CLEANING UP AFTER TRUMAN AND IKE:

The 1956 Hungarian Revolution in the Eyes of Ronald Reagan (János Horváth, 56 Stories)

President Ronald Reagan had a great interest in and knowledge of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution, and this knowledge helped to shape his world views and contributed to his morally firm statesmanship. Contrary to the conventional wisdom of his time, he understood that the Soviet Union was not the strong, stable superpower and the wave of the future that it pretended to be. Moreover, he was aware that the smaller nations that had been engulfed into its colonial empire strongly resented the yoke under which they were held. As President of the United States, these convictions helped to shape the foreign policy of his administration – a policy designed to further weaken the USSR.

I became acquainted with Ronald Reagan in 1974 when he was Governõr of California. At the time I was head of the Department of Economics at Butler University in Indianapolis. Governõr Reagan came to Indiana repeatedly during the early months of that year to help in the Republican primary election campaign his friend and colleague, Governõr Edgar Whitcomb, who aspired to become a U.S. Senator. I was Chairman of Economic Advisors for Governõr Whitcomb, and in that capacity I accompanied the two men on many campaign trips throughout the state. [...]

In 1981, when Ronald Reagan assumed the presidency of the United States, the cold war tension and the atomic war horizon forecasted the shadow of nuclear disaster. Within these circumstances the President’s self-confidence became decisive. He did not hesitate to brand the Soviet Union an “evil empire” and to emphasize that “in the arsenals of the world there exists no such weapon as the moral courage of free men.” Then he continued with these sentiments: “I call upon the nation’s scientists, who had created the nuclear weapons, that this time they turn their talents to the service of humanity and world peace, and create those instruments that render nuclear weapons ineffective.” During the subsequent years it happened that in the “Star Wars” competition the Soviet Union fell so far behind that the whole colonial empire went bankrupt and fell apart. In this way the rockbed fortitude and moral statesmanship of Ronald Reagan led, in 1989, to the freedom and independence of Hungary for which the freedom fighters of 1956 had fought so valiantly.

Of course, all the same folks who opposed Ronald Reagan and Star Wars now oppose George W. Bush and the Reformation of the Middle East.

Posted by Orrin Judd at October 21, 2006 11:38 AM