Loose Lips	Loose Lips Archive

Will the Guide readers' occasional Latin club please come to order? Today Miss Poubelle will be teaching you three useful phrases, and hopes that they will come in handy during this period of public comment on President Ronald Wilson Reagan.

The first is de mortuis nil nisi bonum, which means 'Of the dead, speak nothing but good'. Anyone who says outloud today that Reagan was less than a stellar president will certainly encounter some reproving looks. Even those who thought him the worst president of modern times may hold their tongues at this point out of respect for the dead.

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De mortuis nil nisi bonum is more reasonable line to take with most people. Once Uncle Melvin has shuffled off this mortal coil, it is pointless to complain that he never put the cap back on the toothpaste, dog-eared the pages of books from the public library, and drank directly from the milk carton in the refrigerator. Whatever Melvin's flaws, they have ceased to be of any particular relevance to the world now that he is gone. But those who have committed grave sins don't get such an easy amnesty after death.

Reagan's presidency was a dark time in America. AIDS and the Iran-Contra scandal are only two of the most egregious failures of his administration. The AIDS crisis began in earnest in the early 80s in the United States. From the time Reagan took office in 1981 until 1987, he never uttered the word AIDS in any public forum. He ignored the problem and devoted scant resources to research and education. By the end of 1987, when Reagan deigned to address the issue, 71,176 people had been diagnosed with AIDS in the United States and 41,027 had died. (The number now is over ten times that many.)

His government was content to let gay men and IV-drug users die from AIDS because it was afraid that action would be politically inconvenient and imply moral approval of homosexuality and drug use.

During the Iran-Contra scandal, the Reagan administration set up an undercover scheme to sell arms to Iran in order to fund the resistance in Nicaragua. Both of these actions were explicitly illegal-- the US Congress had passed laws banning both the sale of arms to Iran and military aid to the Contras. If any presidential action ever merited impeachment, this was it. Clinton's blowjob perjury pales next to the Reagan's brazen contempt for the Constitution and the rule of law.

Eulogies for Reagan will conveniently fail to mention these notorious failures of government and instead claim that he ended the Cold War and the Soviet menace. Prominent in the Reagan hagiography is a 1987 speech at the Berlin Wall in which he read "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!" Two years later (November 1989), the wall fell, and conservative commentators give Reagan the credit for this development.

At this point, we turn to the second Latin phrase for today's lesson: Post hoc, ergo propter hoc-- 'After this, therefore because of this'. This is one of the first fallacies that philosophy students learn to identify. The fallacy lies in thinking that because one event preceded a second event, the first caused the second. An obvious instance of a post hoc fallacy-- a pitcher wears red socks and pitches a no hitter later that day. Did the red socks cause the no hitter? Obviously not.

In the same way, the idea that Reagan's speech caused the fall of the Berlin Wall is an absurd post hoc fallacy. The Berlin Wall fell for a number of reasons, including economic problems in the Soviet Union, the election of Mikhail Gorbachev, and local protest movements in Eastern Europe. It is arguable that something in the policies of the Reagan administration hastened these events, but the idea that Reagan caused them is ridiculous.

Finally, class, Miss Poubelle will introduce today's final Latin phrase-- De mortuis, nil nisi veritas-- 'Of the dead, say nothing but the truth.' In the midst of likely national movements to rename a state after Reagan and to put his face on the flag, those who suffered through the bleak years of his administration should remember this motto and have the courage to speak the truth about him.