A little more than a quarter of a century has passed since the inauguration of President Ronald Reagan. Throughout the last 27 years, America has witnessed the triumph of neoconservatism, a movement that uses fundamentalist Christianity, militarism and a free market ideology to combat the dangers seen through their dualistic lens.

Perhaps in 2005 it could have been said that, had he lived another year, Reagan would likely applaud the effects of his and his successors market-rule policies. The housing boom was well underway, as was globalization.

The rising violence in the occupied nation of Iraq and the increasingly unstable nature of its democracy did not affect the neoconservatives. They remained steadfast in their belief in the imminent ?democratic peace?, their version of the Marxist world revolution.

However, by 2008, Reagan would probably stop applauding. Currently, more than two thirds of Americans ?disapprove? of the Iraq War, a conflict born out of the Wilsonian goal of spreading liberal democracy.

Our gross national debt is approaching $10 trillion, while our gross domestic product is $13.86 trillion. Neoconservatism will soon be on its knees, if it is not already.

Speaking in 1987, Ronald Reagan claimed: ?America astonished the world. Chicago School economics, supply-side economics, call it what you will ? I noticed that it was even known as Reaganomics at one point until it started working ? all of it is fast becoming orthodoxy. It?s not just that Milton Friedman or Friedrich von Hayek or George Stigler have won Nobel Prizes; other younger names, unheard of a few years ago, are now also celebrated.?

It is the negative effects of neoconservative policy that are likely to last for decades, and credit given to Reagan is already long overdue.