Political positions of Ronald Reagan

Reagan's basic foreign policy was to equal and surpass the Soviet Union in military strength, and put it on the road to what he called "the ash heap of history".

[2] Reagan himself made the major policy decisions and often overruled his top advisers in cases such as the Reykjavík Summit in 1986, and his 1987 speech calling for tearing down the Berlin Wall.

Reagan had rarely traveled abroad and relied on an inner circle of advisers who were not foreign policy experts, including his wife Nancy, James Baker, Edwin Meese, and Michael Deaver.

[12] Reagan forcefully confronted the Soviet Union, marking a sharp departure from the détente observed by his predecessors Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, and Jimmy Carter.

Under the assumption that the Soviet Union was financially unable to match the United States in a renewed arms race, he accelerated increases in defense spending begun during the Carter Administration and strove to make the Cold War economically and rhetorically hot.

Stansfield Turner, CIA director under Carter, warned in 1981 that, "in the last several years all of the best studies have shown that the balance of strategic nuclear capabilities has been tipping in favor of the Soviet Union.

"[14] Second, Reagan believed the decrepit Soviet economy could not handle a high-tech weapons race based on computers; it was imperative to block them from gaining western technology.

[16] On March 3, 1983, he was blunt to a religious group: the Soviet Union is "the focus of evil in the modern world" and could not last: "I believe that communism is another sad, bizarre chapter in human history whose — last pages even now are being written.

But Reagan labeled the USSR an "evil empire" and argued that it was suffering a deep economic crisis, which he intended to make worse by cutting off western technology.

To mollify Israel and its powerful lobby in Washington, the United States promised to supply it with an additional F-15 squadron, a $600 million loan, and permission to export Israeli-made Kfir fighting aircraft to Latin American armies.

[30] Reagan believed in policies based on supply-side economics and advocated a laissez-faire philosophy,[31] seeking to stimulate the economy with large, across-the-board tax cuts.

[35] However, it has also been acknowledged that Reagan did raise taxes on eleven occasions during his presidency to both preserve his defense agenda and combat the growing national debt and budget deficit.

[53] Although Reagan was for a limited government and against the idea of a welfare state, he continued to fully fund Social Security and Medicare because the elderly were dependent on those programs.

[citation needed] Mounting concerns that rising Social Security benefits were causing a long-term deficit and were growing too fast resulted in a bipartisan compromise in 1983.

Brokered by conservative Alan Greenspan and liberal Congressman Claude Pepper, the agreement lowered benefits over the next 75 years and brought the system into balance.

[67] His first judicial appointee for the Supreme Court, Sandra Day O’Connor, led the effort to uphold Roe v. Wade in a 1992 case over restrictive abortion laws in Pennsylvania.

As California's Governor, Reagan was beseeched to grant executive clemency to Aaron Mitchell, who had been sentenced to death for the murder of a Sacramento police officer, but he refused.

[77] In a 1986 address to the nation by Ronald and Nancy Reagan, the President said: "[W]hile drug and alcohol abuse cuts across all generations, it's especially damaging to the young people on whom our future depends ...

[77] In the address with the first lady, President Reagan reported on the progress of his administration, saying:Thirty-seven Federal agencies are working together in a vigorous national effort, and by next year our spending for drug law enforcement will have more than tripled from its 1981 levels.

[84] At his 78th birthday celebration in 1989, Reagan condemned private ownership and use of machine guns, stating, ″I do not believe in taking away the right of the citizen [to bear arms] for sporting, for hunting and so forth, or for home defense, ...

Despite opposing the ERA, Reagan did not actively work against the amendment, which his daughter Maureen (who advised her father on various issues including women's rights) and most prominent Republicans supported.

Elizabeth Dole, a Republican feminist and former Federal Trade Commissioner and advisor to Presidents Lyndon B. Johnson, Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford (who would go on to become Reagan's Transportation Secretary) headed up his women's rights project.

[93] In 1980, Reagan said the Voting Rights Act of 1965 was "humiliating to the South", but in 1982 he signed a bill extending it for 25 years after a grass-roots lobbying and legislative campaign forced him to abandon his plan to ease that law's restrictions.

[96] Reagan's Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, as well as his Justice Department, prosecuted fewer civil rights cases per year than they had under his predecessor, President Jimmy Carter.

[98] Critics have claimed that Reagan gave his 1980 presidential campaign speech about states' rights in Philadelphia, Mississippi in a calculated attempt to appeal to racist southern voters.

[108] South African Archbishop and anti-apartheid activist Desmond Tutu called Reagan's policy as "immoral, evil, and un-Christian" as Nazism and lamented that the president's administration was overall "an unmitigated disaster" for black people.

[114] Revell also noted that Reagan enjoyed a great relationship with his oldest daughter’s adopted girl from Uganda and also with several African politicians, such as Samora Machel and Yoweri Museveni.

[115][116] According to a 2004 IGF Culture Watch article by Dale Carpenter:[117] Cannon reports that Reagan was "repelled by the aggressive public crusades against homosexual life styles which became a staple of right wing politics in the late 1970s."

"In 1984, Reagan stood by his position against gay marriage by stating:[119] Society has always regarded marital love as a sacred expression of the bond between a man and a woman.

We will resist the efforts of some to obtain government endorsement of homosexuality.Reagan was a supporter of prayer in U.S. schools, as in 1982, he sent Congress a proposed constitutional amendment to allow it, but stating it wouldn't be manadatory.