The death of former President Ronald Reagan has brought out the worst and most vitriolic of his and America's critics, all trying to minimise the positive aspects and results of his eight years in office. Even CNN and the Associated Press are getting in on the action. When trying to focus public attention on the few negatives of his Presidency doesn't serve their purpose, the jackals resort to distorting and even creating the facts. Even when they speak well of him, they speak only of his winning personality, his inveterate optimism and his ability to communicate, while ignoring his policies and accomplishments. Most of us remember President Reagan as the man responsible for revitalising the American spirit, bringing the economy out of its tailspin and defeating the Soviet Union -- immense and daunting tasks at the time. The completion of any one of them would be cause enough to honor and respect the man; Ronald Reagan accomplished all three and more. The haters, as usual, focus exclusively on the negative, no matter how minor. They want to paint a picture of a President who "ignored" AIDS, started wars for fun, and just happened to be in the White House when the Soviet Union collapsed of its own accord. It's a false portrait.

The cry that "President Reagan ignored AIDS" is simply ridiculous. AIDS was not identified until 1981, and Reagan's government spent $5.7 billion on AIDS research, beginning in 1983. In 1988 - the last year he was in office -- there were only 32,311 cases of AIDS diagnosed in the US, and a drug had already been approved that held the promise of treatment. By way of comparison, there were over 62,000 cases of diabetes diagnosed in the United States that same year, yet no outcry about this was heard from the Left then or now. It amazes me that Liberals don't try to blame Reagan (or current President Bush, for that matter) for not halting the scourge of diabetes, a disease which has killed more people than AIDS. It's not about lives, of course, but lifestyle. Liberals have been trying to turn AIDS into a "romantic disease" (no pun intended, of course), much like consumption (tuberculosis) in the 19th century. Unfortunately, AIDS is often spread by the deliberate actions of the infected. There's no romanticising that, and no drug can stop it.

Liberals often excoriate Reagan for his liberation of Grenada and support of Nicaraguan rebels. His opposition to the spread of Communism in Central America (as well as the rest of the world) seems to infuriate them. Generally, the people actually liberated from those Communist regimes have a very different view of President Reagan. "Nicaragua is free because of Ronald Reagan," said Nicaraguan banker Roberto Arguello. "He was highly focused on getting rid of the Sandinistas. He made it part of his strategy to get rid of the evil empire that had planted seeds in Nicaragua, Cuba and Grenada. Ronald Reagan is revered by Nicaraguans." Reagan warned the nation of the growing Soviet threat in Central America in 1986. "A few years ago, then-Soviet Foreign Minister Gromyko noted that Central America was, quote, 'boiling like a cauldron' and ripe for revolution," Reagan said. "In a Moscow meeting in 1983, Soviet Chief of Staff Marshal Ogarkov declared: 'Over two decades ... there was only Cuba in Latin America. Today there are Nicaragua, Grenada, and a serious battle is going on in El Salvador.' But we don't need their quotes; the American forces who liberated Grenada captured thousands of documents that demonstrated Soviet intent to bring Communist revolution home to the Western Hemisphere." It was partly by halting the spread of Russia's influence and power that Reagan was able to defeat them.

While Liberals believed that the United States should be reconciled to the existence of the USSR and the continuation of the failed containment policy known as the Cold War, Ronald Reagan saw a way to bring that government to its knees -- now, in our time. He increased our military budget, forcing the USSR to increase their own military spending to match. In fact, given the 28.3% increase in the Gross Domestic Product during the 1980's, the overall increase in military spending as a percentage of the GDP only increased by .6% during Reagan's term, though it nearly doubled in dollar amount from $158 billion to $304 billion (in 1987 dollars). To the Soviet economy, however, a drastic increase in spending was unsustainable, and Reagan's proposed ant-ballistic missile defense system (Strategic Defense Initiative) a death-blow. The USSR could never hope to match it. The moment that Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev insisted that SDI research be stopped at the summit in Reykjavik, and Reagan walked away from the table, the Soviet Union was doomed. The critics may have a point -- if we had just waited another fifty or a hundred years, the Soviet Union may well have suffered an economic collapse. At what cost? During that time billions of people would have lived out their lives in fear and virtual slavery, and no one can tell how many would have died in its death throes. No collapsing government has ever gone quietly onto "the ash heap of history" of its own volition.

And Communist Russia needed to be defeated -- totalitarian governments which rob their citizens of life, liberty and the freedom to pursue happiness are the antithesis of what America is all about. We are by nature -- or ought to be -- opposed to such regimes. Though there were and still are other oppressive governments in the world, Ronald Reagan defeated the chief of them all, the one that funded and fueled so many others. In a way, his economic and foreign policies were cut from the same Conservative cloth. He believed in giving people a chance, not a handout.