RONALD REAGAN PRESIDENTIAL LIBRARY SIGN VANDALIZED WITH GRAFFIT AHEAD OF DESANTIS BOOK TALK "The speech now is more important than ever, with the rise of China and with the resurgence of Russia using its power to achieve political aims," said Dr. Anthony Eames, director of scholarly initiatives for the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and Institute and a teacher at the Elliot School of International Affairs at George Washington University. Anthony Eames, "was one of the key moments in overturning the myth of moral equivalency" between the communist world and the United States. Ronald Reagan's "evil empire" speech, said Dr. And if America ever ceases to be good, America will cease to be great." "Not until I went into the churches of America and heard her pulpits aflame with righteousness did I understand the greatness and the genius of America," de Tocqueville wrote - and Reagan quoted - in the "evil empire" address. WOMEN'S HISTORY MONTH QUIZ! TEST YOUR KNOWLEDGE OF THE COMMEMORATIVE MONTH The president, in the speech, summoned America's spiritual foundation and cited French historian Alexis de Tocqueville, who famously chronicled the unique qualities of the young United States in his epic 1835 tome, "Democracy of Nations." Reagan saw it differently: The Cold War was an existential crisis pitting good vs. Michael Duggan of the National Archives offered a preview in 2011 of rarely displayed original documents and artifacts in recognition of the Ronald Reagan Centennial, including this three-page draft of the speech given before the National Association of Evangelicals in 1983 when Reagan first declared the Soviet Union an "evil empire." It was a challenge to Americans and westerners around the world who preached "moral equivalency" during Cold War and the nuclear arms race – the belief in the wake of the Vietnam War that American constitutional republicanism and capitalism were no better than dictatorial communism. ![]() ![]() Reagan's speech was more than a scathing indictment of the Soviet Union, with its dictatorial one-party rule and failed economic system. "The temptation of blithely declaring yourselves above it all and label both sides equally at fault, to ignore the facts of history and the aggressive impulses of an evil empire." "I urge you to beware the temptation of pride," Reagan said on March 8, 1983, in front of the annual convention of the National Association of Evangelicals in Orlando, Florida. Their effort to honor Reagan's leadership comes at a time when voices on both sides of the American political spectrum say that communist China poses an ever-growing threat to national liberty and sovereignty and as the United States is funding Ukraine's war against Russia and its leader, former communist party agent Vladimir Putin. President Ronald Reagan at Durenberger Republican convention rally, 1982.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |