Autobiography - The Galindo Group

Ram Galindo THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN Page 81
he accomplished was to fuel the fires of aggression with more strength and to
discourage freedom fighters the world over.
Eventually President Reagan ordered the deployment of intermediate ballistic missiles
to Europe and armed them with neutron bomb artillery. He thus began breaking Soviet
momentum. In a show of how President Carter’s policy was a failure, as contrasted to
the perceived strength projected by Mr. Reagan, the Iranians, after confirming this
perception through their Algerian Embassy intermediaries, realized that his
administration was not going to display Carter’s weakness that had allowed them to
keep their 52 hostages for 444 days. Wisely, they released them on the first day of
Reagan’s new administration. They even released an American writer who had also
been taken after the fall of the Embassy. My opinion that strength induces peace was
vindicated again.
During Jimmy Carter’s tenure, I believed, as I do now, that inflation was the cruelest tax
because it stealthily attacked everyone, especially people on fixed incomes. I believed
that hyper-high interest rates discouraged all business undertakings and that a 70 %
marginal tax rate was outright looting. In my view we were on the verge of losing sight of
our foundation stones cast in the late 1700s. The prime lending interest rate was at 21.5
% p.a., the highest since the Civil War. The misery index (the sum of prime lending
rates plus inflation) was unprecedentedly high. The economy was careening into a
recession. Banks were making very few loans. Our self-esteem as a nation of
entrepreneurs was in danger of suffering a big blow.
Though asked by friends and acquaintances to run for political office, I believed that
there were vastly superior candidates who could do the job well. Therefore I never
chose to run. Instead, I sought to find economic support to help my favorite candidates
gain office. Texas had brilliant and courageous leaders who had read the Declaration of
Independence and the Constitution and understood that the overriding purpose of
government in domestic affairs is to defend the people from government itself. They
also understood that our foreign policy should be rooted on strength, not on
appeasement.
Echoing the stimulating leadership of Ronald Reagan, these messages were being
delivered by many candidates, principally affiliated with the Republican Party. Some of
my new Texan friends called themselves Democrats but really were de-facto
Reaganites. They would later courageously admit this and, following the lead of then
Congressman Phil Gramm, several changed parties despite the retribution they
received from the Democratic establishment. Regardless of their party affiliation,
however, I added my economic support to these committed volunteers who wanted to
go to Washington or to Austin. Their mission was to return America to limited
government and to its position as the world’s bulwark of liberty.
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