Barack Obama has had a busy couple of days. On April 6, the president released his administration’s Nuclear Posture Review, which says that the United States will not use or threaten to use nuclear weapons against countries that don’t have nuclear capabilities. On April 8, his administration signed the new Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, which reduces nuclear weapons for both countries from 2,200 to 1,500. On April 11, he began his Nuclear Security Summit.

It has been for the Obama Administration, as one senior aide described it, “all nukes, all the time.”

“I believed then””as I do now,” said President Obama at the signing of the START treaty, “that the pursuit of that goal [eradicating nuclear weapons] will move us further beyond the Cold War, strengthen the global nonproliferation regime and make the United States, and the world, safer and more secure.”

This has caused quite a firestorm on the militaristic right.

“Apart from being morally bizarre, the Obama policy is strategically loopy,” wrote columnist Charles Krauthammer. “Does anyone believe that North Korea or Iran will be more persuaded to abjure nuclear weapons because they could then carry out a biological or chemical attack on the U.S. without fear of nuclear retaliation?”

Excuse me, but this is simply ideological junk, a reflexively partisan response to a middle-of-the-road policy.

The Obama administration’s policy is a common-sense one. Why would we use nuclear weapons against countries that don’t have them? And concerning North Korea and Iran: Assuming that they could or would attack us in some way (highly unlikely), this policy still allows for the use of nuclear weapons in extreme circumstances. All this is from Krauthammer, and those like him, is fear mongering.

Often, conservatives, such as myself, hearken back to the era of Reagan, and his policy of “peace through strength.” Indeed, Reagan’s actions helped hasten the end of the Cold War and the fall of the Soviet Union””without firing a shot. Conservatives today want a “Reagan-esque” leader who would not hesitate to fire on our enemies if he had to.

In his memoir about the 40th president, “The Reagan I Knew,” William F. Buckley Jr., founder of National Review, intellectual leader of conservatism for over 40 years and personal friend of the Gipper, told a story from a speech he gave at a National Review anniversary dinner where he praised Reagan for his supposed willingness to use nuclear weapons.

“What I said in as many words, dressed up for the party, was that Reagan would, if he had to, pull the nuclear trigger,” wrote Buckley. “Twenty years after saying that in the most exalted circumstance, in the presence of the man I was talking about, I changed my mind.”

This coming from the undisputed intellectual leader of American conservatism about the undisputed political leader of American conservatism.

All those naturally disposed to disagreeing with the president simply because of the ideology from whence he came should rethink their stance. As conservative philosopher Leo Strauss said, “A view is not refuted by the fact that it happens to have been shared by Hitler.” The fact that it is Barack Obama who espouses this idea does not make it false.

It is on this point where we should find common ground with the president. We should follow his predecessor Ronald Reagan, who, in Buckley’s words, “would in fact not have deployed our great bombs, never mind what the Soviet Union had done.”

The fact that there are those who think a policy of limiting the potential use of nuclear weapons “morally bizarre” makes one wonder what, exactly, is moral about this policy’s opposite.