THE MANLIEST DECADE IN HISTORY; THE 80's BABY!
Part 1:The Politics of the 1980s

This is a three pronged article named “The manliest decade in history; The 80's Baby!”. The first part of the article will detail the manliness of the 1980s from a political standpoint. The subsequent two sections will bring to light the manliness of this great decade in music and popular culture. This may seem like a strange notion but I know upon completion of this article you will agree, and if you don't, you are an idiot. Many people are under the mistaken assumption that the 1980's was a decade of false pretensions. After reading this article you will understand why the 1980's was the beginning of the greatest era in American history, which continues today. To understand the greatness of the 1980's, the debacle that was the 1970's must be examined. In 1979, Jimmy Carter was President (that is really all I should have to say but this article will detail the ineptitude of this man in great detail).

The late 1970's

Or was he?

The presidency of Jimmy Carter was an utter failure in every way possible. First, he was elected with 49.9% of the vote against an unpopular incumbent, Gerald Ford. Ford was never elected to the Presidency, or the Vice Presidency for that matter (he was appointed to the Vice Presidency by Congress after Spiro Agnew was forced to resign as part of the Watergate Scandal). In other words, Gerald Ford was never popular with the electorate and whoever ran against him as the Democratic nominee was destined to be victorious. Unfortunately for our nation, this man was Jimmy Carter.

The mistakes made during this administration were numerous; I will take a look at some of the worst of them. Carter, by nature, was and is a pacifist. This approach in certain times of American history would not have been negative but when dealing with the Soviet menace, this was a disastrous approach. In the late 70s, the might of the Soviets grew immensely. Under Lenoid Brezhnev, the Soviet Union enacted a policy of expansion through a series of military coups that were funded directly by the USSR. With the perceived pacifism of Jimmy Carter posing no threat, the Soviets were able to extend communism into Vietnam, Angola, Somalia, Mozambique, Ethiopia, Grenada, Nicaragua, and South Yemen. At the same time, military funding was declining in real dollars.

Economic policy was no better under Carter. From 1976 to 1980, purchasing power for the average citizen declined 9 percent; Source: http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa-261.html. When Ronald Reagan took office in 1981, unemployment was 7.6 percent, a historically high number. Worse than this, the inflation rate in 1979 was 13.5 percent and anyone who knows anything about economics knows how high inflation rates can destroy an economy.

The handling of the Iran hostage crisis was in true Carter form, horrible. When the Iranian revolution of 1979 took place, the US embassy was ransacked and the dignitaries there were taken hostage. What did Carter do?? In typical Carter fashion, he talked and nothing happened. This sign of weakness would have contributed to more attacks on our embassies, but in 1980, Ronald Reagan was elected and the Golden Era of America began.

The mistakes, disasters and failings of the 1970s were many (I still have not mentioned the culture of the 1970s which could be worse than the political landscape, if that is even possible) and I could go and on about them but this article is a positive one that illustrates the greatness of the 1980s.

The watershed event of the 1980s and for that matter in modern American history was the election of Ronald Reagan to the Presidency. In 1980, Americans were struggling with a negative outlook and self-image. With prices soaring, unemployment rampant, outrageous interest rates, and the humiliating foreign policy failures of the 1970s, this “malaise” (Jimmy Carter coined this phrase in a speech) was completely understandable. Ronald Reagan was an optimist and his infectious happiness got him elected in a landslide victory over the morose and limp-wristed Jimmy Carter.

The dividends of his elections were collected minutes after his inauguration with the freeing of the hostages in Iran. The Iranians knew the Ronnie would kick ass and take names if immediate action was not taken and they made the right choice. His first act of office was to eliminate the price controls on domestic energy that had crippled the industry in the late 1970s. This act allowed domestic corporations to make money and use those profits for exploration and development of modern petroleum delivery. In 1981, Reagan was shot in an attempted assassination and his affable nature during this difficult time only served to endear him to the American public. In the summer of 1981, Reagan took a major step towards modernizing our economy when he fired the striking air traffic controllers union; this ushered in the modern era of union's declining importance in the American economy. This robbed the nation's unions to hold companies hostage and since unions are inherently communist, this was a positive development.

One of the most important decisions of the early Reagan years was to appoint Paul Volker as chairman of the Federal Reserve. Volker immediately increased interest rates to bring inflation under control and controlling inflation has been the main mission of the Federal Reserve ever since. This, of course, was successful and lower inflation rates paved the way for unprecedented economic growth for the entire decade. In 1979, the consumer inflation rate was 13.5% and by 1983 the rate had been halved to 6.2% Source: http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa-261.html .

The growth of the American economy in the 1980s was robust to say the least. The growth rate from 1981 to 1989 was 3.2% per year which is the highest 9 year rate in American history. This was achieved by crushing inflation and the adoption of “Reaganomics”. For some reason this term was used in jest by Dumbocrats in the decade but proved to be a smashing success. The main idea of Reaganomics was supply-side economics. Reagan's ideas were not his own, they had been espoused by an economist named Arthur Laffer. His assertion was that taxes were too high and therefore individuals and business had no incentive to grow. The Laffer curve was a simple economic model that stated that if taxes were 0% the government would receive nothing and if taxes were 100% the government would receive nothing so somewhere between 0-100% there was an ideal percentage that would result in the highest possible tax collection. Prior to the Reagan administration, the highest tax bracket was an astounding 75%!! Reagan halved this to 37.5% and to the utter humiliation of liberals everywhere; tax receipts grew from $517 billion in 1980 to over $1 trillion by 1989 (source same as above). This approach is proving to be successful again now in the Bush II administration with tax receipts growing 17% from 2003 to 2004.

All of these statistics are important because they show the economic gains for the American people during the 1980s. These economic developments fundamentally changed this nation for the better. The rise of the service industry, computer science, low taxes and increased day-to-day convenience trace back to the 1980s. It is important to note Ronald Reagan's contribution to the economic rebirth of our nation that took place in the 1980s. A strong economy, while important, was not the greatest contribution to our nation's history made in the 1980s. The most important impact of the Reagan Presidency was the defeat of the Soviet Bloc and communism as a whole.

The Cold War

I could write an entire article about this subject since it is my favorite subject in modern political history, but I will attempt to give you (my generally ignorant readers) a brief synopsis of our victory in the Cold War.

The Cold War began in 1946, after WWII when Stalin and Roosevelt (a noted communist himself) negotiated the partitioning of Europe into the pro-American bloc (known as NATO) and the pro-communist bloc (The Soviet Bloc). Soon after WWII, the Soviet Union detonated an atomic bomb and ushered in the endless arms race that ceased in the mid 1980s. During most of the 1950s, 60s and 70s, the Soviet Union maintained a larger arsenal of nuclear weapons, along with a superior (from a size standpoint) land and air force.

The Soviet Menace was a force to be reckoned with, and for the most part America chose to allow the Soviets to gain strength and consolidate its never-ending power grabs in the Middle East, Africa and Central and South America. Many Americans feared an apocalyptic battle with the Russians. I was one of them. As a five year old child I can remember staying awake worrying about ICBMs being launched by the USSR and striking my homeland. This was 1982-84, when Soviet Premiers were being replaced rapidly after the death of Brezhnev, first was Andropov and then Chernenko. For a five year old child to worry about the deaths of a foreign nation's leaders and think that war could be imminent is not a pleasant thought. To me, this is the lasting legacy of Ronnie, he defeated the Soviets and now five year olds can worry about things like if their parents are going to feed them or if they are going to come back after a night of shooting meth (maybe my childhood was better!).

The most important thing that Reagan did to defeat communism was to confirm to the average American that his nation was the greatest on Earth. Prior to Reagan, American was still in a Vietnam-induced hangover, where we feared our economic and military superiority, and this “malaise” was threatening to destroy America as the beacon to the free world. Reagan did not do this through policy alone; he did it with a “patriotic crusade”. He toured the nation and spoke, not about policies and politics, but with speeches calling the Soviet Union the “evil empire”. Another famous quote by Ronnie was “How do you tell a communist? Well, it's someone who reads Marx and Lenin. And how do you tell an anti-communist? It's someone who understands Marx and Lenin”. I could not have said it better myself. Ronald Reagan personified the manly greatness of the 1980s and it was under his leadership that many other manly events took place in the great decade that was the 1980s.

NEXT: The music and culture of the 1980's!

-arthur@arthurshall.com