Today is the 100th birthday of Ronald Reagan. Alan Sears describes the time and the man well:
Time gets away from all of us, and it’s hard, sometimes, to remember what a pall lay over the United States 30 years ago. The economy was in near ruins. Our enemies abroad had been emboldened to increasing aggressions by the passive “tsk-tsk-tsks” of a president who chided his own people for their moral “malaise.” Even amid celebrations of its 200th year of liberty, the country seemed downcast and disenchanted at the prospects of a bleak and listless future.
Then he walked in.
“It’s morning in America,” he said, with a smile like the rising of the sun. He embraced his nation and its destiny, unfazed by the waning economic indicators and the rattling sabers of Communist armies and insurgents around the globe. He exuded joy and hope and confidence … and looking on themselves through his warm gaze, Americans began to share his belief that this nation’s best years might still lie ahead. . .
It will go down as one of the great marvels of history that President Reagan, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, and Pope John Paul II all achieved positions of crucial leadership at almost exactly the same moment. Together, by the grace of a merciful God, that extraordinary trio accomplished what seemed impossible: the thwarting of the Communists’ global agenda, and the toppling of the theretofore impregnable Soviet government.
No moment better symbolizes what Reagan brought to that fight – or what he represented to his nation, and people everywhere – than his famous speech of June 12, 1987, at the Berlin Wall, and his powerful cry to his Soviet counterpart: “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!”
Few realize the political courage it took to make that statement, in the face of almost universal disapproval from other world leaders and Reagan’s own staff and advisors. Few understood, at the time, how much that courageous declaration meant to captive peoples all over the world. And no one could have predicted that, 29 months later, that wall would indeed come down.
But it’s not just the courage that I cherish from that speech that so eloquently expressed the soul and vision of Ronald Reagan. It’s the unswerving trust in God and liberty.
“As I looked out a moment ago from the Reichstag, that embodiment of German unity,” President Reagan said in the Berlin Wall speech, “I noticed words crudely spray-painted upon the wall, perhaps by a young Berliner: ‘This wall will fall. Beliefs become reality.’ Yes, across Europe, this wall will fall. For it cannot withstand faith. It cannot withstand truth. The wall cannot withstand freedom.”