US VS. EVIL:

Goodbye, freedom man (Saul Singer, Jun. 6, 2004, Jerusalem Post)

Reagan was vilified at the time for calling the Soviet Union an "evil empire," much as Bush has been derided for fingering the "axis of evil." And Bush seems to have a similarly unpopular insight that the jihad will only end when the regimes that support it have gone the way of either Gaddafi or Saddam and the entire region is on the path to freedom.

In all three modern global conflicts the pattern has been the same: a Western reluctance to recognize both the scope of the danger and the power of its own secret weapon, the power of freedom. In World War II the need for complete victory was eventually recognized, but in the Cold War and the current conflict, the assumption of indefinite, perhaps even deteriorating, stalemate is widespread.

Given his focus on freedom, it is not surprising that Reagan was considered one of the most "pro-Israel" presidents ever. Missteps aside, such as the condemnation of Israel's attack on Iraq's Osirak reactor in 1981, supporting Israel came naturally for him.

In his final Oval Office address in 1989, Reagan told a story of an American sailor patrolling the South China Sea. "The crew spied on the horizon a leaky little boat. And crammed inside were refugees from Indochina hoping to get to America. ...As the refugees made their way through the choppy seas, one spied the sailor on deck and stood up and called out to him. He yelled, 'Hello, American sailor. Hello, freedom man.'"

"A small moment with a big meaning," said Reagan. "Because that's what it was to be an American in the 1980s. We stood, again, for freedom. I know we always have, but in the past few years the world again, and in a way, we ourselves rediscovered it."

One of Ronald Reagan's greatest speeches is often overlooked because of the circumstances under which it was delivered. But on his visit to Bitburg he enunciated the universality of the American cause:

Four decades ago we waged a great war to lift the darkness of evil from the world, to let men and women in this country and in every country live in the sunshine of liberty. Our victory was great, and the Federal Republic, Italy, and Japan are now in the community of free nations. But the struggle for freedom is not complete, for today much of the world is still cast in totalitarian darkness.

Twenty-two years ago President John F. Kennedy went to the Berlin Wall and proclaimed that he, too, was a Berliner. Well, today freedom-loving people around the world must say: I am a Berliner. I am a Jew in a world still threatened by anti-Semitism. I am an Afghan, and I am a prisoner of the Gulag. I am a refugee in a crowded boat foundering off the coast of Vietnam. I am a Laotian, a Cambodian, a Cuban, and a Miskito Indian in Nicaragua. I, too, am a potential victim of totalitarianism.

The one lesson of World War II, the one lesson of nazism, is that freedom must always be stronger than totalitarianism and that good must always be stronger than evil. The moral measure of our two nations will be found in the resolve we show to preserve liberty, to protect life, and to honor and cherish all God's children.

The crux of the Reagan vision is that to be an American is to be a freedom man.

Posted by Orrin Judd at June 7, 2004 4:36 PM