Western civilization is in the midst of a crisis that threatens its very existence. It is a crisis born of success in which the boundary between optimism and hubris has been erased. The spirit of renewal to preserve and improve our small corner of the world lost to the passions of the present. This small space will seek to defend "the little platoon we belong to in society."
Douglas Murray is a best-selling author, an award-winning political commentator, and a senior fellow at the National Review Institute. He has written books on neoconservatism, terrorism and national security, freedom of speech, and the rise of woke culture and identity politics.
His upcoming book, The War on the West: How to Prevail in the Age of Unreason, explores why in recent history it has become acceptable to discuss the flaws and crimes of Western culture, but celebrating the West’s contributions is condemned as hate speech.
Recorded on November 10, 2021, in St. Louis, Missouri
Still a teenager, had the opportunity to listen and meet Ronald Reagan
when he visited Miami, Florida on June 29, 1988 and spoke at the Omni International Hotel to support the Senate candidacy of Connie Mack. He actually came across better in
person than he did on camera. A treasured memory shared here on the 110th anniversary of his birth in Tampico, Illinois.
Sadly,
since Ronald Reagan left the presidency the quality of political
leadership in the White House has been in decline, but now is a time to
celebrate the life of a great American and be grateful that the United
States had such a Chief Executive for eight years.
Americans need
to be grateful because prior to 1980 Ronald Reagan was viewed by many
as too extreme to ever be President of the United States because he
refused to embrace "constructive engagement" and "detente" with a system
that he viewed as fundamentally evil. A large part of this nervousness
by the Left came from Ronald Reagan's first national political speech
that introduced him to the country in 1964.
Those
who would trade our freedom for the soup kitchen of the welfare state
have told us they have a utopian solution of peace without victory. They
call their policy "accommodation." And they say if we'll only avoid any
direct confrontation with the enemy, he'll forget his evil ways and
learn to love us. All who oppose them are indicted as warmongers. They
say we offer simple answers to complex problems. Well, perhaps there is a
simple answer -- not an easy answer -- but simple: If you and I have
the courage to tell our elected officials that we want our national
policy based on what we know in our hearts is morally right.
We
cannot buy our security, our freedom from the threat of the bomb by
committing an immorality so great as saying to a billion human beings
now enslaved behind the Iron Curtain, "Give up your dreams of freedom
because to save our own skins, we're willing to make a deal with your
slave masters." Alexander Hamilton said, "A nation which can prefer
disgrace to danger is prepared for a master, and deserves one." Now
let's set the record straight. There's no argument over the choice
between peace and war, but there's only one guaranteed way you can have
peace -- and you can have it in the next second -- surrender.
Admittedly,
there's a risk in any course we follow other than this, but every
lesson of history tells us that the greater risk lies in appeasement,
and this is the specter our well-meaning liberal friends refuse to face
-- that their policy of accommodation is appeasement, and it gives no
choice between peace and war, only between fight or surrender.
1981 Inaugural Address
On January 20, 1981 Ronald Wilson Reagan was sworn in as the 40th President of the United States and what follows is an excerpt from the Inaugural Address:
To
those neighbors and allies who share our freedom, we will strengthen
our historic ties and assure them of our support and firm commitment. We
will match loyalty with loyalty. We will strive for mutually beneficial
relations. We will not use our friendship to impose on their
sovereignty, for or own sovereignty is not for sale.
As for the
enemies of freedom, those who are potential adversaries, they will be
reminded that peace is the highest aspiration of the American people. We
will negotiate for it, sacrifice for it; we will not surrender for
it--now or ever.
Our forbearance should
never be misunderstood. Our reluctance for conflict should not be
misjudged as a failure of will. When action is required to preserve our
national security, we will act. We will maintain sufficient strength to
prevail if need be, knowing that if we do so we have the best chance of
never having to use that strength.
Above all, we must realize
that no arsenal, or no weapon in the arsenals of the world, is so
formidable as the will and moral courage of free men and women. It is a
weapon our adversaries in today's world do not have. It is a weapon that
we as Americans do have. Let that be understood by those who practice
terrorism and prey upon their neighbors.
I am told that tens of
thousands of prayer meetings are being held on this day, and for that I
am deeply grateful. We are a nation under God, and I believe God
intended for us to be free. It would be fitting and good, I think, if on
each Inauguration Day in future years it should be declared a day of
prayer.
During
my first press conference as President, in answer to a direct question,
I pointed out that, as good Marxist-Leninists, the Soviet leaders have
openly and publicly declared that the only morality they recognize is
that which will further their cause, which is world revolution. I think I
should point out I was only quoting Lenin, their guiding spirit, who
said in 1920 that they repudiate all morality that proceeds from
supernatural ideas -- that's their name for religion -- or ideas that
are outside class conceptions. Morality is entirely subordinate to the
interests of class war. And everything is moral that is necessary for
the annihilation of the old, exploiting social order and for uniting the
proletariat.
Well, I think the refusal of many influential
people to accept this elementary fact of Soviet doctrine illustrates an
historical reluctance to see totalitarian powers for what they are. We
saw this phenomenon in the 1930's. We see it too often today.This
doesn't mean we should isolate ourselves and refuse to seek an
understanding with them. I intend to do everything I can to persuade
them of our peaceful intent, to remind them that it was the West that
refused to use its nuclear monopoly in the forties and fifties for
territorial gain and which now proposes 50-percent cut in strategic
ballistic missiles and the elimination of an entire class of land-based,
intermediate-range nuclear missiles.
At the same time, however,
they must be made to understand we will never compromise our principles
and standards. We will never give away our freedom. We will never
abandon our belief in God. And we will never stop searching for a
genuine peace. But we can assure none of these things America stands for
through the so-called nuclear freeze solutions proposed by some.
The
truth is that a freeze now would be a very dangerous fraud, for that is
merely the illusion of peace. The reality is that we must find peace
through strength.
I would agree to a freeze if only we could
freeze the Soviets' global desires. A freeze at current levels of
weapons would remove any incentive for the Soviets to negotiate
seriously in Geneva and virtually end our chances to achieve the major
arms reductions which we have proposed. Instead, they would achieve
their objectives through the freeze.
A freeze would reward the
Soviet Union for its enormous and unparalleled military buildup. It
would prevent the essential and long overdue modernization of United
States and allied defenses and would leave our aging forces increasingly
vulnerable. And an honest freeze would require extensive prior
negotiations on the systems and numbers to be limited and on the
measures to ensure effective verification and compliance. And the kind
of a freeze that has been suggested would be virtually impossible to
verify. Such a major effort would divert us completely from our current
negotiations on achieving substantial reductions.
A number of
years ago, I heard a young father, a very prominent young man in the
entertainment world, addressing a tremendous gathering in California. It
was during the time of the Cold War, and communism and our own way of
life were very much on people's minds. And he was speaking to that
subject. And suddenly, though, I heard him saying, "I love my little
girls more than anything -- -- "And I said to myself, "Oh, no, don't.
You can't -- don't say that."
But I had underestimated him. He
went on: "I would rather see my little girls die now, still believing in
God, than have them grow up under communism and one day die no longer
believing in God."
There were thousands of young people in that
audience. They came to their feet with shouts of joy. They had instantly
recognized the profound truth in what he had said, with regard to the
physical and the soul and what was truly important.
Yes, let us
pray for the salvation of all of those who live in that totalitarian
darkness -- pray they will discover the joy of knowing God. But until
they do, let us be aware that while they preach the supremacy of the
state, declare its omnipotence over individual man, and predict its
eventual domination of all peoples on the Earth, they are the focus of
evil in the modern world.
It was C.S. Lewis who, in his
unforgettable "Screwtape Letters," wrote: "The greatest evil is not done
now in those sordid 'dens of crime' that Dickens loved to paint. It is
not even done in concentration camps and labor camps. In those we see
its final result. But it is conceived and ordered (moved, seconded,
carried and minuted) in clear, carpeted, warmed, and well-lighted
offices, by quiet men with white collars and cut fingernails and
smooth-shaven cheeks who do not need to raise their voice."
Well,
because these "quiet men" do not "raise their voices"; because they
sometimes speak in soothing tones of brotherhood and peace; because,
like other dictators before them, they're always making "their final
territorial demand," some would have us accept them at their word and
accommodate ourselves to their aggressive impulses. But if history
teaches anything, it teaches that simple-minded appeasement or wishful
thinking about our adversaries is folly. It means the betrayal of our
past, the squandering of our freedom.
So, I urge you to speak out
against those who would place the United States in a position of
military and moral inferiority. You know, I've always believed that old
Screwtape reserved his best efforts for those of you in the church. So,
in your discussions of the nuclear freeze proposals, 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 ignore
the facts of history and the aggressive impulses of an evil empire, to
simply call the arms race a giant misunderstanding and thereby remove
yourself from the struggle between right and wrong and good and evil.
I
ask you to resist the attempts of those who would have you withhold
your support for our efforts, this administration's efforts, to keep
America strong and free, while we negotiate real and verifiable
reductions in the world's nuclear arsenals and one day, with God's help,
their total elimination.
While America's military strength is
important, let me add here that I've always maintained that the struggle
now going on for the world will never be decided by bombs or rockets,
by armies or military might. The real crisis we face today is a
spiritual one; at root, it is a test of moral will and faith.
Whittaker
Chambers, the man whose own religious conversion made him a witness to
one of the terrible traumas of our time, the Hiss-Chambers case, wrote
that the crisis of the Western World exists to the degree in which the
West is indifferent to God, the degree to which it collaborates in
communism's attempt to make man stand alone without God. And then he
said, for Marxism-Leninism is actually the second oldest faith, first
proclaimed in the Garden of Eden with the words of temptation, "Ye shall
be as gods."
The Western world can answer this challenge, he
wrote, "but only provided that its faith in God and the freedom He
enjoins is as great as communism's faith in Man."
I believe we
shall rise to the challenge. I believe that communism is another sad,
bizarre chapter in human history whose last pages even now are being
written. I believe this because the source of our strength in the quest
for human freedom is not material, but spiritual. And because it knows
no limitation, it must terrify and ultimately triumph over those who
would enslave their fellow man. For in the words of Isaiah: "He giveth
power to the faint; and to them that have no might He increased strength
But they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall
mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary."
"Enlightened"
opinion blasted the speech and warned of Reagan the warmonger, but his
strong, principled and moral stand backed up with moral toughness and
prudent conservative policies in solidarity with dissident movements
opposing international communism helped to turn the tide. By 1987 the
Russians were willing to negotiate for peace in real terms and Reagan
held them to it. The speech at the Berlin Wall indicates how he went
about it.
Reagan at the Berlin Wall (1987)
In this excerpt from his June 12, 1987 address at the Berlin Wall Ronald Reagan provided
both the history and economic realities that offered the context that
explained his optimism on behalf of freedom and challenging the Russians
to back up their rhetoric with action:
In the 1950s,
Khrushchev predicted: "We will bury you." But in the West today, we see a
free world that has achieved a level of prosperity and well-being
unprecedented in all human history. In the Communist world, we see
failure, technological backwardness, declining standards of health, even
want of the most basic kind--too little food. Even today, the Soviet
Union still cannot feed itself. After these four decades, then, there
stands before the entire world one great and inescapable conclusion:
Freedom leads to prosperity. Freedom replaces the ancient hatreds among
the nations with comity and peace. Freedom is the victor.
And now
the Soviets themselves may, in a limited way, be coming to understand
the importance of freedom. We hear much from Moscow about a new policy
of reform and openness. Some political prisoners have been released.
Certain foreign news broadcasts are no longer being jammed. Some
economic enterprises have been permitted to operate with greater freedom
from state control.
Are these the beginnings of profound changes
in the Soviet state? Or are they token gestures, intended to raise
false hopes in the West, or to strengthen the Soviet system without
changing it? We welcome change and openness; for we believe that freedom
and security go together, that the advance of human liberty can only
strengthen the cause of world peace. There is one sign the Soviets can
make that would be unmistakable, that would advance dramatically the
cause of freedom and peace.
General Secretary Gorbachev, if you
seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and Eastern
Europe, if you seek liberalization: Come here to this gate! Mr.
Gorbachev, open this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!
During
Ronald Reagan's tenure the United States did not participate in any
major conflicts. The US military invaded and occupied Grenada in 1983 to
drive out Cuban troops building a military runway there, but on
Reagan's watch America was it peace and the Cold War was on its way to
being resolved peacefully.
Well,
back in 1980, when I was running for President, it was all so
different. Some pundits said our programs would result in catastrophe.
Our views on foreign affairs would cause war. Our plans for the economy
would cause inflation to soar and bring about economic collapse. I even
remember one highly respected economist saying, back in 1982, that "The
engines of economic growth have shut down here, and they're likely to
stay that way for years to come." Well, he and the other opinion leaders
were wrong. The fact is what they call "radical" was really "right."
What they called "dangerous" was just "desperately needed."
And
in all of that time I won a nickname, "The Great Communicator." But I
never thought it was my style or the words I used that made a
difference: it was the content. I wasn't a great communicator, but I
communicated great things, and they didn't spring full bloom from my
brow, they came from the heart of a great nation--from our experience,
our wisdom, and our belief in the principles that have guided us for two
centuries. They called it the Reagan revolution. Well, I'll accept
that, but for me it always seemed more like the great rediscovery, a
rediscovery of our values and our common sense.
Common sense told
us that when you put a big tax on something, the people will produce
less of it. So, we cut the people's tax rates, and the people produced
more than ever before. The economy bloomed like a plant that had been
cut back and could now grow quicker and stronger. Our economic program
brought about the longest peacetime expansion in our history: real
family income up, the poverty rate down, entrepreneurship booming, and
an explosion in research and new technology. We're exporting more than
ever because American industry became more competitive, and at the same
time, we summoned the national will to knock down protectionist walls
abroad instead of erecting them at home.
Common sense also told
us that to preserve the peace, we'd have to become strong again after
years of weakness and confusion. So, we rebuilt our defenses, and this
New Year we toasted the new peacefulness around the globe. Not only have
the superpowers actually begun to reduce their stockpiles of nuclear
weapons--and hope for even more progress is bright--but the regional
conflicts that rack the globe are also beginning to cease. The Persian
Gulf is no longer a war zone. The Soviets are leaving Afghanistan. The
Vietnamese are preparing to pull out of Cambodia, and an
American-mediated accord will soon send 50,000 Cuban troops home from
Angola.
The lesson of all this was, of course, that because we're
a great nation, our challenges seem complex. It will always be this
way. But as long as we remember our first principles and believe in
ourselves, the future will always be ours. And something else we
learned: Once you begin a great movement, there's no telling where it
will end. We meant to change a nation, and instead, we changed a world.
Countries
across the globe are turning to free markets and free speech and
turning away from the ideologies of the past. For them, the great
rediscovery of the 1980's has been that, lo and behold, the moral way of
government is the practical way of government: Democracy, the
profoundly good, is also the profoundly productive.
When you've
got to the point when you can celebrate the anniversaries of your 39th
birthday, you can sit back sometimes, review your life, and see it
flowing before you. For me there was a fork in the river, and it was
right in the middle of my life. I never meant to go into politics. It
wasn't my intention when I was young. But I was raised to believe you
had to pay your way for the blessings bestowed on you. I was happy with
my career in the entertainment world, but I ultimately went into
politics because I wanted to protect something precious.
Nothing
is less free than pure communism--and yet we have, the past few years,
forged a satisfying new closeness with the Soviet Union. I've been asked
if this isn't a gamble, and my answer is no, because we're basing our
actions not on words but deeds. The detente of the 1970's was based not
on actions but promises. They'd promise to treat their own people and
the people of the world better. But the gulag was still the gulag, and
the state was still expansionist, and they still waged proxy wars in
Africa, Asia, and Latin America.
Well, this time, so far, it's
different. President Gorbachev has brought about some internal
democratic reforms and begun the withdrawal from Afghanistan. He has
also freed prisoners whose names I've given him every time we've met.
But
life has a way of reminding you of big things through small incidents.
Once, during the heady days of the Moscow summit, Nancy and I decided to
break off from the entourage one afternoon to visit the shops on Arbat
Street--that's a little street just off Moscow's main shopping area.
Even though our visit was a surprise, every Russian there immediately
recognized us and called out our names and reached for our hands. We
were just about swept away by the warmth. You could almost feel the
possibilities in all that joy. But within seconds, a KGB detail pushed
their way toward us and began pushing and shoving the people in the
crowd. It was an interesting moment. It reminded me that while the man
on the street in the Soviet Union yearns for peace, the government is
Communist. And those who run it are Communists, and that means we and
they view such issues as freedom and human rights very differently.
We
must keep up our guard, but we must also continue to work together to
lessen and eliminate tension and mistrust. My view is that President
Gorbachev is different from previous Soviet leaders. I think he knows
some of the things wrong with his society and is trying to fix them. We
wish him well. And we'll continue to work to make sure that the Soviet
Union that eventually emerges from this process is a less threatening
one. What it all boils down to is this: I want the new closeness to
continue. And it will, as long as we make it clear that we will continue
to act in a certain way as long as they continue to act in a helpful
manner. If and when they don't, at first pull your punches. If they
persist, pull the plug. It's still trust but verify. It's still play,
but cut the cards. It's still watch closely. And don't be afraid to see
what you see.
Finally,
there is a great tradition of warnings in Presidential farewells, and
I've got one that's been on my mind for some time. But oddly enough, it
starts with one of the things I'm proudest of in the past 8 years: the
resurgence of national pride that I called the new patriotism. This
national feeling is good, but it won't count for much, and it won't last
unless it's grounded in thoughtfulness and knowledge.
An
informed patriotism is what we want. And are we doing a good enough job
teaching our children what America is and what she represents in the
long history of the world? Those of us who are over 35 or so years of
age grew up in a different America. We were taught, very directly, what
it means to be an American. And we absorbed, almost in the air, a love
of country and an appreciation of its institutions. If you didn't get
these things from your family, you got them from the neighborhood, from
the father down the street who fought in Korea or the family who lost
someone at Anzio. Or you could get a sense of patriotism from school.
And if all else failed, you could get a sense of patriotism from the
popular culture. The movies celebrated democratic values and implicitly
reinforced the idea that America was special. TV was like that, too,
through the mid-sixties.
But now, we're about to enter the
nineties, and some things have changed. Younger parents aren't sure that
an unambivalent appreciation of America is the right thing to teach
modern children. And as for those who create the popular culture,
well-grounded patriotism is no longer the style. Our spirit is back, but
we haven't reinstitutionalized it. We've got to do a better job of
getting across that America is freedom--freedom of speech, freedom of
religion, freedom of enterprise. And freedom is special and rare. It's
fragile; it needs [protection].
So, we've got to teach history
based not on what's in fashion but what's important--why the Pilgrims
came here, who Jimmy Doolittle was, and what those 30 seconds over Tokyo
meant. You know, 4 years ago on the 40th anniversary of D-Day, I read a
letter from a young woman writing to her late father, who'd fought on
Omaha Beach. Her name was Lisa Zanatta Henn, and she said, "We will
always remember, we will never forget what the boys of Normandy did."
Well, let's help her keep her word. If we forget what we did, we won't
know who we are. I'm warning of an eradication of the American memory
that could result, ultimately, in an erosion of the American spirit.
Let's start with some basics: more attention to American history and a
greater emphasis on civic ritual.
And let me offer lesson number
one about America: All great change in America begins at the dinner
table. So, tomorrow night in the kitchen, I hope the talking begins. And
children, if your parents haven't been teaching you what it means to be
an American, let 'em know and nail 'em on it. That would be a very
American thing to do.
And that's about all I have to say tonight,
except for one thing. The past few days when I've been at that window
upstairs, I've thought a bit of the "shining city upon a hill." The
phrase comes from John Winthrop, who wrote it to describe the America he
imagined. What he imagined was important because he was an early
Pilgrim, an early freedom man. He journeyed here on what today we'd call
a little wooden boat; and like the other Pilgrims, he was looking for a
home that would be free. I've spoken of the shining city all my
political life, but I don't know if I ever quite communicated what I saw
when I said it. But in my mind it was a tall, proud city built on rocks
stronger than oceans, windswept, God-blessed, and teeming with people
of all kinds living in harmony and peace; a city with free ports that
hummed with commerce and creativity. And if there had to be city walls,
the walls had doors and the doors were open to anyone with the will and
the heart to get here. That's how I saw it, and see it still.
And
how stands the city on this winter night? More prosperous, more secure,
and happier than it was 8 years ago. But more than that: After 200
years, two centuries, she still stands strong and true on the granite
ridge, and her glow has held steady no matter what storm. And she's
still a beacon, still a magnet for all who must have freedom, for all
the pilgrims from all the lost places who are hurtling through the
darkness, toward home.
We've done our part. And as I walk off
into the city streets, a final word to the men and women of the Reagan
revolution, the men and women across America who for 8 years did the
work that brought America back. My friends: We did it. We weren't just
marking time. We made a difference. We made the city stronger, we made
the city freer, and we left her in good hands. All in all, not bad, not
bad at all.
And so, goodbye, God bless you, and God bless the United States of America.
Lawrence W. Reed, in an essay remembering Reagan's freedom legacy on the 110th anniversary of his birth observed that "for the most part, and more than any of his fellow presidents since
Coolidge, Reagan knew that there was no loftier achievement for any
society than freedom. We do ourselves a service to get re-acquainted
with that notion."In these challenging times it would do all Americans well to revisit the 40th President's legacy of freedom, and adapt and adopt them for today.
