regimes in nations ranging from Nicaragua to Angola, it's clear that, very early in his Administration, if not before then, Reagan became committed to the idea of drastically reducing, if not eliminating, nuclear weapons.

Much to the consternation of his neo-conservative foreign policy team, Reagan made overtures to the Soviets as early as April 1981, when he wrote a letter to Leonid Brezhnev while recovering from an assassination attempt. The Brezhnev dialog never went anywhere, largely because Brezhnev was apparently too stubborn and too ill to actually pursue serious negotiations. Similarly, the short-lived reigns of his two immediate successors made pursuing peace impossible. As Reagan himself once quipped, "They keep dying on me."

It was only with the rise to power of Mikhail Gorbachev, who required reduced tensions with the U.S. to pursue his ultimately doomed strategy of reforming Communism, that Reagan was able to pursue his desire to bring both countries out of the horrifying doctrine of Mutual Assured Destruction.

One interesting thing that Diggins' book brings out is the extent to which many of Reagan's conservative supporters became convinced in the late 1980s that their leader had sold America down the river. Many of the same people who, on the occasion of his funeral in 2004, lionized him as the man who had "won" the Cold War. Among the critics were William F. Buckley, Jr., George Will, and Henry Kissinger, all of whom seemed convinced at the time that the Cold War and the tensions with the USSR were a permanent and irreversible fact (Jeane Kirkpatrick had in fact said as much in her writings prior to being named U.N. Ambassador).

Reagan, Diggins, argued, never accepted the neo-conservative view of history and rejected the idea that the Cold War was a permanent fact of life that could only end with an exchange of nuclear missiles that would destroy both nations, if not most of the civilized world. In fact, rather than being a true conservative, Diggins persuasively argues that Reagan was really more of a traditional old-style liberal, what we would today call a libertarian, and that his ideas were influenced more by the libertarianism of Thomas Paine and the romanticism of Ralph Waldo Emerson than conservative hero Edmund Burke. While Reagan courted social conservatives and neo-cons, he did not share their views on the inherent sinfulness and fallibility of man.

Diggins goes criticize some aspects of Reagan's record, most notably, in the domestic sphere, and he rightly criticizes him for the mis-handling of the Iran Contra affair. But, like I said, this is a biography not a hagiography. On the whole, though, Diggins does an excellent job of rescuing our 40th President from his detractors and his worshipers. Hopefully, other historians will follow suit.

There is already a vast amount of literature on the life of Ronald Reagan, and it shows no sign of abating. The 40th President of the United States is a continuing subject of fascination as the man who reasserted his country's superpower dominance, engineering the fall of communism and the end of the Cold War.

His domestic policies, dominated by his passionate belief in small government and the ability of individuals to shape their own destinies, earned him the enmity of liberals, yet even on his own side of politics he is not the unquestioned hero as for example his contemporary, Margaret Thatcher, is among British conservatives.

I recall a conversation with a retired American diplomat who preferred the unsuccessful 1964 Republican presidential candidate Barry Goldwater as the true founder of the modern conservative movement in the US, dismissing Reagan as an opportunist, a former Democrat who could see the way the wind was blowing, jumping on the bandwagon in the right place at the right time.

John Patrick Diggins seeks to dismiss this argument. For him Reagan deserves to be rated alongside George Washington, Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt as one of the greatest presidents of all time. He believes history will vindicate Reagan in the same way it did Lincoln, whose reputation was besmirched for many decades after his death, but more about that relationship later.

The problem that Diggins and any other biographer of Reagan face is proximity. As the author states with some exasperation in the bibliographical notes, more than 80 per cent of the material in the presidential library remains classified and can be obtained only through the laborious and often unsuccessful method of applying under the Freedom of Information Act.

Undeterred, he turns to other sources, notably the evidence emerging from Soviet archives of the relationship with the Soviet Union's last President, Mikhail Gorbachev, as well as the burgeoning amount of literature discussing the origins behind the sudden collapse of the Soviet Union two years after Reagan left office.

The result is a scholarly, meticulously-researched book that seeks to understand not just the president of the 1980s, but the film actor of the 30s, 40s and 50s, the California Governor of the 60s and 70s and the man who passionately believed in a new beginning for his country - a rebirth that came to be called "Morning in America".

For Diggins, the man who took office in January 1981 had three dragons to slay: the nuclear arms race that threatened the world with extinction; the expanding welfare state that increased dependency and lowered self-esteem and the third, most controversially "a joyless religious inheritance that told people their kingdom was not of this world and they needed to be careful about pursuing happiness in case they enjoyed it".

This was hardly the language that the increasingly influential religious right would have wanted to hear but Reagan could see no conflict in embracing the rewards of this world - after all, it was what trade unions had been advocating for their members for half a century. He may have been ushering in the decade of Wall Street and `Greed is Good', but it is the author's insistence that the president wanted Americans to enjoy the pursuit of wealth and not be ashamed of the bounty they accumulated. It was, Diggins asserts, a necessary step in order to restore Americans' confidence in themselves after the debacle of the Vietnam War, Watergate, the Iran hostages humiliation and a decade of economic malaise.

Diggins does not hold back on the obvious black marks of the Reagan presidency, most notably the Iran Contra scandal, occurring deep into Reagan's second term and at least partially resorting from the arrogance that comes from years of unbroken power.

As with the Nixon presidency 15 years previously, there had been the subtle growth of a macho `can do' culture with little regard for moral or ethical objections. The difference being that Reagan quickly shouldered the blame in a televised mea culpa address in which the Great Communicator was at his best: "A few months ago I told the American people I did not trade arms for hostages. My heart and my best intentions still tell me that's true, but the facts and the evidence tell me it is not...what began as a strategic opening to Iran deteriorated in its implementation into trading arms for hostages."

I take issue with the final chapter in which the author seeks to link Reagan even closer to Lincoln by likening Reagan's battle against communism to Lincoln's struggle to free the slaves. It is for readers to follow Diggin's closely argued reasoning and come to their conclusions, but the fact is Lincoln went to war not to free slaves but to save the Union and that the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863 was a ploy to turn foreign opinion against the Confederacy and disrupt it internally at a time when the conflict was going badly for the North.

However, it is certainly worth noting that the Cold War was won bloodlessly while the Civil War resulted in the deaths of more Americans than have been killed in all conflicts combined in the century-and-a-half since.

There are times when this book stumbles into academic denseness, and I am unconvinced that Diggins has made his case for Reagan to be elevated to the heights of the presidential pantheon, but for those seeking an insight into the mind of the man who radically altered the face of American politics, it is to be recommended.

I read this book for a graduate class in American history. In this noteworthy biography, John Patrick Diggins sheds light on Ronald Reagan's evolving political philosophy and how this philosophy was his rule and guide throughout his life. Expertly written and based on both primary and secondary sources, this book's view favors Reagan's political career in general. Diggins did an excellent job of pointing out both historical and contemporary figures who helped form Reagan's religious beliefs and political philosophy. Some examples are Thomas Paine, Reagan's mother, Whittaker Chambers who was an anti-Communist, and economist F. A. Hayek. By following a more psychological approach in this biography of the fortieth president of the United States, Diggins drew a clearer picture of Reagan's political motivations than has been previously available. Diggins' biography has made Reagan, who was perhaps the most important president of the second half of the twentieth century, more understandable to his readers.

In his biography, Diggins was adept at pointing out many of the misconceptions that liberals had of Reagan's religious and political beliefs. As an example, Diggins emphasized the role Reagan's mother had in formulating his religious beliefs that stayed with him throughout his life. From his mother, Reagan inherited the optimistic outlook on life that the Disciples of Christ Church espoused. It would fit very neatly with his political philosophy that he shared with Thomas Paine. Both men were staunch believers in people attaining liberty and freedom from oppressive government. After all Diggins made the point innumerably throughout his book, that if there was one defining and deeply held belief that Reagan had, it was that "Reagan inevitably saw government as the problem" (xvii). There were so many incongruities in Reagan's religious attitudes and actions that historians will be debating them for many years to come. Diggins expertly pointed out that for all the support that the Moral Majority crowd, led by the Reverend Jerry Falwell, gave Reagan in both his presidential campaigns, he truly shared little in common with their strict religious beliefs. Reagan did not wear his religion on his sleeve. He did not claim to be a born again Christian. During his years in the White House, he seldom attended church services. Although as Governor of California in 1967 Reagan signed a bill to grant women the right to have an abortion, he soon had misgivings but never tried to push legislation through to abolish abortion. He would speak out against abortion for the rest of his life. Similarly, Reagan spoke of the need for religion in the classroom; however, he made no political moves to bring that goal of the Moral Majority to fruition. In essence, "Reagan looked to religion less as a source of divine guidance than as a bulwark against the power of the state" (32).

Since Reagan believed that removing the stifling yoke of government off the neck of the people was of paramount importance, it is no wonder that Reagan came to believe that Communism was the worst sort of government that could be foisted on humanity. His anathema against Communism and to its liberal sympathizers was sharpened by the Hiss-Chambers congressional hearings of the early 1950's. It was also influenced by two particular books. One book was Chamber's book, "Witness as the book that would shape his political outlook" (10). In addition like many conservatives, Reagan read F. A. Hayek's book Road to Serfdom and "accepted Hayek's thesis that liberalism paves the way for communism by institutionalizing a centralized state" (110). Diggins recounted the numerous times throughout Regan's life that he railed against the evils of Communism, which led to his well-publicized "evil empire" speech in 1983. This speech finalized Reagan's reputation as the anti-Communist jingoistic cowboy. Diggins cogently showed in his book that it was Reagan's life long vitriol against Communism, was the only cold war president that could reach out to the Soviet Union and substantially reduce the nuclear weapons arsenal.

Diggins did a masterful job of showing how Reagan, while in the hospital recovering from the wounds he received from the attempt on his life in 1981, awakened to the realization that he had to do his utmost in reducing the chances of the world being destroyed in a nuclear holocaust. Diggins found Reagan was completely misunderstood by liberals who characterized him as a warmonger. Reagan came to see the folly of Mutual Assured Destruction, which had been the cornerstone of America's nuclear deterrence. For the always-optimistic Reagan this new mission was akin to Nixon opening China. Only Reagan who called the Soviet Union the "evil empire," could befuddle his neo-conservative supporters and liberal critics time after time as he worked to get Mikhail Gorbachev to trust him and ultimately become his partner in arms reduction. In doing so, Reagan was instrumental in paving the way for the end to the cold war, and ultimately the collapse of the Soviet Union. In his book Diggins recounted one of the most poignant speeches Reagan, also known as the great communicator, ever delivered, which took place in 1988 to students at Moscow State University. It was Reagan, the optimist and defender of liberty and not the warmonger and staunch anti-Communist that addressed the audience. Reagan spoke about the new revolution that would sweep across the globe, and a technological revolution that computers would bring, which would ultimately transform humanity with the new information age.

In conclusion Diggins' book, though written when very little of Reagan's presidential papers have been accessed by historians, has captured the essence of the ideas and life experiences that motivated Reagan to act the way he did. Since Diggins' book focused more on the psychological, religious, and philosophical makeup of Ronald Reagan and not on the details of his administration, it will be valuable for years to come by students studying Reagan and the Cold War era. It is doubtful that Diggins' book will need much revision as more presidential papers are released.

As a graduate student I recommend this book for anyone interested in Reagan, American History, Cold War History.

Most authors who try to write an insightful book about Ronald Reagan eventually say in frustration, "It's impossible to get to know the man!" Indeed, the same man that many of us felt close to despite never meeting him was apparently a tough nut to crack in person. That hasn't given historians and biographers much to work with. Most famously, Edmund Morris, a brilliant biographer, laid a huge egg with the highly anticipated "Dutch."

Diggins seems to understand that it's hard to understand the man, so he takes a slightly different approach in this book. First, he studies Reagan's years in Hollywood and as Governor of California, looking at his stance and action on issues (especially Communism) and interpreting their meaning. Once Diggins' narrative reaches the White House years, he really leans heavily on the thoughts and actions of Reagan's advisers, especially the group Diggins calls Neo-Cons (new conservatives).

All in all, Diggins does a very nice job of taking a truly objective look at Reagan's Presidency - one of the first books that has enough temporal distance from the event to do it. That is a worthy achievement and wins this book four stars, but ultimately you are left with the sense that you missed the core of what made Reagan's Presidency what it was - both good and bad - Reagan.

Diggins often uses ideas from Michael Deaver's book about his years with Reagan, "A Different Drummer" to try to give perspective on the President. Despite being a close adviser, friend and fan of Reagan, Deaver does give a fairly objective look at the man. I recommend that book first, or maybe together with this one.

I never thought I'd give a five-star review to a book with which I had disagreed in so many places. But this is just a fantastic book; original, provocative, magnificently insightful, and oftentimes poetic. It should revolutionize understanding of Ronald Reagan, even if not every interpretation in the book holds up.

Diggins sets out to rescue Ronald Reagan from his acolytes on the right and his detractors on the left. He argues that both fundamentally misunderstand the nature and meaning of his greatness. For Diggins, Reagan is clearly among the greatest two or three Presidents after Lincoln. He credits Reagan with finding a peaceful way to end the Cold War, and for the Soviet Empire to dissolve without war or violent revolution. Diggins states that this is one of the great political surprises in all of history, and so it is.

Diggins rejects the conventional rightist explanation that the Soviet Union collapsed only after Reagan and his conservative Administration challenged the Soviets on every front: via a military buildup with which the Soviets couldn't contend; with counter pressure against communist aggression around the world; with the strategic defense initiative, etc. In fact, Diggins depicts many of Reagan's policies, both domestic and international, as misguided. Diggins contradicts the Reagan view that many of the world's communist insurgencies were facilitated by Moscow. Diggins further asserts that the Soviet Union imploded on its own, and would have done so with or without US economic and military pressure.

But Diggins credits Reagan for seeing beyond other US strategists, and for understanding the opportunity and necessity of negotiating communism's demise without war. Diggins depicts Reagan as seizing a unique historical moment, and understanding how to do business with Gorbachev. He portrays Reagan not as a warrior but as a great diplomat and educator of the international public. The final pages of the book are very moving, when Reagan goes to Moscow State University and addresses the Russian people. Taught that the pursuit of wealth led to despair and to self-estrangement, they instead heard from Reagan that free economies were the path to fulfillment and self-reliance, something that America's "academic-media complex" (a felicitous phrase) failed to understand, perhaps because their own well-being depended less than the Russians' on such understanding.

One needn't agree with Diggins's take on Reagan and his policies in all respects, and I certainly did not. But Diggins is absolutely right in showing the Reagan that was utterly misunderstood by the American left. Far from being a warmonger, Reagan maintained a horror of nuclear war, and he fully grasped the folly of the doctrine of Mutual Assured Destruction that had held decades of American thinkers in its deluding sway. Reagan understood that an American President could not assure his people's, or the world's, security solely with the threat that he could destroy the Soviet Union while the USSR destroyed America. As Diggins noted, the survival of humanity depended utterly on innovative conceptual thinking, and this Reagan had, perhaps uniquely among American statesmen of the time. Many of Reagan's policies, from his attachment to SDI to his determination to negotiate disarmament, rightly or wrongly stemmed from the priority that he attached to avoiding a nuclear exchange, indeed a higher priority for him even than his lifelong objective of destroying communism.

Diggins also reveals a Reagan that was in many ways very distinct from the American religious right. Reagan rejected the traditional religious view that humankind was inherently sinful and needed to be restrained. Rather, Reagan saw human nature as fundamentally good (a view Diggins says he acquired from his Transcendentalist mother), and he tried to eliminate government restraints upon that noble nature. The support of the religious right for Reagan was in many respects a consequence of their common objection to American liberalism, and especially its coddling of communist strong-arm tactics. Reagan understood the tendency of the American left to look the other way from the worst habits of America's enemies (a tendency that persists today), and he felt an obligation to speak out against this. But Diggins argues that while Reagan and the religious right made common cause, Reagan's fundamental view of humanity was far different from theirs.

Reading this book was, for me, an unusual if not unique experience. At first I was surprised by several of Diggins's interpretations, which were counter to my own. As I read on, I found the book so provocative, so original, that I found myself reconsidering many of my own long-held views, and loving the book despite my occasional disagreements. Around page 200 or so, however, I reached a sort of critical mass in no longer tolerating what I believed to be interpretative errors by Diggins. He wrote one too many statements that I felt were inexcusably sloppy and ahistorical, shattering my faith in some of his other judgments. But then on the strength of the book's final chapters my reading experience recovered, and by the end I felt that Diggins had put his finger on something fundamentally great about Reagan, so important, and so right, that it outweighed the other factual beefs I had compiled along the way.

Among the many examples of the sloppy statements that Diggins makes en route: He says early on that the US government now faces its highest debt in history (in reality, debt has been declining, and is fairly typical of historic norms.) He writes that Carter easily beat Ford in the 1976 election (in reality, it was one of the closest elections of the era). At one point, Diggins mocks Reagan for reminding Gorbachev of the US/USSR common cause in WWII (Diggins parenthetically wonders what Gorbachev thought of this, given that America had looked the other way as Hitler prepared to attack Russia. This is an absurd aside from Diggins, given that Stalin himself was sending resources to Hitler on the eve of his attack on the USSR. Most assuredly, Gorbachev would have been well aware that Stalin's tunnel vision had been worse than FDR's.) He also asserts that no American statesman has ever offered a rationale for why the Vietnam war was fought, an absurd statement even for a strong opponent of that war.

There are many such slips in the book, and one is a bit surprised that an editor didn't catch and remove them. But in the end, they do not undo one of the most fascinating reinterpretations of a Presidency that I have ever read. In Diggins, Reagan finds his most important biographer to date. Diggins finds in Reagan the "greatness of soul" that saved the world at a truly critical time. Reagan's legacy deserves and needs this understanding, and Diggins's book is the finest available place to discover it.

It is good to see serious scholarship on the Reagan years emerging, the problem I had here was this book reads much more like a college political science class textbook than a "read by the pool" book. The lengthy quotes from philosophers and theorists, while important to the author's thesis, often caused my mind to wander off the subject.
That is a problem with all historical analysis. How do you write it in a way to contribute to the understanding and knowledge of the general reading public? In this case, I am afraid that many will not want to wade through much of the text to try and understand where the author is going.
Then again, maybe it is only political junkies like me (or nerds if you prefer that term!) who would be reading this book by the pool.

I thought I knew Ronald Reagan. I thought he won the Cold War by engaging the Soviets in an arms race & forcing them to capitulate when they could no longer afford to keep up. I thought he was was a hawk & not a peacemaker. I knew he was not an intellectual & also not the amiable dunce his detractors said he was. I also knew he had the courage of his convictions. But I never knew how devoted Ronald Reagan was to an idea & how the idea of freedom was so central to his thinking until I read this wonderful intellectual biography. John Patrick Diggins in his Ronald Reagan, Fate, Freedom, And The Making Of History re-introduces me to the man & President I once loved & it has, sadly, tarnished the admiration I had for him. There is a place for a reassessment of the Presidency of Ronald Reagan. Much has changed since he left office. As an intellectual biography this book demands some patience & diligence to assimilate the ideas brought forth.

Diggins shows how Reagan's philosophy of freedom is actually borrowed from an earlier tradition of political liberalism or libertarianism which itself is indebted heavily to the philosophy of Ralph Waldo Emerson. Reagan, Diggins says, was bequeathed his ideas of freedom by the Universalist religion of his mother & his education at Eureka College, a small, liberal arts & Christian school in Illinois.

Reagan had a core belief in the goodness & competency of each individual. He believed that if each individual was left alone without the interference of government each individual would create their own wealth & happiness. In this belief he falls away from the guilt-ridden Christian fundamentalist doctrine of sin & away from the constructions of the Federalists who were so influential in the writing of our Constitution. Diggins says Reagan's Christianity didn't need the concept of sin or guilt. Those concepts were impediments to the power of individual choice.

His fundamental belief in the ability of men to rise above their government allowed him to use his negotiating skills learned as a president of the Screen Actors Guild in Hollywood to barter an end to the Cold War. He believed if he could sit down face to face with a Soviet leader & both agree that a nuclear war would mean the death of civilization & thus a nuclear war could not be won. He ignored his Neo-Con advisers who believed communism & the Evil Empire of the Soviet Union would last forever & who believed their leaders would never negotiate. Reagan believed men & not governments made history. In Mikhail Gorbachev he found a kindred spirit & together they were able to rise above history & dismantle both nuclear arsenals & walk away from the insane asylum of Mutual Assured Destruction.

Reagan was anti-government first & anti-communist second. Ronald Reagan made war at the same time on government in his own country. He started a political movement which, through the means of his & subsequent Republican Administrations & Republican-controlled Congresses, have been successful in extirpating the governmental restraints the modern liberals have enacted into legislation since the administrations of F.D.R. This was the true Reagan Legacy. Modern liberalism lies moribund at its feet. The ending of the Cold War brought the U.S. almost unbounded power & riches. And Reagan empowered the individual to wield the power & spend the riches. Tax cuts & deregulation were the devices the Reagan Revolution used to dismember government & we are left the results. Should we rejoice?

Unbalanced, almost unfettered, power of the individual over government brings greed & corruption. The rich & powerful can now devour the poor & the weak without the restraint of government. The gap between the rich & poor grows. The American Dream is now part of the nostalgia of the Fifties. How peculiar because Ronald Reagan believed the fulfillment of the American Dream was every citizen's right & legacy. Get government out of the way & let the individual go to it.

His belief in the goodness of the individual & the evil of governmental restraint has brought us all the damage that the unrestrained individual can wreak upon society. There is an irony here. Reagan's nemesis was the Hollywood communist & today no one, not even a Hollywood actor, would claim to be a communist. His socialist foes have slunk off to academia & other repositories of power reaped from the Cultural Revolution of the Sixties. Now the secular humanists of liberal academia & those conservatives (so diametrically opposed) who now evoke the Reagan legacy have one thing in common: neither are accountable to religion for their actions. The individual reigns supreme.

I am a child of the Cold War & for the end of the threat of a nuclear war between the two Super-Powers I have only Ronald Reagan & God to thank. For the rest I am deeply saddened.

John Patrick Diggins has brought the ideas of Ronald Reagan to the table & he has done it in a way the non-academic reader can enjoy. I confess I know little of the philosophy of Emerson & probably won't be digging deep to acquaint myself with it. But I am pleased that the connection between the old & new was made so eloquently by Professor Diggins. I enjoy having to think my way through history. I would strongly recommend this work to anyone who admired Ronald Reagan or to anyone with an intellectual curiosity about him. I find no faults with this book.