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me i have spent most of my life as a democrat i recently have seen fit to follow another course this is the issue of this election whether we believe in our capacity for self-government or whether we abandon the American Revolution and confess that a little intellectual elite in a far distant capital can plan our lives for us better than we can plan them ourselves. You and I have a rendezvous with destiny. We'll preserve for our children this, the last best hope of man on earth, or we'll sentence them to take the last step into a thousand years of darkness. That was part of President Ronald Reagan's 1964 Time
for Choosing speech, one delivered on behalf of Republican candidate Barry Goldwater, who would go on, of course, who would go on to be wiped out in the 1964 landslide, a landslide of historic proportions. But it helped launch Ronald Reagan's own political career. A new piece on Substack titled The Man on a Horseback, author Tim Barnacle takes a closer look at that message and also parallels to the present day. Tim writes that Reagan was the embodiment of what John F. Kennedy had warned about in a speech just a few years prior. Quote, while Kennedy emphasized unity that night, Reagan realized division was the way of the future. And Tim joins us now.
His substack is American Times with Tim Barnacle. You know, Tim, there's debate in conservative circles about Ronald Reagan and where, how we went from Ronald Reagan to the revolution of 1994, who many people blame people like me for where we are today. Just ask Norm Ornstein. Hi, Norm. And then about my class. We've had this debate about Newt Gingrich for some time. But then so from Reagan to Gingrich to Trump and trying to figure out exactly the through line there, especially when you look at the fact that so much of what Donald Trump supports, tariffs, Russia, no immigration policy is the complete antithesis of Ronald Reagan when it comes to policy issues. So talk about the through line as well as some of the things that don't line up quite so well.
Well, the question everyone's asking themselves as Senator Blumenthal was on and you see those nominees denying reality, the question is, when did this movie start? When did we derange and devolve into this movement, even if it's just the Republican Party, it's the party in power. And I would say that movie starts Now, it's just the first baby steps of Reagan. And really that starts actually oddly with Goldwater in 64. Reagan was the top surrogate for Goldwater. And he says Goldwater did extremism IN THE DEFENSE OF LIBERTY IS NO VICE. WELL, REAGAN PICKS THAT UP AND RUNS WITH IT AND IT GOES FROM REAGAN ARGUABLY TO NIXON AND THEN YES, TO GINGRICH AND ALL THE WAY TO TRUMP.
SO, TIM, YOU ALSO WROTE IN THE PIECE THAT THE CLICK-BATE WORLD OF PITTING AMERICANS AGAINST ONE ANOTHER HAS REAL WORLD CONSEQUENCES AS THOSE GATHERED AT THE WASHINGTON HILTON ALMOST LEARNED firsthand on Saturday night. Not only does it raise the specter of violence, but it also exhausts every one of us and leads many into thinking that this is how political conversations are supposed to happen. There's no single finger to blame for all this, not Goldwater, not Reagan, and not Trump. But it's all part of one coherent if degenerative timeline. In order to restart the search for meaningful unity in America and collectively regain the veneer
of national respectability, we need to RECOGNIZE THAT THOSE GOALS HAVE BEEN SLIPPING AWAY FROM US BIT BY BIT FOR A VERY LONG TIME NOW. AND WE HAVEN'T QUITE RETURNED TO THE SORT OF VIOLENCE THAT PERMETED OUR POLITICS IN THE 1960s AND THE EARLY 70s BUT WE'RE GETTING DISTURBINGLY CLOSE YOU KNOW WITH THERE OF COURSE BEEN MULTIPLE ATTEMPTS ON PRESIDENT TRUMP'S LIFE THERE HAVE BEEN THE VIOLENCE OF JANUARY 6TH THERE HAVE BEEN THE ASSASSINATIONS OF LAWMAKERS IN MINNESOTA THE LIST SADLY GOES ON AND ON ABOUT THESE EPISODES OF MULTIPLE VIOLENCE AND IT DOES SEEM TO HANG OVER US ALL AND SORT OF REINFORCE THIS IDEA THAT THIS NATION IS SO HOPELESSLY DIVIDED AND BROKEN THAT PEOPLE FEEL LIKE WELL WE HAVE NO OTHER RECORSE RIGHT AND I THINK IT'S ONE OF
THESE THINGS WHERE WE PUT PEOPLE LIKE RONALD REAGAN UP ON A PEDESTAL WE HAVE THIS VENEER OF RESPECTABILITY NOW OF COURSE RONALD REAGAN WAS NOT DONALD TRUMP AND DONALD TRUMP HAS DERIDED AND DEVOLVED OUR NATIONAL PROJECT AND TRAMPLED THE CONSTITUTION AND CONTINUED TO DO SO DAILY BUT RONALD REAGAN WAS KIND OF THE OLD SEEMINGLY DAUGHTERING PHIL HARTMAN CHARACTER THAT SNL did so well. But just take a look at last week with the Voting Rights Act, which section two was gutted by the Supreme Court. Well, the chief justice is John Roberts. John Roberts started his career in the Department of Justice under Ronald Reagan. And the thing he was charged with and tasked with was going after Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act.
Now, that didn't happen then because it was a Democratic Congress. But this process has been not-it didn't start when Donald Trump came down the escalator in 2015. It started decades and decades ago. Now, again, Trump has devolved it into somewhere where even Ronald Reagan would not be able to see it go. Yet there is a beginning to this story. The rhetoric in terms of this being civilizational. I mean, I just want to quote what you quote here from 64, Reagan saying, quote, we will preserve for our children this, the last best hope of man on earth,
or we will sentence them to take the last step into a thousand years of darkness. And I don't know, like looking back, you're thinking, man, that is dramatic. But now the instincts feel again like they are existential. The stakes are existential. And so when you hear the rhetoric and the temptation to speak on a cosmic biblical level, what goes through your mind now that maybe there's an attempt to correct this legacy of degeneracy that you've described? Well, right. You have what Reagan says and then you have just a few weeks ago, a whole civilization will die tonight. Donald Trump.
You have Ronald Reagan saying yes, you know, we have a rendezvous with destiny. And then you have Trump putting almost everything where it just becomes so, you know, washed over, so whitewashed. We expect it. But these things started a long time ago. And, you know, again, it starts with this goldwaterism of extremism. The defense of liberty is no vice, you know, Reagan takes that, puts it in Hollywood packaging. And then, yes, you have Gingrich who kind of develops into this more malevolent form. But it all has a beginning and it's gone to this new place.
But I think we need to kind of in order to understand, you know, why the forest is on fire. We need to look at the spark that started it. The new piece titled A Man on Horseback is available to read on the American Times with Tim Barnacle Substack. Tim, thank you so much for joining us this morning.
