Sublime

These Christian foot soldiers of the revolution were not at all libertarians—they wanted morality brought into every corner of public life—but the narrative of Free America gave them a common enemy. Reagan attached their agenda to the program of the business class, but the Christians always brought up the rear and never achieved their goals,

The brilliance of Reaganomics was to marry the antiauthoritarian urge of what had once been the counterculture with the antigovernment bias of free-market conservatives. In Reagan’s persona as well as his politics, the independent, shoot-from-the-hip individualism of the Marlboro Man became compatible—even synergistic—with the economics and culture