Why Ronald Reagan Wanted to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (Max Boot)
The Michael Shermer Show
Michael Shermer
4.3 • 1K Ratings
🗓️ 1 October 2024
⏱️ 61 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Max Boot's revelatory biography of Ronald Reagan, a decade in the making, offers a nuanced portrait of the actor-turned-politician who ushered in a transformative conservative era in American politics. Despite his fame, Reagan remained enigmatic even to those closest to him. Boot's work, avoiding both hagiography and criticism, charts Reagan's epic journey from Depression-era America to "Morning in America."
The biography provides fresh insights into key aspects of Reagan's presidency, including "trickle-down economics," the Cold War's end, and the Iran-Contra affair. Boot's definitive work stands as a compelling presidential biography, rivaling any in recent decades. The author, a Russia-born naturalized American historian and foreign policy analyst, brings his expertise to this comprehensive examination of Reagan's life and legacy.
Shermer and Boot discuss Reagan's early life, his political evolution from a liberal to a conservative, his presidency, and the impact of his policies on modern conservatism. Boot provides insights into Reagan's views on social issues, nuclear weapons, and his relationships with key figures like Gorbachev. The discussion also touches on the current state of the Republican Party and the challenges it faces today.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | You're listening to the Michael Sherman Show. The Michael Sherber Show 10 years in the making. How do you like parse different sources? So let's say you |
| 0:31.2 | have Reagan's diary or Nancy diary or whatever about some issue and then you come across somebody else's notes and then you have some published letters and then you have, you know, |
| 0:45.0 | secondary sources and so on. How do you kind of go through that on any particular issue, I and |
| 0:49.2 | contrary or whatever, and go, here's what probably was really going on. |
| 0:53.0 | Well, you have to do what intelligence analysts call all source analysis. |
| 0:59.0 | You have to look at every source and analyze them |
| 1:02.0 | and try to figure out discrepancies and sometimes you can I mean |
| 1:06.0 | there are times in the book where I will say they're a differing accounts of |
| 1:09.4 | what happened and and the evidence does not allow me to reach a solid conclusion, but in most cases you do, you do reach a conclusion, even if it's not 100% solid, you say this is probably what happened based on my reading of the evidence and of course you have to you |
| 1:25.2 | know put things together and obviously they're often you know wildly differing stories I mean for, just one random example, what happened in 1983 after the Marine |
| 1:36.3 | barracks bombing after 241 Americans were killed by a forerunner of Hezbollah in Lebanon. |
| 1:45.0 | Bud McFarland, who was then the National Security Advisor, |
| 1:48.0 | claimed that Ronald Reagan authorized airstrikes |
| 1:51.0 | against Hezbollah opposition in Lebanon, but those airstrikes never took place. |
| 1:56.4 | So why didn't they take place? |
| 1:57.7 | Well, Bud McFarland later claimed that Casper Weinberger, |
| 2:01.8 | who was the defense secretary, refused to carry out the president's order because he was opposed to it. |
| 2:07.8 | Cap Weinberger in turn claimed that he never received that order and said, you know, if he had gotten it, he would have done done it but he didn't get it so the question is you know |
| 2:15.4 | who was telling the truth Bud McFarland or or or Casper Weinberger and you know I tried to get to the bottom of it I looked into the archives and was |
| 2:25.4 | looking for the execute order that Bud McFarland claims that that Reagan gave |
| 2:29.1 | an execute order saying like here's my presidential authorization go launch military action and I worked with the |
| 2:35.2 | archivist at the Reagan Library in Seamy Valley did not find that execute order and so that |
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