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03-09-2001, 02:19 PM
WarLady1
Owner/ezOP/Moderator
posts: 1770
(2/16/01 12:50:55 pm)
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Ronald Reagan Gets Czech Fan Club
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http://www.praguepost.cz/news021401c.html
Ronald Reagan gets Czech fan club
Local group forms booster society for former U. S. president
By Kate Swoger
Cold War gladiator Ronald Reagan got a unique birthday gift this year -- an official cheerleading squad in the Czech Republic.
A group of conservative Czechs have banded together to form a local admiration society for the former U.S. president, who turned 90 on Feb. 6.
"My life in the last 10 years in a free country, it's mainly due to the work of Mr. President Reagan," said Ladislav Jakl, one of the eight founding members of The Czech Society for Ronald Reagan.
"He's one of the most important figures of the 20th century," added Jakl, an adviser to Civic Democratic Party leader and former Prime Minister Vaclav Klaus, a longtime conservative figure.
Jakl, 41, and his fellow Czech Reaganites want to promote the U.S. leader's image in this country above all for the role Reagan played in the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Ronnie sites
The Czech Society for Ronald Reagan's Web site is www.reagan.cz (http://www.reagan.cz)
Other sites of interest: www2.whitehouse.gov/history/presidents/rr40.html and www.godblessronaldreagan.com (http://www.godblessronaldreagan.com)
Reagan, who held office between 1981 and 1989, encouraged Mikhail Gorbachev in his efforts to liberalize Soviet society. In 1989, the Berlin Wall fell.
Reagan was much criticized at home for his conservative fiscal and social policies and the Iran Contra affair, in which his administration was accused of secretly supplying weapons to Iran to help win the release of U.S. hostages, and of backing anti-communist rebels in Nicaragua.
Still he won the admiration of people like Jakl by spending heavily to ratchet up the U.S. side of the arms race and by delivering fighting words about freedom and individualism.
Man of the '80s
Born: Feb. 6, 1911 in Tampico, Illinois
U.S. president: 1981-1989
Other jobs: radio announcer, actor, governor of California
Quotes:
"You can tell a lot about a fellow's character by his way of eating jellybeans." (New York Times, Jan. 15, 1981)
"Please tell me you're Republicans." (to surgeons as he entered the operating room after being wounded in an assassination attempt on March 31, 1981)
"Politics is supposed to be the second-oldest profession. I have come to realize that it bears a very close resemblance to the first." (at a conference in Los Angeles, March 2, 1977)
"So in your discussions of the nuclear freeze proposals, I urge you to beware the temptation of pride -- the temptation blithely to declare yourselves above it all and label both sides equally at fault, to ignore the facts of history and the aggressive impulses of an Evil Empire." (speech to the National Association of Evangelicals, March 8, 1983)
"After 60 or 70 years of strong socialist tendencies in the world, in democratic countries, he returned the mindset in the U.S. and Western Europe back to the basic values of an open society and a free market," Jakl said.
But he fears that young people here do not remember or care about Reagan and his place in the annals of history. So the Czech Society for Ronald Reagan has set up an award to be handed out to youths who embody Reagan's ideals and they asked the former president's wife Nancy for permission to attach the ailing Reagan's name to the prize.
Jiri Pehe, a political analyst at New York University in Prague, doesn't believe that the society will find a plethora of such people in the current Czech political climate.
"The conservative, right-wing ideals of Reagan and (former British Prime Minister) Margaret Thatcher had appeal in the first half of the 1990s, when Klaus and his people proposed similar policies here, but since then, they've been discredited," he said.
While Pehe agrees that Reagan put a lot of effort into ending the Cold War, he thinks Jakl exaggerates the role the former Republican president played in the fall of communism.
"[Reagan] probably accelerated things by a few years, but I think it would have happened anyway," Pehe said. "The communist system just could not compete with the Western economy when new technologies took hold in the 1970s."
While Pehe thinks most Czechs appreciate Reagan's foreign policy stance, he believes their image is one-dimensional.
"What they have is this idealized picture ... That's his legacy in this part of the world," he said.
Jakl is undeterred. He hopes that the election of Republican President George W. Bush -- who has already announced plans for a missile defense program similar to Reagan's Star Wars plan -- will bring about a renaissance of Reaganist ideals and boost participation in his new group.
"I don't know what will happen," Jakl said, adding that about 30 people had joined the society in its first day. "All I can do is try to start something going."
Owner/ezOP/Moderator
posts: 1770
(2/16/01 12:50:55 pm)
Reply
Ronald Reagan Gets Czech Fan Club
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.praguepost.cz/news021401c.html
Ronald Reagan gets Czech fan club
Local group forms booster society for former U. S. president
By Kate Swoger
Cold War gladiator Ronald Reagan got a unique birthday gift this year -- an official cheerleading squad in the Czech Republic.
A group of conservative Czechs have banded together to form a local admiration society for the former U.S. president, who turned 90 on Feb. 6.
"My life in the last 10 years in a free country, it's mainly due to the work of Mr. President Reagan," said Ladislav Jakl, one of the eight founding members of The Czech Society for Ronald Reagan.
"He's one of the most important figures of the 20th century," added Jakl, an adviser to Civic Democratic Party leader and former Prime Minister Vaclav Klaus, a longtime conservative figure.
Jakl, 41, and his fellow Czech Reaganites want to promote the U.S. leader's image in this country above all for the role Reagan played in the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Ronnie sites
The Czech Society for Ronald Reagan's Web site is www.reagan.cz (http://www.reagan.cz)
Other sites of interest: www2.whitehouse.gov/history/presidents/rr40.html and www.godblessronaldreagan.com (http://www.godblessronaldreagan.com)
Reagan, who held office between 1981 and 1989, encouraged Mikhail Gorbachev in his efforts to liberalize Soviet society. In 1989, the Berlin Wall fell.
Reagan was much criticized at home for his conservative fiscal and social policies and the Iran Contra affair, in which his administration was accused of secretly supplying weapons to Iran to help win the release of U.S. hostages, and of backing anti-communist rebels in Nicaragua.
Still he won the admiration of people like Jakl by spending heavily to ratchet up the U.S. side of the arms race and by delivering fighting words about freedom and individualism.
Man of the '80s
Born: Feb. 6, 1911 in Tampico, Illinois
U.S. president: 1981-1989
Other jobs: radio announcer, actor, governor of California
Quotes:
"You can tell a lot about a fellow's character by his way of eating jellybeans." (New York Times, Jan. 15, 1981)
"Please tell me you're Republicans." (to surgeons as he entered the operating room after being wounded in an assassination attempt on March 31, 1981)
"Politics is supposed to be the second-oldest profession. I have come to realize that it bears a very close resemblance to the first." (at a conference in Los Angeles, March 2, 1977)
"So in your discussions of the nuclear freeze proposals, I urge you to beware the temptation of pride -- the temptation blithely to declare yourselves above it all and label both sides equally at fault, to ignore the facts of history and the aggressive impulses of an Evil Empire." (speech to the National Association of Evangelicals, March 8, 1983)
"After 60 or 70 years of strong socialist tendencies in the world, in democratic countries, he returned the mindset in the U.S. and Western Europe back to the basic values of an open society and a free market," Jakl said.
But he fears that young people here do not remember or care about Reagan and his place in the annals of history. So the Czech Society for Ronald Reagan has set up an award to be handed out to youths who embody Reagan's ideals and they asked the former president's wife Nancy for permission to attach the ailing Reagan's name to the prize.
Jiri Pehe, a political analyst at New York University in Prague, doesn't believe that the society will find a plethora of such people in the current Czech political climate.
"The conservative, right-wing ideals of Reagan and (former British Prime Minister) Margaret Thatcher had appeal in the first half of the 1990s, when Klaus and his people proposed similar policies here, but since then, they've been discredited," he said.
While Pehe agrees that Reagan put a lot of effort into ending the Cold War, he thinks Jakl exaggerates the role the former Republican president played in the fall of communism.
"[Reagan] probably accelerated things by a few years, but I think it would have happened anyway," Pehe said. "The communist system just could not compete with the Western economy when new technologies took hold in the 1970s."
While Pehe thinks most Czechs appreciate Reagan's foreign policy stance, he believes their image is one-dimensional.
"What they have is this idealized picture ... That's his legacy in this part of the world," he said.
Jakl is undeterred. He hopes that the election of Republican President George W. Bush -- who has already announced plans for a missile defense program similar to Reagan's Star Wars plan -- will bring about a renaissance of Reaganist ideals and boost participation in his new group.
"I don't know what will happen," Jakl said, adding that about 30 people had joined the society in its first day. "All I can do is try to start something going."