Slarty's World

Today at lunch, I was listening to Sirius satellite radio. I have been listening to the Patriot station (144) – the right winger station. They are a bit nuts, but I find them much less irritating than the left winger station.

Today they were playing some of Ronald Reagan’s speeches while he was President. In particular, they played his “Tear Down This Wall” speech. I must be a sucker for a good speech, because I sat in the car and listened to the whole thing. You can download it from the Reagan Foundation website if you need some New Year’s cheer.

A few things about this speech strike me as interesting. One is that I have heard a lot of people tell me that think the whole Soviet collapse had nothing do with the Reagan Administration and more to do with circumstances within the Soviet Union. People have said that the fact that Reagan won the cold war was revisionist history. This speech clearly lays out his rational for the arms race and seems to predict the fall of the USSR. Here is a bit of the speech, it makes me feel like Reagan deserved a bit more credit than some give.

I understand the fear of war and the pain of division that afflict this continent– and I pledge to you my country’s efforts to help overcome these burdens. To be sure, we in the West must resist Soviet expansion. So we must maintain defenses of unassailable strength. Yet we seek peace; so we must strive to reduce arms on both sides.

Beginning 10 years ago, the Soviets challenged the Western alliance with a grave new threat, hundreds of new and more deadly SS-20 nuclear missiles, capable of striking every capital in Europe. The Western alliance responded by committing itself to a counter-deployment unless the Soviets agreed to negotiate a better solution; namely, the elimination of such weapons on both sides. For many months, the Soviets refused to bargain in earnestness. As the alliance, in turn, prepared to go forward with its counter-deployment, there were difficult days–days of protests like those during my 1982 visit to this city–and the Soviets later walked away from the table.

But through it all, the alliance held firm. And I invite those who protested then– I invite those who protest today–to mark this fact: Because we remained strong, the Soviets came back to the table. And because we remained strong, today we have within reach the possibility, not merely of limiting the growth of arms, but of eliminating, for the first time, an entire class of nuclear weapons from the face of the earth.

Another part of the speech, which I don’t remember at all (I was 15!), talks about why Berliner’s stay in Berlin and why they withstand the hardship:

In these four decades, as I have said, you Berliners have built a great city. You’ve done so in spite of threats–the Soviet attempts to impose the East-mark, the blockade. Today the city thrives in spite of the challenges implicit in the very presence of this wall. What keeps you here? Certainly there’s a great deal to be said for your fortitude, for your defiant courage. But I believe there’s something deeper, something that involves Berlin’s whole look and feel and way of life–not mere sentiment. No one could live long in Berlin without being completely disabused of illusions. Something instead, that has seen the difficulties of life in Berlin but chose to accept them, that continues to build this good and proud city in contrast to a surrounding totalitarian presence that refuses to release human energies or aspirations. Something that speaks with a powerful voice of affirmation, that says yes to this city, yes to the future, yes to freedom. In a word, I would submit that what keeps you in Berlin is love–love both profound and abiding.

He follows with his vision of love. I really like the imagery he uses in this section.

Perhaps this gets to the root of the matter, to the most fundamental distinction of all between East and West. The totalitarian world produces backwardness because it does such violence to the spirit, thwarting the human impulse to create, to enjoy, to worship. The totalitarian world finds even symbols of love and of worship an affront. Years ago, before the East Germans began rebuilding their churches, they erected a secular structure: the television tower at Alexander Platz. Virtually ever since, the authorities have been working to correct what they view as the tower’s one major flaw, treating the glass sphere at the top with paints and chemicals of every kind. Yet even today when the sun strikes that sphere–that sphere that towers over all Berlin–the light makes the sign of the cross. There in Berlin, like the city itself, symbols of love, symbols of worship, cannot be suppressed.

This would make some of my friend squirm because of the obvious religious overtones (not to mention the East vs West, Christians vs infidels bit). I don’t recall that Reagan was over-the-top religious, not like the current breed of Conservatives – the Conservatives that Barry Goldwater disliked so much. But I could have been simply brainwashed by him. When I was in college, a friend of mine told me that our generation was more optimistic than the previous because we were part of the Reagan Revolution. The time when America’s self esteem was restored. Personally, I agree.

I want a President that can inspire and lead us somewhere important. It seems like currently we are looking for a candidate that will successfully manage us for 4-8 years. I think we can do better than that.

All right, I have trunk full of booze and some pizza’s to cook. Ramble on…