In The Way Things Ought To Be, the first of what promises to be a long series of bestsellers by me, I predicted that liberalism would stop at nothing to re-write and revise the history and lessons of the 1980s. To quote myself (page 285 in the hardcover edition): "Beware. Liberals will pursue relentlessly their goal of destroying the legacy and truth of the Reagan presidency." Well, folks, I don't want to be redundant. I hate to keep on saying, "See, I Told You So." So, from now on, within the confines of this tome, let's just shorthand it like this: "SITYS."

Liberals correctly perceive the Reagan records as their most dangerous enemy. Why? Because what happened during the 1980s-prosperity at home (the longest period of peacetime growth in this nation's history: fifty-nine consecutive months), strength abroad-directly contradicts every liberal shibboleth. Liberals know that if they are to have any success they must redefine the public's perception, rewrite the history, and distort the public record of that period.

Bill Clinton and his gang that can't govern straight have been successful at one thing-thoroughly and artfully confusing people about the 1980s and the Reagan legacy. I can still hear, echoing cacophonously in my head, their dissonant chorus of class envy and vexation: "The rich got richer, the poor got poorer. The rich didn't pay their fair share. It's time to target those who benefited unfairly during the 1980s. The Decade of Greed and Selfishness caused the deficit."

I hoped the discordant symphony of despair would end mercifully when the 1992 campaign was over. But, no, the constant drumbeat has been building to a mind-numbing crescendo. Clinton and the Democrats in Congress, in a deliberate attempt to deceive, continue to disparage "the last twelve years," despite the fact that the last three years of "those twelve" were governed by the 1990 budget deal and its disastrous policy changes, which veritably destroyed the legacy of the 1980s and were then renewed in the Omnibus Deficit Reduction Act of 1993! Now, they gleefully proclaim, "Trickledown [Reaganomics] is dead." Well, Reaganomics died in 1990, and with it, expansive growth of the economy.

Republicans, meanwhile, have failed miserably to offer an effective counterpoint to the inharmonious lies trolled about this crucial decade. So, once again, the job is left to me. But, as always, I am ore than up to the challenge. In this chapter I will present factual, documented, undeniable, take-it-to-the-bank proof that the 1980s have been totally and intentionally mischaracterized by slick liberal politicians with the active complicity of the mainstream establishment media.

It's time to set the record straight. If you listen to liberals, you might get the impression that every problem we experience in our society arose during the Reagan and Bush years. Frankly, I am sick and tired of the Democrats pretending that history began in the 1980s. Sometimes it sounds as if they're actually trying to convince people that we had the American Revolution and then came 1980.

Here's the truth: The 1980s could and should serve as a model for our nation's future economic policies for generations to come. And the image of Ronald Reagan, the man responsible for shaping that decade, should be carved into Mount Rushmore, minted into coins, and emblazoned in a place of honor in every schoolchild's history test as a constant reminder of this great man's contributions to world freedom, national pride, and individual prosperity.

That's right. I'm an unabashed, unequivocating, out-of-the-closet, die-hard champion of the 1980s. With my record of enthusiastic eighties cheerleading, some cynics might assume that I'm one of those infamous and selfish people who profited unfairly in what liberals malign as the Decade of Greed. Surprise, folks. The fact of the matter is that I never made less money in my life than in the eighties-especially the first half of that decade. My convictions about the 1980s have nothing to do with my own personal achievements. They have everything, however, to do with our nation's best interests.

I, for one, remember the long gas lines of the 1970s. I remember Jimmy Carter's 21 percent interest rates, 14 percent inflation rate, and massive unemployment. I remember how real income for the average American family fell from 1977 through 1981. I remember the liberal Democratic president blaming Americans for being in a "malaise" and warning of even worse times to come. What an inspiration he was! What a leader!

In 1979, I was working for the Kansas City Royals and we depended on leisure-time dollars. We were trying to draw people from five states-Iowa, Nebraska, Kansas, Missouri, and Colorado. To do that, gasoline had to be affordable and hotels needed to be reasonably priced. Remember those fuel shortages? I'll tell you, we were sweating it out in those days, as were many other businesses.

Those gas lines were a direct result of the foreign oil powers playing tough with us because they didn't fear Jimmy Carter. They didn't respect him. He didn't believe in peace through strength. He believed in peace through good intentions. It didn't work. When we had strong Republican administrations through 1992, we never had those problems, even though our dependence on foreign oil had not decreased. But the real miracle of the eighties-and the one I want to focus on for the purposes of this chapter-was unprecedented economic growth and prosperity. Some 20 million jobs were created-real, long-term jobs in the private sector (and they were not hamburger-flipping jobs), not the kind of public, make-work, short-term taxpayer-rip-off jobs Bill Clinton is promoting. Businesses grew, small companies started up. People were investing their money, taking risks, and, contrary to popular opinion, every segment of society benefited.

From 1982 through 1990, the United States experienced ninety-six continuous months of economic growth-the longest peacetime expansion in history. (Did I already say that? Good, It needs to be repeated and repeated to counter the lies.) Interest rates were brought down from the stratosphere. The stock market nearly tripled in value. And we were able to finance the military buildup that brought the Soviet empire to its knees. America reached full employment while simultaneously nullifying inflation, making obsolete the renowned Phillips Curve of the Keynesian school of economics, which graphically demonstrated that there was a necessary trade-off between unemployment and inflation, i.e., you couldn't attack both problems at the same time. Well, we did, just as Jack Kemp and other supply-siders predicted would happen before the Kemp-Roth across-the-board marginal income-tax-rate reductions were implemented. But outside of this book and some other obscure ones, you won't hear Reagan, Kemp, Jude Wanniski, president of Polyconomics in New Jersey, Robert Bartlett, Wall Street Journal editor, and other seminal supply-siders being given the credit for this. So learn it here, folks, and remember it.