Selective memory. The economy boomed under Reagan. He reduced taxes, ended the Cold War (which was MASSIVE) .
He granted amnesty to illegals and wrote new laws. Too bad we don't follow them, but thats not his fault.
Ronald Reagan was an incredibly effective president. I have a hard time taking anyone seriously who says he wasn't a good president.
I don't believe you were alive during the Reagan era if you don't recall the pride people had to be Amercians at the time. We've lost that over the past 20 years. Its a shame that people born in the 90's have never experienced that.
The economy boomed under Reagan....then busted in 1987. Boom and bust is a historical trend correlated with far right trickle-down style economics that repeats itself every time it gets implemented. Greenspan and the housing bubble, laffer/Reaganomics and black monday, Mellonomics and the great depression, horse/sparrow economics and the double banking crisis....every one of these happened as a result/in the aftermath of either Reagan/Laffer's economic model or a very similar one.
Also, don't forget that the national deficit tripled under Reagan - percentage wise this is a worse effect than Obama had, who you previously called an embarrassment.
Saying that he ended the cold war is, although maybe not a flat out lie, definitely hyperbole. The soviet union and its communist regime was doomed to fail regardless of who the US president was at the time due to their planned central economy's failure to anticipate and adapt to changes in the global market. Seriously, Mimi Soltysik could've gone back in time and become president in Reagan's place and the Soviet Union would've still collapsed and resulted in the end of the Cold War. This isn't to say that Reagan didn't play a role at all, you can give him
some credit for this, as the arms race definitely took a tool on the Soviet economy and that's still a big deal, but to say that he flat out ended the Cold War is exaggerated to the point of revising history
As for pride to be American, that's because the republican party co-opted patriotism into their campaigning around this time in order to sell themselves to voters. "If you vote democrat you're un-american" became a schtick - not unlike (or rather, exactly like) today's SJWs playing the "everyone who votes for the other team is a racist and a sexist and a homophobe" card.