THE rEALISTS CAN NEVER FORGIVE HIM:

"The real crisis we face today is a spiritual one," Reagan told a gathering of evangelicals on March 8, 1983. "At root it is a test of moral will and faith." It was this conviction that lay at the heart of Reagan's "Evil Empire" speech, delivered forty years ago. It is hard to think of another world leader who could combine, convincingly, the themes of spiritual salvation, the reality of evil, and the nature of the totalitarian state:

"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.

Secular elites in the academy and in the media, of course, excoriated Reagan for his "simple-minded" and "Manichean" approach to U.S. foreign policy. It is easy to forget the mood of the hour: Conventional liberal wisdom was that the United States and the Soviet Union had equally flawed political systems. They must work to "converge" and compromise for the sake of world peace.

Reagan took this liberal dogma to the woodshed. Quoting from C.S. Lewis in The Screwtape Letters, he warned his religious audience not to be deceived by smooth-talking Soviet leaders, "quiet men with white collars and cut fingernails and smooth-shaven cheeks who do not need to raise their voices." He cautioned against the dangerous 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." In this outlook--as popular today as it was a generation ago--Reagan saw the sin of spiritual pride.

Although Reagan believed deeply in American exceptionalism, he was not blind to the nation's shortcomings. Although labeled a racist by today's left, Reagan spoke candidly about America's racist history: "Our nation, too, has a legacy of evil with which it must deal." It is a remarkable fact that the same president who extolled America as a "shining city on a hill" also lamented its "legacy of evil," a record of ethnic and racial hatred that has deeply burdened America's democratic journey.

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