Today is the 20th anniversary of the iconic Reagan speech delivered in Berlin in 1987. Little did we know two years later the entire Evil Empire would collapse, but Reagan’s speech certainly reflected the worldwide attitude that Reaganistic optimistic freedom was the only way to live.
Some argue to this day that the Soviet Union would have collapsed no matter what, no matter who was at our helm. On the contrary–revolution requires hope and vision. It was Reagan who shares his optimism with the world. Americans weren’t the only ones President Reagan raised up, it was a gift he gave the entire world.
Peter Robinson is the speech writer who fashioned that speech for the president. The Washington Times has a piece today about the impact of Reagan’s remarks and an interview with Mr. Robinson.
‘Wall’ speech set Reagan apart
The 1987 speech is “a moment that sums up for me a great deal of what I so loved and admired about Ronald Reagan,” Mr. Robinson said during a telephone interview from Stanford University, where he is a Hoover Institution research fellow.
“There was quite a lot of contention” among top Reagan administration officials about whether the president should deliver the line asking Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev to “tear down this wall,” Mr. Robinson said.
“I wouldn’t have written it for anyone else, and it’s hard to imagine that any other political figure of that day would have insisted on overruling the advice of foreign policy professionals to deliver that speech,” he said. “He alone could have given that speech.”
Yet if Mr. Reagan “were with us today, he would be recognizing the role of ordinary people in Eastern Europe,” Mr. Robinson said. “He called on Gorbachev to tear down the wall, but it was ordinary Germans who finally did.” […]
“It was one of the great conflicts in all human history,” he said. “It lasted more than four decades, it reached to virtually every corner of the globe.””And we won,” Mr. Robinson said. “The Cold War did not just end — we won.”
The thing I remember most about the speech is how the people from the state department kept trying, again and again, to remove that line from the speech and how President Reagan had to put that line back in again and again. The final speech terrified the left because Reagan refused to appease the soviet union.
Reagan in 08 !!!!
Immortal words. Needed that boost. He is with us, don’t worry my friends! I have to believe that. Thanks Tammy.
Hey…it’s Russian Independence Day today too. As in independence from Communist rule. Is that a koinkidink?
Thank you for the Reagan posts! Many of Reagan’s speeches are extremely moving, and I still get the same chill and enthusiasm hearing him demand Gorbachev to ‘…tear down this wall!’
Those words serve us now as ‘we the people’ have to tear down the walls of tyranny our own government is erecting. Unfortunately, they refuse to protect us with a wall at the border but wish to surround us with threats, insults and by completely ignoring our wishes.
This is certainly a moment of ‘What Would Reagan Do?’ and I think we all know the answer!
I still remember that night in March of 1983 when President Reagan made his speech calling for a space based missile defense system that would eventually cause the Soviets to spend themselves broke.
The buffoons I worked with at CNN didn’t get it then, and I’m sure they don’t get it now.
For anyone that thinks there was ever a right wing bias in the media, I can tell you from first hand experience, I heard my producer say anytime something looked bad for Reagan; “let’s throw this up in his face”.
Weasels.
Neil – I too, am surrounded by weasels (weasel organization’s name withheld to protect the ambivalent).
I have personally witnessed first-hand such weaselry as seeing a reporter debunk the Bush “National Guard memos” as total fakes, but do so through gnashed teeth. The line, “I can’t believe this – and we thought Reagan was Teflon” was uttered by an anchor.
While that is typical, I also heard an assignment editor voice displeasure over the wall-to-wall coverage of the Reagan funeral and state viewing by saying (in a smarmy tone), “How much longer is this going to go on for?”.
They don’t get it – they never will. I remember watching the highlights of Reagan’s “Great Wall Speech” on the evening news and feeling tears well up in my eyes. The next day at college, some of my fellow students were mocking the speech as the words of a maniac trying to start a war.
They don’t get it – they never will.