| "We win, they lose. What do you think about that?" |
The Evil Empire (Spring/Summer 2008, Volume 58, Issue 4) n:61864 (americanheritage.com):
"Internally there was much dissension. Most of his senior staff second-guessed him. The State Department consistently undermined his foreign policy. Even senior people in the White House, including his wife, thought he should retire.
During this difficult period, Reagan fell back on Reagan, much like Lincoln fell back on Lincoln during the Civil War. Great willful presidents have enormous capacities to outmaneuver the bureaucracy. But they have to pay attention.
Officials from the National Security Council and State Department routinely receive advance copies of foreign policy speeches for their input. Reagan knew they would try to prevent him from describing the Soviet Union with the clarity and forcefulness he knew was necessary to establish moral dominance. So he chose a different venue.
An opportunity arose on March 8 for an address to the National Association of Evangelicals in Orlando, Florida. Few remember now that the Evil Empire speech was primarily a comprehensive discussion of domestic policy. Only at the end does Reagan being to talk about foreign policy in the context of its moral meaning.
“So, in your discussions of the nuclear freeze proposals,” said Reagan, “I urge you to beware the temptation of pride—the temptation of blithely declaring yourselves above it all and label both sides equally at fault, to simply call the arms race a giant misunderstanding and thereby remove yourself from the struggle between right and wrong and good and evil.”
In one short but unequivocal statement he asserted that the core of totalitarianism was evil by definition. No other statement of moral purpose would be more important in bringing about the end of the Soviet Empire.
The Strategic Defense Initiative, or Star Wars speech, which Reagan gave to the nation from the Oval Office on March 23, 1983, also generated little enthusiasm—and even hostility—from his advisors. Every major element of his administration, except his National Security advisor, Judge William P. Clark, and the head of the Science Counsel, Jay Keyworth, who had drafted the speech at Reagan’s direction, opposed it. Secretary of State George Shultz vigorously objected.
Speaking with clarity and conviction, Reagan fundamentally dismantled the entire strategic framework of “mutually assured destruction,” the arms negotiation mindset that had defined American policy for the past two decades. That he could do this in one speech demonstrates his decisiveness and the power of the presidency.
The scale of Reagan’s courage emerged clearly in light of the responses to these two speeches. The pushback from the mainstream media was particularly strong, not unsurprising because the American news media was deeply committed to the secular left. In the tradition of H.L. Mencken, the media reacted viscerally, instinctively, and savagely to any reference that suggested religious, moral, or other kind of judgment. Anthony Lewis wrote in The New York Times that “Reagan used sectarian religiosity to sell a political program. The Evil Empire speech was primitive, a mirror-image of crude Soviet rhetoric. What is the world to think when the greatest of powers is led by a man who applies to the most difficult human problem of a simplistic theology?” The core notion of Lewis’s criticism was of moral equivalence. How could America judge the Soviets?
Tom Wicker, also at The New York Times, wrote, “The Evil Empire speech was smug and a near proclamation of Holy War.” Wicker nearly got it right: it was clearly a proclamation of intellectual, moral, and political warfare. And the Reagan administration waged that war against the Soviets with the Pope, the British Prime Minister, labor unions, and the Catholic Church in Poland as our allies.
The administration squeezed the Soviet Union on many fronts simultaneously: reducing the price of oil, passing laws that slowed or prohibited the sale of advanced technology, and accelerating the pace of science and technology.
Reagan’s grand strategy worked. He did it without a traditional war. Poland converted without firing a shot, followed by Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and then the Soviet Union. This achievement ranks as one of the most extraordinary strategic victories in recorded history: An entire empire disappeared and hundreds of millions of people were liberated.
Yet, many of the people who disagreed with Reagan in the 1980s have still not learned anything." .......
Reagan’s ‘Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall’ was almost left unsaid | Stanford News
The Times and the State Dept.-Blob HATED both of Actual President Reagan’s phrases “Tear Down This Wall” and the “Evil Empire”. State kept trying to censor them, thinking them hostile and dangerous."Feeling despondent, Robinson hoped that his next meeting with a high-ranking American diplomat would provide him the material needed for the speech. But that too was unhelpful, Robinson said.
“He was full of ideas about what Reagan should not say,” Robinson said, including under no circumstance was Reagan to make a big deal about the Berlin Wall. “They’ve gotten used to it by now,” the diplomat said.
It was not until Robinson broke off from the advance team to join a group of Berliners for dinner that he finally found inspiration. Robinson, who himself was astounded by the wall’s omnipresence, asked his dinner companions if they had – as the diplomat insisted – really become used to the 27-mile barricade that enclosed their city.
“There was a silence. And I thought, I committed just the kind of gaffe that the diplomat wants the president to avoid. They looked at each other and one man pointed and said, ‘My sister lives just a few kilometers in that direction but I haven’t seen her in more than 20 years. How do you think we feel about that wall?’” Robinson said.
For the rest of the evening, the guests shared their experiences. Robinson realized that Berlin residents had simply stopped talking about the wall rather than become used to it. ...
That Monday, when the team met with the president, Griscom asked Reagan if he had any thoughts about Robinson’s speech. All Reagan said was that it was a good draft, Robinson recalled.
Robinson then stepped in. He told the president that people in East Berlin would be able to hear him speak. Depending on weather conditions, he might even be picked up in Moscow by radio. Robinson asked if there was anything Reagan wanted to convey to the people listening from the other side.
“And the president said, ‘Well, there’s that passage about tearing down the wall. That’s what I want to say to them. That wall has to come down.’”...
“Ronald Reagan could imagine a different kind of world. He could imagine a post-Soviet world. He could see a world without the Berlin Wall. If you put him in a position to give a speech in front of the Berlin Wall, he would feel a certain sense of duty to tell the truth as he saw it,” Robinson said. “The speech belongs to Ronald Reagan.”.......
But the morally-ambiguous Status Quo was hostile and dangerous, not Ronald Reagan’s Moral Clarity. That clarity freed millions.
Today, we have another Power-Mad Imperial Government bent on World Domination though Lies and Murder.
Oh, how they scoffed at the Evil Empire.
And then became one.
9 “Woe to him who gets evil gain for his house,
to set his nest on high,
to be delivered from the power of calamity!”
10 You have given shameful counsel to your house
by cutting off many peoples,
and forfeiting your life.
11 For the stone will cry out from the wall,
and the beam of the woodwork will answer it.
12 “Woe to him who builds a town with bloodshed
and establishes a city on iniquity!”
13 Is it not from the Lord of Hosts
that the people labor to feed fire,
and the nations weary themselves for nothing?
14 For the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord,
as the waters cover the seas.
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| Many Peoples |
Your Presence is Your Glory, Lord!
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