Understanding Reagan ; and Ignoring Liberal Orthodoxy

Summary

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John Patrick Diggins, a professor of history at the City University of New York, has written a remarkable book about Ronald Reagan. It is remarkable because the author freed himself of the orthodoxy of modern academia in order to see his subject not as one- dimensional but whole.

As a young man on the University of California's Berkeley campus in the 1960s, Mr. Diggins saw Mr. Reagan through left-liberal eyes, and later saw the Reagan presidency as "little more than the age of avarice and savings-and-loan scandals." Unlike many of his academic colleagues, however, he dug into the growing body of evidence about the formation of Mr. Reagan's view of the world and the president's "intelligent, sensitive mind with passionate convictions."

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Extract

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Understanding Reagan ; and Ignoring Liberal Orthodoxy

In "Ronald Reagan: Fate, Freedom and the Making of History," Mr. Diggins writes, "Reagan, it is now clear, delivered America from fear and loathing. He stood for freedom, peace, disarmament, self-...

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