student at college in santa barbara and couldn't make it here on this cold winter day. but i'm delighted to have our second place winner who is reejt university undergrad whoses say was entitled ronald reagan and global democracy and that's mr. chris metiere. >> finally, in the graduate student category, the winners are from tennessee and in second place was a third year law student, took third place in this category last year, democracy for everyone. katie.

would you help me in thanking our three winners today. american history tv with a look at journalism history. at 8:00 p.m., women reporters in vietnam. a new exhibit reporting vietnam, the museum hosts a discussion with women who covered the war. at 9:20 p.m., we marked the 150e anniversary of the nation, one of the oldest magazines in america. we have interviews. journalism history on american

history tv, 8:00 p.m. herein on c-span3. >> for the weekend webs here are a few book tv special programs. saturday, august 22nd, we're live from jackson, mississippi, for the inaugural mississippi book festival, beginning at 11:30 a.m. eastern with discussions on harper lee, civil rights and the civil war. on saturday, september 5th, weir live from our nation's festivals. on sunday with our live, in-depth program with former second lady and senior fellow at the american enterprise institute, lynn cheney, book tv on c-span2, television for serious readers.

coming up tuesday, a panel discussion considering the iran nuclear agreement and the role of sanctions including as part of the deal. that's 10:00 a.m. eastern on c-span. later, a forum considering the iran nuclear agreement and its implications for the international community. that's 2:00 p.m. eastern on c-span2. >> this weekend on the c-span networks, politics, books and american history. on c-span live from the iowa state fair. presidential candidates speak at the des moines register candidate soap box. beginning at noon, we'll hear from republican senator santo m santorum, lincoln chafee, bernie sanders and sunday afternoon, more coverage from the iowa state fair at 5:00 followed by george pataki. on c-span2 saturday night at 10:00 eastern, missouri senator

claire mccaska on her life and political career. sunday morning at 10:30, desusa talks about his recent book "america" and campaign finance law. on american history tv on c-span3, with many presidential candidates visiting the iowa state fair, we look back at the 2008 presidential race. and saturday evening at 6:00 on the civil war, historian and author john corsine on the 1864 battle of mobile bay, the resulting union victory and the closing of one of the phenomenon fed rasy's last ports. up next on american history tv, recentlient university looks back at president reagan's

speech. we hear the speech after a brief introduction, then a panel on reagan's role in confronting the cold war soviet threat. this 2:10 program was part of the annual ronald reagan's symposium and regent university. >> thank you, dr. patterson. president ronald reagan delivered a speech to the british parliament that has come to be known as his west minister address. reagan audaciously predicted the down fall at the soviet union at the hand of what he called a democratic revolution. one that would, quote, lead marxism, linenism on the ash of history. it was the soviet union, according to reagan, and it

satellite that ran against the tide of history by denying human freedom and human dignity to its citizens. prime minister margaret thatcher called it a magnificent speech, but then she was expected to say such a thing. the american press viewed it as anything but. one prominent figure arrogantly waved the speech away as, quote, vintage reagan. another called it naive. while the president may have had folksy charm and stuffness, he had been shot just a year earlier, media figures thought him rather a lightweight on foreign policy. one of them characterized reagan's parliamentary audience as bemused. you're going to see it in just a moment, so you make up your own minds. mrern academics, however, viewed the president at down right dangerous.

he was, they said, strident, and a warmonger and he was very wrong about the future. the soviet union, two of them insisted in the journal of foreign affairs, quote, is not now nor will it ever be in the next decade in the throes of a true crisis. as an academic, i can only hope they had tenure when they wrote that. of course, in less than a decade, reagan proved to be very right. by 1989, the soviet empire was beginning to spin apart. and the berlin wall came dumbling down. we're going to hear more about that in our second panel.

but for the next 30 minutes or so, i invite you to watch and listen to president reagan's westminster address from june 1982, geniusly given to us by the reagan library. president reagan. it is my privilege to welcome to the -- the president of my mother's country, my lords, ladies and gentlemen, mr. president reagan. >> thank you very much.

my lord chancellor, mr. speaker, the journey of which this visit forms a part is a long one. already it has taken me to two great cities of the west, rome and paris and to the economic summit of versailles. once again, it's proven that even in a time of severe economic strain, free peoples can work foeg freely and voluntarily to address problems as serious as inflation, unemployment, trade and economic development in a spirit of cooperation and solidarity. other milestones lie ahead. later this week, in germany, we and our nato allies will discuss measures for our joint defense and america's latest initiatives for a more peaceful, secure world through arms reductions. each stop of this trip is important.

but among them all, this moment occupies a special place in my heart and in the hearts of my countrymen. a moment of kinship and homecoming in these hallowed halls. speaking for all americans, i want to say how very much at home we feel in your house. every american would because this is as we have been so eloquently told one of democracy's shrines. here are the rights of free people and the process of representation have been debated and refined. it has been said that an institution is the lengthening shadow of a man. this institution is the lengthening shadow of all the men and women who have sat here and all those who have voted to send representatives here. this is my second visit to great britain as president of the united states. my first opportunity to stand on

british soil occurred almost a year and a half ago when your prime minister graciously hosted a -- at the british embassy in washington. mrs. thatcher said then that she hoped i was not distressed to find staring down at me from the grand staircase a portrait of his royal majesty, king george iii. she suggested it was best to let bygones be bygones and in view of on our two countries' remarkable friendship in succeeding years, she add most englishmen today would agree with thomas jefferson that, quote, a little rebellion now and then is a very good thing, end quote. but from here, i will go on to bonn and then berlin. where there stands a symbol of power, the berlin wall, that

dreadful, gray gash across the city is in its third decade. it is the fitting signature of the regime that built it. and a few hundred kilometers behind the berlin wall, there is another symbol. in the center of warsaw, there is a sign that notes the distances to two capitals. in one direction, it points towards moscow. in the other, it points towards brussels. headquarters of western europe's unity. the marker says that the distances from warsaw to moscow and warsaw to brussels are equal. the sign makes this point. poland is not east or west. poland is at the center. it is doing so today by being magnificently unreconciled. poland struggled to be poland. and to secure the basic rights

we often take for granted, demonstrates why we dare not take those rights for granted. defending the reform bill of 1866 gladstone declared you cannot fight against the future. time is on our side. it was easier to believe in the march of democracy in gladstone's day. we are approaching the end of a bloody century plagued by a terrible invention, totalitarianism. democracy's enemies have refined their instruments of repression. yet optimism is in order. because day by day, democracy is proving itself to be a not at all fragile flower.

from the baltic to the black sea, the regimes planted by totalitarianism have had more than 30 years to establish their legitimacy. but none, not one regime, has yet been able to risk free elections. regimes planted by bayonets do not take root. the strength of the solidarity movement in poland demonstrates the truth told in an underground joke in the soviet union. it is that the soviet union would remain a one-party nation even if an opposition party were permitted. because everyone would join the opposition party. not always patient. i do recall that on one

occasion, sir winston churchill said about one of our most distinguished diplomates, it is the only case of a bull i know who carries his china shop with him. but as witty as sir winston was, he also had that special attribute of great statesmen, the gift of vision. the willingness to see the future based on the experience of the past. it is this sense of history, this understanding of the past that i want to talk with you about today for it is in remembering what we share of the past that our two nations can make common cause for the future. we have not inherited an easy world. if developments like the industrial revolution which began here in england and the gifts of science and technology made life much easier for us, they have made it more dangerous. there are threats now to our freedom, indeed to our very existence that other generations

could never even have imagined. there is first the threat of global war. no president, no congress, no prime minister, no parliament can spend a day entirely free of this threat. and i don't have to tell you that in today's world, the existence of nuclear weapons could mean if mott the extinction of man kind then surely the end of civilization as we know it. that is why negotiations on intermediate range nuclear forces now under way in europe and the starter talks, strategic arms reduction talks, which will begin later this month, are not just critical to american and western policy, they are critical to man kind. our commitment through early success in these negotiations is firm and unshakeable. and our purpose is clear. reducing the risk of war by reducing the means of waging war on both sides.

at the same time, there sa threat posed to human freedom by the enormous power of the modern state. history teaches the dangers of government overreaches. political control taking precedence over free economic growth, secret police, mindless bureaucracy, all to stifle individual excellence and personal freedom. i'm aware that among us here, and throughout europe, there is legitimate disagreement over the extent to which the public sector should play a role in the nation's economy in life. but on one point, all of us are united. our abhorrence of dictatorship in all its forms. but most particularly, totalitarianism and the terrible inhumanities it has caused in our time. the great percentage, auschwitz,

cambodia, historians looking back in our time will note the consistent restraints. they will note that they refused the nuclear monopoly in the 40s and early 50s for territorial and imperial gain. a map of europe, indeed the world would look very different today. certainly it's not the democracies that invatd afghanistan and southeast asia. we see around us today the marks of our terrible dilemma. redictions of dooms day, anti-nuclear demonstrations, an

arms race be an unwilling participate. at the same time, we see total tearan forces in the world who seeks aversion and conflict around the globe to further their assault on the human spirit. sir winston churchill refused to accept the inevitable of war or even that it was yuq/timminent. it's the permanent prevention of

war and freedom and democracy as rapidly as possible in all countries. i believe we live now in a turning point. we are witnessing today a great revolutionary crisis, a crisis where the demands of the economic order are confliblt flikting directly with those of the political order, but the crisis is happening not in the free, nonmarksist west, but in the home of marxist, linenism, the soviet union. it is the soviet union that runs against the tide of history by denying human freedom and human dignity to its citizens. it also is economic difficult.

the rate of growth is less than half of what it was then. a country which employs one-fifth of its population in agency is unable to feed its own people. were it not for the private sector, the tiny private sector tolerated in soviet agriculture, the country might be on the brink of famine. these private plots occupy a bare 3% of the airble land, but account for nearly one quarter of soviet farm output and nearly one-third of meat products and vegetables. overcentralized with little or no incentives year after year, the soviet system pours its best resource into the making of instruments of destruction. the constant shrinkage of economic growth combined with the growth of military production is pulling heavy strain on the soviet people.

what we see here is a political structure that no longer corresponds to its economic base, a society where productive forces are hampered by political ones. the decay of the soviet -- should come as no surprise to us. wherever the comparisons have been made between free and closed societies, west germany and east germany, austria and czechoslovakia, malaysia and vietnam, it is the democratic countries that are prosperous and responsive to the needs of their people. and one of the simple but overwhelming facts of our time is this. of all the millions of refugees we've seen in the modern world, their flight is always away from, not toward, the communist world. today on the nato line, our military forces face east to prevent a possible invasion. on the other side of the line,

the soviet forces also face east to prevent their people from leaving. the hardest of total tearan rule has caused mankind an uprising of the intellect and will. whether it is the growth of the new schools of economics in america or england or the appearance of the so-called new philosophers in france, there is one unifying trip running through the intellectual work of these groups. rejection of the arbitrary power of the state, the refusal to subordinate the rights of the individual to the super state. the relatialization that collec stifles all the best human impulses. since the exodus from egypt, history has written of those who sacrificed and struggled for freedom. the revolt of spartacus, the

warsaw uprising in world war ii. we've seen evidence of this in one of the developing nation necessary central america. for months and months, the world news media covered the fighting in el salvador. day after day, we were treated to stories and film slanted towards the brave freedom fighters in government forces on behalf of the silent, suffering people of that tortured people. then one day, those silent, suffering people were offered the chance to vote, to choose the kind of government they wanted. suddenly, the freedom fighters in the hills were supposed for what they really are, cuban backed guerillas who want power for themselves, not democracy for the people. they threatened death to any who voted and destroyed hundreds of buses and trucks to keep people from getting to the polling place. but on election day, the people of el salvador an unprecedented

1.4 million of them braved ambush and gunfire for miles to vote for freedom. they stood for hours in the hot sun waiting for their turn to vote. members of our congress who went there as openers told me of a woman who was wounded by rifle fire who refused to leave the line to have her wound treated until after she had voted. a grandmother who had been told by the guerillas she would be killed when she returned from the polls. she told the guerillas, you can kill me, you can kill my family, kill my neighbors, but you can't kill a us all. the real freedom fighters of el salvador turned out the be the people of that country. the young, the old, the in between. strange, but there's been little if any news coverage of that war since the election.

perhaps there are newer struggles now and distant islands in the south atlantic. young men are fighting for britain. and, yes, choices have been raced protesting their sacrifice. but those young men aren't fighting for mere real estate. they fight for a cause, for the belief that armed aggression must not be allowed to succeed and the people must participate in the decisions of government. st decisions of government under the rule of law. if they had been support for that government 45 years ago, perhaps our generation wouldn't have suffered the blood letting of world war ii. in the middle east now, the guns sound once more.

this time in lebanon. a country that for too long had to endure the tragedy of civil war, terrorism and foreign intervention and occupation. the fighting in lebanon was part of all parties must stop and israel should bring its forces home. but this is not enough. we must all work to stamp out the scourge of terrorism that in the middle east makes war an ever present threat. but beyond the trouble spots, lies a deeper, more positive pattern. around the world today, the democratic revolutionists gathering new strength in india, a critical test has been passed with the peaceful change of governing political parties. in africa and thigh gear ya is moving into remarkable and unmistakable ways to govern its institutions. in the caribbean and central america, 16 of 24 countries have freely elected governments and in the united nations, eight of

the 10 developing nations which will join that body in the past five years are our democracies. in the communist world, as well. man's instinctive desire for freedom and self-determination surfaces again and again. to be sure, they are grim reminders of how brutally the police stayed attempts to snuff out this quest for self-rule. 1953 in east germany. 1956 in hungary. 19678 in czechoslovakia, 1981 in poland. but the struggle continues in poland and we know that there are even those who strive and suffer from freedom within the confines of the soviet union itself. how we conduct ourselves in the western democracies will determine whether this trend continues. no, democracy is not a fragile flower. still, it needs cultivating.

if the rest of this century is to witness the gradual growth and freedom of democratic ideals, we must take actions to assist the campaign for democracy. some argue that we should encourage democratic change in right wing dictator shipss, but not in communist regimes, but to accept this notion as some well meaning people have is to invite the argument that once countries achieve a nuclear capability they should be allowed an undisturbed reign of terror over their own citizens. we reject this course. as for the soviet view, chairman breshnev repeatedly stressed that the competition of ideas and systems must continue and if this is entirely consistent with relaxation of tensions and peace. but we ask only that these systems begin by living up to their own constitutions, abiding by their own laws and complying

with the international open investigations they have undertaken. we ask only for a process, a direction, a basic code of decency. not for an instant transform age. we cannot ignore the fact that even for honor and encouragement there has and will continue to be repeated explosions against deck taterships. any system is inherently unstable that has no peaceful means to legitimize its leaders. in such cases, the repressiveness of the state ultimately drives people to resist it, if necessary, by force. why we must be cautious about forcing the pace of change, we must not hesitate to declare our objectives and to take concrete action toes move towards them. we must be staunch in our conviction that freedom is not the sole prerogative of a lucky

few, but the rights of all human beings. so states the united nations universal declaration of human rights, which among other things guarantees free elections. the objective i propose is quite simple to state. to foster the infrastructure of democracy, the system of a free press, unions, political parties, utilities, which allows a people to choose their own way to develop their own culture to reconcile their own differences through peaceful means. this is not cultural imperialism. it is providing the means for genuine self-determination. and protection for diversity. democracy already flourishes in countries with very different cultures and historical experiences. it would be cultural condescension or worse to say that any people prefer

dictatorship to democracy. who would voluntarily choose not to have the right to vote? besides the purchase government propaganda handouts instead of independent newspapers. preferred government to work a controlled unions. opt for land to be owned by the state instead of those who till it. want government repression of residentialus liberty, a single political party instead of a free choice, a rigid cultural orthodoxy instead of democratic tolerance and diversity. since 1917, the soviet union has given trading assistance to marxist linenist in many countries and violent subversion by these same forces. over the past several decades, leaders have offered open

assistance to fraternal political and social institutions to bring about peaceful and democratic progress. appropriately for a vigorous new democracy, a federal republic of germany's political foundations have bam a major force in this effort. we in america now intend the take additional steps as many of our allies have already done towards realizing this same goal. the chairman of the leaders of the national republic and democratic party organizations are initiating a study with a bipartisan american political foundation to determine how the united states can best contribute as a nation to the global campaign for democracy now gathering force. they don't want to have the cooperation of congressional leaders of both parties along with representatives of labor, and other institutions in our society. i look forward to receiving recommendations and to working with these institutions and the

congress in the common task of strengthening democracy throughout the world. it is time that we committed ourselves as a nation in both the public and private sectors to assisting democratic development. we plan to consult with leaders of other nations, as well. there is a proposal before the council of europe to invite parliament heirans to a meeting next week in strasburg. that gathering could consider ways to help democratic political movements. this november in washington, there will take place an international meeting on free elections. the next spring there will be a conference of world authorities on constitutionalism and self-government hosted by the chief justice of the united states. authorities from a number of developing and developed countries, judges, philosophers and politicians with practical experience have agreed to

explore how to turn principal into practice and further the rule of law. at the same time, we invite the soviet union to consider with us how the competition of ideas and values you just committed to support can be conducted on a peaceful and reciprocal basis. for example, i am prepared to offer the president an opportunity to speak to the american people on our television if he will allow me the same opportunity with the soviet people. we also suggest panels of our news men periodically appear to discussion major events. i don't wish to sound overly

optimistic. easting domestic unrest through greater oppression and foreign venture or it chooses a wiser course, it begins to allow its people a voice in their own destiny. even if this latter process is not realized soon, i believe the renewed strength of the democratic movement complemented bay global campaign for freedom will strengthen the prospects for arms control and a world at peace. i have discussed on other occasions, including my address on may 9th the elements of western policies for the soviet union to safeguard our interests and protect the peace. what i am describing now is a plan and a hope for the future. tend of marxism as it has left

other tierneys which stifle the freedom and muscle the self-expression of the people. that is why we must continue our efforts to strengthen nato even as we move forward with our zero option initiative in the negotiations on range forces and our proposal for a one-third reduction in strategic and ballistic missile warheads. our military strength is a prerequisite to peace. but let it be clear, we maintain this strength in the hope it will never be used. for the ultimate determinat and the struggle is now going on in the world. it will not be bombs and rockets, but a test of wills and ideas. a trial of spirits will resolve. the values we hold, the beliefs we cherish, the ideals to which we are dedicated. the british people know that given strong leadership, time and a little bit of hope, the

forces of good ultimately rally and tree oomph over evil. here among you is the cradle of self-government. the mother of parliaments. here is the enduring greatness of the british contribution to man kind. the great civilized ideas. individual liberty, representative government, and the rule of law under got. i've often wondered about the shyness of some of us in the west about standing for these ideals that have done so much to ease the plight of man and the hardships of our imperfect world. this reluctant to use those vast resources at our command reminds me of the elderly lady whose home was bomb in the blitz. as the rescuers moved about, they found a bottle of brandie they found in the staircase which was all that was left standing. since she was barely conscious, one of the workers pulled the cork to give her a taste of it. she came around immediately and

said there now, put it back. that's for emergencies. well, the emergency is upon us. let us be shy no longer. let us go to our strength. let us offer hope. let us tell the world that a new age is not only possible, but probable. during the dark days of the second world war when this island was incandescent with occur aenl, winston churchill explained about britain's adversaries, what kind of a people do they think we are. britain's adversaries found out what extraordinary people the british are. but all the democracies paid a terrible price for allowing the dictators to underestimate us. we dare not mistake that mistake again. so let us ask ourselves what kind of people do we know we

are? and let us answer, free people. worthy of freedom and determined not only to remain so, but to help others gain their freedom, as well. sir winston led his people to victory in war. he left office honorably and as it turned out temporarily. knowing that the liberty of his people was more important than the fate of any single leader, history recalls his greatness in ways no dictator will ever know he left us a message of hope for the future. as opposition leader in the commons nearly 20 years ago. he said when we look back on all the peril through which we have passed and at the mighty will he

lows and all the dark and deadly designs that we have frustrated him. why should we fear for our future? we have, he said, come safely w. with the task i've set forth will long outlive our own generation, but together, we, too, have come through the worst. let us now begin a major effort to secure the best, a crusade for true dom that will engage the faith and fortitude of the next generation, for the sake of peace and justice. let us move forward a world that where all people are at last free to determine their own destiny. thank you.

i heard that applause. and you heard it there, didn't, you from that bemused audience of ministers of parliament. we had the pleasure and the privilege of hearing first, panel of knowledgeable and experienced and engaging speakers and you're about to hear four more. dr. henry now is professor in the elliott school of international affairs at george washington university in d.c. he also taught and williams college, johns hopkins in d.c., sta stanford and columbia universities and was a senior staff member and president reagan's national security council. his latest book is "conservative internationalalism: armed disphone si of jefferson, polk, truman and reagan." he'll be speaking on how to spread liberty abroad, who

protecting liberty at home. dr. william inboden is executive director of the william p. clemens jr. center for history, strategy and state craft, and associate professor at the lbj school of public affairs at thes university of texas in austin. previously, he served as senior director for strategic planning on the national security council at the white house, at the department of state and as a staff member in the united states senate and house of representatives. he will be speaking on institutionalizing freedom. reagan's national security council and the translation of words into action. dr. james graham wilson is a diplomatic historian in the office of the historian at the department of state. where he works on soviet and national security policy volumes for the foreign relations of the united states. he is also affiliated with the history and public policy

program in washington, and he's the author of "triumph of improvisati improvisation." he'll be speaking on reagan and his cold war adversaries. and finally, we'll be hearing from dr. kiran skinner. kiran is the founding director of the center for international relations at carnegie melon, university, at the w. glen campbell research fell local at the hoover institution. her books include "turning points in ending the cold war," "the strategy of campaigning," "reagan, a life in letters," and "reagan in his own hand." dr. skinner will be speaking on ronald reagan and human rights. dr. henry now.

>> thank you very much. from fesor morrison. i have a really tough act to follow. ronald reagan, i should just say, he said it all and sit down. and i'm reminded of something that dwight hisseisenhower once said. he said, watch out for those experts that come in to advise you. those are the people that use a lot of words and take a lot of time to tell you more than they know. let's see if i can avoid that criticism by dwight eisenhower. i want to talk, briefly, and some of this will be repetitive, about how reagan viewed the world. because he had a very consistent view of the world. a very coheerrent view. that he had been shaping for a very, very long time. we're now learning from all of the records that are being released that he wrote and he thought a lot. he read, by the way, also, a lot. long before he ever went into politics.

and george shultz once said something very profound, he said, when you do a lot of writing, and reagan has done an enormous amount of writinwritin the way, over 20,000 letters, and jefferson only wrote 16,000. but when you write a lot, it means you've been thinking a lot. and reagan did do a lot of thinking. his views were revolutionary, as the panelists said this morning. unconventional. and clashed with the conventional views at the time. for reagan, what was most important in international affairs was, in fact, the ideas that countries represented. and that countries competed with one another. the ideas of how people should live together, in a society, and for reagan, america was always this kind of an entity. it was an idea. he says, already in 1952, this

is in a speech, 1952, in a speech at william woods college in fulton, missouri, where churchill gave his famous iron curtain speech, he says the following, quote, america is less a place than an idea. the idea of that deep within the heart of one of us is something so god-like and precious that no individual or group has a right to impose his or its will upon the people. end quote. so, for reagan, international relations was all about ideas. that stood in juxtaposition to win another. and those ideas would determine the outcomes. now, the conventional views at the time was that you really couldn't make choices and change the world. you had to accept the world the way it was. leaders, for example, like richard nixon would say, the soviet union has now achieved

military parity, we must recognize that. and probably expect to live in permanent coexistence with the soviet union. we need to get onto the achievement of common interest, despite our different philosophies. others like jimmy carter at the time, and maybe president obama today, believe that the way you get ahead or the way you change the world is through negotiations. and you try to actually soft pedal the differences. sign agreements, gain some trust in one another and maybe you can become friends. well, that was exactly the opposite of the way reagan thought about the world. he thought about the world in terms of ideas being in competition, those ideas drove societies, motivated societies, and in the end, the struggle over ideas would determine the ultimate outcomes. i want to just briefly touch on four come appropriates of reagan's view of the world.

the first i've already suggested. that is that ideas create and shape realities. he thought in terms of moral choices, not in terms of material constraints. and he believed that the source of violence in the world was actually the domestic character of authoritarian regimes. and that they were the ones who were more inclined to use force, as they did domestically, to maintain power, and therefore would be more likely to use force internationally. he believed in what we call the democratic peace. he said to congress in 1984, governments which rest upon the consent of the governed do not wage war on their neighbors. so, he was very conscious of the fact that the problem in the world was not balance of power and it wasn't misunderstandings and international negotiations, it was, in fact, the kind of ideas that were propagated by authoritarian powers.

he had a wonderful way often of putting things very simply. he said, if oppressive governments, if the soviet union treats its own people that way, meaning with arbitrary force, think what they will do with us if they get the chance. so, this was the source of conflict in the world. and he knew that he had to narrow these ideological differences with the soviet union before he could achieve any kind of negotiations with them. so, when he met gorbachev for the first time, this is how he started the conversation. quote, countries do not mistrust each other because of arms. but rather, countries build up their arms because of the mistrust between them. i hope that in our meetings, both of us can get at the source of the suspicions that exist. now, that was exactly in contrast, by the way, to the way

richard nixon opened his conversation with mau, when he met mau in 1972. richard nixon said, we should not let our fiphilosophical differences get in the way of our common interests. so, reagan was reversing the relationship between ideas and relationships and military competition. now, secondly, in this competition of ideas, second component, in the competition of ideas, there was no moral equivalence between ideas. reagan was simply very, very clear about this. he said, for example, for him, obviously, the soviet union was illegitimate and free countries were the only legitimate actors in the international system. he said on the anniversary of the 40th -- or on the date, 1985, the date of the 40th anniversary of yalta, the following.

there is one border that can never be made legitimate, and that is the dividing line between freedom and oppression. he went on to say, we're going to roll back that border. so, he took a stand on the competition between democracy and tyranny. and he issued that famous statement at the evangelical conference in 1983, i urge you to be aware of the temptation of pride, the temptation of blithely declaring yourself above it all and labeling both sides as 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 to remove yourself from the struggle of right and wrong, good and evil. we heard a lot about that this morning. and reagan was very aware of what he was doing. he originally got a draft of the speech that said, surely historians will see there, that is, in the soviet union, the

focus of evil. what did reagan do, he changed those words to they are the focus of evil. and later, he told us that he did all of this with malice of forethought. he said, at late as spring of 1988, he said this in springfield, before he went to moscow, by the way, annoyed g gorbach gorbachev, he said to the people of springfield, look, we spoke plainly and bluntly. we said that freedom was better. we said that communism was bad. experts told us this was dangerous. but far to the contrary. this made clear to the soviets that the differences that accept rated us and the soviets were deeper and wider than just missile counts and the number of warheads. now, the third component, ideologies drive the balance of power. reagan believed that societies

were in a contest with one another, both in terms of which produced better economic outcomes for their citizens and which produced better security for their citizens. and a better world for their citizens. right, so he saw ideological competition driving the arms competition. now, he believed an arms competition was necessary. he this is where he was very different from jimmy carter, and maybe president obama this day. he believed the only way to bring the soviet union to the table was to have an arms race with the soviet union. he says in 1963, again, even before he goes into government, in california. he says the following. quote, the only sure way to avoid war is to surrender without fighting. the other way is based on the belief that an all-out race, our system is stronger and eventually the enemy gives up the race as a hopeless cause.

then, a noble nation believing in peace extends the hand of friendship and says there is room in the world for both of us. think about that. that's a prediction in 1963 of exactly what he did when he came into office and faced off against the soviet union. so, that arms buildup that he initiated was absolutely crucial and it was crucial to his being able to get across to the soviet union that, look, you're not going to win outside of negotiations. if you want an arms race, come on. we'll win, you'll lose. therefore, let's get serious about the negotiations. and do you know what? i think that arms buildup had more to do with gorbachev's determination to negotiate than many people concede, because here's what gorbachev said in october of 1985, and we have this from the minutes of that meeting, quote, the last thing

we can afford is an arms race with the united states. we will lose. end quote. there, in my mind, is the indisputable proof that reagan got his message across. you can't win outside, now, start seriously negotiating inside. you never thought that arms would resolve the issue. he always thought, as you heard in the westminster address, that the ultimate determinant, as he said, in the struggle that is now going in the world will not be bombs and rockets, but a test of wills and ideas. but the idea of freedom would win. and that's the last component of his world view. that is, he really genuinely believed that freedom was universal. and that freedom could spread without war. this was a unique competition for ronald reagan, who you remember wanted to eliminate nuclear wells at the same time that he wanted to defeat the soviet union and spread freedom.

he believed that the to enshl for freedom existed in every country. and because that potential was there, freedom was universal. at westminster, he said, and you heard him just a few minutes ago, quote, what we have to consider here today, while the time remains, is the permanent prevention of war and the establishment of the conditions of freedom and democracy as rapidly as possible in all countries. now, that was, again, an unusual combination of wanting to spread freedom and wanting to do it without war. well, i think two considerations were important in how reagan believed that that was possible. first, reagan -- freedom was not going to be american style when it necessarily emerged in other countries. it would always be unique to their culture. but he believes there were liberal traditions in every culture, and those liberal conditions struggled against totalitarian conditions. as it did in our country. think about how freedom struggled in our country, against oppression by the

british, against slavery, against the jim crow era. so, inside every country, there are liberal tendencies and they struggle against authoritarian ones. the battle for freedom is local. it is always local. in another one of his pithy comments, reagan would say, freedom is only one generation away from being lost, and if it is lost in america, where do we go? where do we go? so, he was very open to the emergence of freedom on its own terms in other countries. he did believe that that freedom necessitated a civil society, and so at westminster, he announced he was going to create a national endowment for democracy which, in fact, he did, which are the four institutions that exist today to do what he said in that speech,

namely to foster the inf infrastructure of democracy. that is to build the political parties, to build a system of the repressed, to build unions, et cetera, that make for an independent democratic country. most important, an opposition party, his little joke of the soviet union. now, he didn't see this as cultural impeeralism. he thought that was when you said that no other country was able to have democracy. that was cultural imperialism. to say that they all could possibly have democracy was, in fact, the right way to go. and lastly, as you also heard, he said, look, in this struggle, america has to be there. we have to be at the side of other countries. now, his hope was, clearly, to encourage the soviet union and china and other countries to abandon the use of force, that we would get war by showing them they couldn't compete and then moving to negotiations to move the needle of freedom forward. so, reagan's world view had

ideas and democracy at the center. the conventional views had realities and constraints at the center. today, unfortunately, too many people are focusing on the constraints. america's declined, america's relative loss of power, we're trying to negotiate, i think, without any real backup, without any military backup. we want iran to take negotiations seriously, but meanwhile, iran is securing all of its objectives outside the negotiations, spreading terrorism, gaining a threshold nuclear capability. they call for america to come home, step back -- democracy's in retreat. reagan would have had none of that. reagan would have been standing tall on the basis of a strong revial of america's economy, of america's military and then he would have negotiated with iran and with russia, with china. but fully confident that the

strength of free societies would prevail and that those countries would eventually compromise in negotiations in wails that advanced the cause of freedom. >> so, one of president reagan's most effective tools in his multiorbed arsenal was humor. and you picked that up from a couple of lines in the westminster address. you picked that up from a couple of dr. now's anecdotes. and in our symposium here, particularly the question of freedom, there's a reagan joke that, in my mind, is very revealing of his approach to these things and how he wanted to make the point that freedom was not just the prerogative of the united states, but rather

was an inheritance, should be available to all people in all societies and all systems and a joke he would tell was that he was sitting down with the president of the soviet union, the soviet dictator in the early '80s, reagan's main nemesis really at the time and was trying to get the point to him about what it means to live in a free society, governed by rule of law, rather than a dictator. and so president reagan said, let me tell you what it means to live in a free society, as an american. an american citizen can stand on pennsylvania avenue, right in front of the white house, right at the white house gates and scream at the top of his lungs, president reagan is a but and a terrible president and he's free to do that. i can't arrest him. i won't stop him. we're a free society. and then brezhnev said, oh, mr. president, i understand exactly what you're saying, i don't see the difference, because in the soviet union, someone can stand in the middle of red square and yell the same thing.

think about it for a second. so, president reagan would use humor like that to disarm some of his opponents, but also to make these points the. the theme of my remarks today starts with a paradox, which is the paradox of presidential power and powerlessness. we often think to ourselves that the president of the united states is the most powerful man in the world, and in a lot of ways, he is. but at the same time, american presidents, when they're sitting there behind the desk in the oval office, often feel relatively powerless. they feel victim to world events, as sometimes things just seem to be spy ramming out of control around him and there's -- no matter what they do with american policy, they just can't change that. but they feel powerless to their own government. a president can issue orders and give speeches, but it feels like their own government, the media,

congress, will just resist it and presidents often feel powerless. president reagan used to joke about this with his own government. he would sometimes say, you know, my government's a little confused, my white house has a lot of feuding. sometimes the right hand doesn't know what the far right hand is doing. like i said, think about it. the so, he would -- but he was at a right insight there, even though that swore on the oath of office to serve under him sometimes didn't want to carry out his directives. and so, when it would come to a big initiative like his effort to promote freedom around the world and to end the cold war and defeat the soviet union, the -- for him, partly it was a matter of coming up with the right ideas and the right values, but then the question is, how do you translate these words into action? how do you take an eloquent speech like the westminster address and turn that into policies and a program of action? how do you actually implement

that? and so that's what i want to focus on in my remaining remarks today. my title is -- subtitle of my remarks talks about institutionalizing freedom. and that can be one of those fancy academic words, but as you heard from the westminster address, to quote president reagan, it means the lengthening shadow of a man. it means creating bodies and enties that will carry on your values and your ideas after you leave office. for a country, for a system, it means a system of government that does not depend on the whims of a dictator, but that is governed by rule of law. but the institutions that embody the rule of law. so, there's three ways that president reagan worked on institutionalizing freedom and the primary instrument for these was his national security council staff. his white house staff and then the cabinet principles. so, first president reagan integrated freedom promotion

into his overall cold war strategy. so, freedom promotion for him was not just an idealistic impulse or an emotional commitment to help a few dissidents. rather, it was integral to his overall strategy to weaken soviet come ewe schism. second, he created and expanded the institutions of freedom promotion within the american system. the creation of the national endowment of democracy. he knew that he was going to leave office eventually, but once he did, he wanted to make sure that there were weapons, tools in the american system to carry forward, to institutionalize the expansion of freedom. and then third, these efforts focused on creating institutions of democracy and human freedom abroad so that other countries and societies could know separation of powers, rule of law, constitutional government, rather than really being ruled by the whims of a dictator. so, just to give you a few examples of how president reagan

institutionalized these ideals into his policies and into the system that carried forward. the first one, as i mentioned, is how to institutionalize and integrate freedom into an overall cold war strategy. when we think of the cold war, we think of the super powers standoff of two nuclear armed rivals, arms control negotiations, support for the mujahadin in afghanistan, things like that. but for president reagan, it involved supporting dissidents, and freedom, peaceful freedom fighters behind the iron curtain. that they would know that they had the power and moral authority of the united states on their side. he first did that with his national security council staff with a series of secret strategy documents, with, thanks to the great work of dr. wilson have been declassified and we can understand what the strategy was. so, for example, one of his most important strategy documents was the nsdd 75.

national security decision directive 75. when it was issued early in his presidency, it was sent to the heads of all of our different national security arms and entities, saying this is what american policy is going to be. and this is what the document said. american policy toward the soviet union will consist of three elements. external resistance to soviet imperialism, interm pressure on the ussr to weaken the sources of soviet imperialism and then negotiations to eliminate on the basis of strict reciprocity outstanding disagreements. and then, a memo to president reagan from his national security adviser at the time, bill clark, elaborated on why this was significant. said, it has always been the objective of american policy to combine containment with negotiations. that's what previous presidents had done. but our strategy document is the firsts in which the united states government adds a third objective to its relations with the soviet union, namely encouraging anti-totalitarian

changes within the ussr. and so, this strategy essentially took human rights and democracy promotion, made it central to the reagan administration's overall policy towards the soviet union. now, reagan had long taken interest in political and religious dissidents within the soviet bloc. their individual traits of courage and idealism really appealed to his heart, and served in his mind to personalize the brutalities of communism and the takes of the cold war. and political and strategic terms, he believed that the existence of these prisoners of conscience, underground pastors, political dissidents, they demonstrated the fragility of the soviet system. if people were risking their very lives to resist their government, that probably tells you it is not a very legitimate or strong or enduring government. only an insecure government, he thought, would be so 0 prezive and so fearful of its own citizens merely to exercise

basic rights. so, as an instrument of statecraft, reagan found that he could serve as tests of soviet sincerity and good will on other issues like arms control negotiations. reagan and his advisers devoted countless hours in getting dissidents free from the gulag. giving them freedom to emigrate to israel or the united states. the siberian seven pentecostals that lived in the basement of the u.s. embassy in moscow for five years. if they left it, they would be thrown back into the gulag. so, the american embassy in moscow was this safe haven for these seven pentecostals from siberia. and reagan negotiated their release a real test of soviet

intentions. he said to the soviets, i'm not going to talk to you about arms control negotiations or any of the other issues between our countries, until you release the siberian seven. because then i will know that you are a credible in negotiating. then, i will know that we can trust you in sitting down and doing business. trust but verify. and so for him, the verification would come with the soviets allowing these seven siberians to leave the u.s. embassy and seek freedom in the united states. so, individual cases like this were one thing, but then a global effort to promote freedom and democracy was another, and that's precisely what president reagan called for in the westminster address. i want to quote an especially important line from that. we must be staunch in our conviction that freedom is not the sole prerogative of a lucky few, but the universal right of all.

to foster the infrastructure of democracy, the system of a free press, unions, political parties, universities, which allows a people to choose their own way, to develop their own culture. reconcile their own differences through peaceful means. so, in the context of the cold war and the soviet bloc, this represented reagan's effort to develop the idea through the strategy democrat by increasing internal pressure on the kremlin. it extended to america's allies, as well. there were some more right wing authoritarian nations that were important allies to the united states who were anti-communist but not allowing their people much freedom, and in reagan's mind, he wanted to encourage them to open up, to allow more freedom. this would show, he thought, the integrity of the values of america and of a free society and give moral legitimate si to the struggle and also ensure longer term stability of these allies.

but the question, of course, was, how to turn these words into action. how to turn this lofty speech into a specific program of action. this is where the nsc staff picked up the torch. led by walt raymond, who was a career cia official detailed to the staff at the time, set up something called project democracy. out of which eventually came the national endowment for democracy and several other democracy-promoting organizations, which continue today. so, bill clark and walt raymond then other the next 18 months did the long, hard work of working through the american bureaucracy, getting funding from congress, getting the state department, u.s. aid, others on board to set up these new institutions that would support people's aspirations for freedom in all places, in all times. and so they eventually did success, when the national

endowment for democracy was created in december 1983. so, what did all of these efforts lead to? well, as i mentioned, it did lead, of course, to the creation of these different institutions, which continue today, which have been celebrating their anniversaries in recent years. even though the cold war ended, you know, oppressive societies, authoritarian governments have continues, whether it's china, north korea, cuba, laos, or close, an oppressive muslim societies. so, the need for these democracy and human rights-promoting organizations continue, though the cold war is over and president reagan is no longer in the oval office. i think the historical record is pretty clear that the reagan administration contributed to one of the greatest expansions of human freedom in history, when soviet communism was no

more. let's remember, yet still very important, i think, the reagan administration support that extended to american allies like taiwan, philippines and el s salvad salvador. they were all more right wing you a thorn tarn governments and yet he helped encourage democratic transitions in those countries and a number of others,er as well. so, there was a real moral and strategic consistency there, showing he wanted our friends in positive direction ocean, as he wanted freedom behind the borders of our enemies. i think reagan's record on this is more consistent, more effective and more enduring than is commonly appreciated and perhaps holds lessons and insights for today, as the united states still struggles to figure out our leadership in the world. and as we see regressions of freedom across the middle east and some discouraging signs in parts of south and east asia, as

well. but in reagan's case, he's most, remembered, of course, for helping in ushers fr ererring f the soviet bloc. this is the inheritance he bequeathed to the world and it is up to our generation to carry it forward. thank you very much. >> well, let me say what a pleasure it is, an honor it is to be on the panel and get to know a bit and i should say, there was some reference made to getting the material out that shows, illuminating the policy-making and reagan's thinking over time, and there's no single person who is more responsible for doing that in the last 20 years than kiran

skinner. and it certainly, everyone interested in this topic owes a deep debt of gratitude to her. i'd like to thank dean patterson and jeffrey morrison for inviting me here. i was a bit reluck tactant at f but when jeffrey said, encouraged me to use my private e-mail to communicate, i thought -- how could i turn this down? now, there's -- there's a phrase -- i have to read here, some of you have been in government and have said this, others, i think, maybe in the fifth row here, are just getting ready to get into government and that is the views expressed herein are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the department of state or the u.s. government. so, i've gotten that out of the way. now, there have been some mention in will and henry's talks about the national endowment of democracy and just

to reiterate, this is the great follow-through of the westminster speech. and nm '83, december, when reagan goes to inaugurate it, he says, we are not trying create imitations of the american system around the world. there is no simple cookbook recipe for political development that is right for all people and there is no timetable, end quote. americans should approach the world with humility in patience, in other words, yet without doubt over the ultimate outcome. the nation, quote, can be confident that the tide of history is a freedom tied. that's the real message of our time and it may just be the reason why those that don't like to hear the truth are so worried, end quote. six years after reagan inaugurated the national endowment for democracy, the per lynn wall came down.

poland, hungary and the rest of eastern europe became democracies. in march 1990, east germans cast ballots in a free election and overwhelmingly rejected the communist p communist. their officials voted for the dissolution of the communist state and the following year, the soviet union collapsed. the swift and peaceful conclusion to the cold war appeared to validate reagan's proclamation at westminster that the tide of history is a freedom tide. and, indeed, the president's reassertion and reinvigoration of the truman doctrine that it would be, quote, the policy of the united states to support free peoples who are resisting by armed minorities or outside pressures, played an important role in the story of the end of the cold war. my argument here, and in the

spirit of a symposium and a university setting, my argument here is that even more important than reagan's crusade and support for anti-communist forces around the world was his persistent engagement of cold warred adversarieadversaries. if you go to the diaries, the reagan diaries, i think one finds an distinction between enemy and adversary. clearly, mow wh gadhafi was an . reagan said, he's a mad man. full stop. we got that. so was castro and a few others. i think reagan conceived of enemies between those particular men as faceless, as in the

abstract, that is to say, terrorist terrorists were faceless. communism was an ideology that was not terrorism. it had a coheerpt set of principles. reagan, of course, as we know, rejected those principles. but i don't think that after the '40s, after mccarthyism, i think that reagan thought less of communism -- less of an international conspiracy and as a false religion, and as such, it corrupted individuals. yet man was redeemable, after all, this was the lesson of the life of whitaker chambers, whose autobiography, "witness," was a foundational text for reagan. on a less dramatic scale, reagan knew from his own experience that a sort of political

conversion was possible. he said, again and again, that he didn't leave the democratic party, the democratic party left him. i do think, however, that reagan had in his own mind, a sense that his political views did change between the '40s and the early 1960s. now, there's an example that i always -- i think is instructive from 1985, when reagan goes to bitburg and a political firestorm ensued when news broke out that he and the west german chancellor were scheduled to visit a cemetery that included remains of ss troops. reagan doubled, tripled, quadrupled down, much to the aggravation of some of the political advisers around him, and i think if you really dig into reagan and his diaries and

his trajectory over time, to him, even those germans, who per me traited heinous crimes, were also, to a degree, victims of naziism, and then the same principle to him applied to russians in the soviet union. yes, the soviet union may have been an evil empire. reagan wanted to see and did see, i think, a distinction between russian and soviet. he became very interested, particularly in '84 onward, in hearing from historians, his top nsc staffer jack matlock, he took, in hearing this -- stories that reinforced the inclination toll separate russians and soviets, he took heart in hearing from billy graham in late '84 that the soviets are experiencing a wave of religious revival, particularly on the

part of young russians. he was encouraged by the report that the sign of the cross was made at her husband's funeral and he famously said, i don't know, mike, to mike beaver, after meeting gorbachev for the first time, i honestly think he believes in a higher power. reagan was seriously an optim t optimist. as with all leaders, he was ambivalent and paradoxical. the distinction between soviet and russia that even the men in the kremlin were the victims of their own ideology and might again with russians. the men in charge were, quote, those inhuman monsters, he wrote in his diary, after hearing of the plight. individually, however, soviet leader leaders wered a ver ed a veadva enemies. and reagan wanted to negotiate

with them. he wanted from the very start to negotiate with them. in january of 1983, in discussing some of the arms negotiations with the soviets, he wrote in his diary, found i was wishing i could do the negotiating with the soviets. they can't be any tougher than frank freeman and harry cohen, the heads of paramount studios and columbia pictures. so, let me previously summarize three examples of reagan engaging his cold war adversaries. and the first is, you know, still a somewhat surprising story of reagan and pre-gorbachev soviet leaders. for more than five years, reagan wrote in his memoir, recalling the year 1985, i'd made little progress with my efforts at quiet diplomacy. for one thing, the soviets, soviet leaders kept dying on me. when he wrote that, a lot of

people thought, well, that's -- that's a great line, but it was true. he did per sue quiet dim employee si and soviet leaders did respond by dying on him. the first letter he wrote to brezhnev in '81, he described meeting him when he came to visit president truman. the president writes in his letter, you took my hand in both of yours and assured me that you were aware that you were dedicated with all your heart and mind to fulfilling our hopes and dreams. it is in this spirit, in the spirit of helping the people of both our nations, that i have lifted the grain embargo. perhaps this decision will contribute to creating the circumstances which will lead to the meaningful and constructive dialogue which will assist us in fulfilling our joined obligation to find lasting peace. the following year, around the time of the westminster speech, reagan expressed interest to his

advisers of the possibility of meeting with brezhnev at the -- an june coming u.n. conference in new york. he made overtures. brezhnev's decline in health in the late spring of '82 made this impossible. in the speech we just saw, where the president talked about, i will agree that brezhnev can speak on american tv if i can speak on russian tv -- i think he was 100% sincere about that. he would have welcomed that, not just to humiliate brezhnev, which, at that time, it would have, if you ever watched on youtube brezhnev speaking on tv. but i think it was earnest and i think he followed through on this. after brezhnev. after the fall of '83, when the soviets walked out of the inf negotiations, reagan writes to antropov, i continue to believe that despite the profound differences between our nations,

there are opportunities indeed a necessity for us to work together to prevent conflicts, to expand our dialogue and to place our relationship on a more stable and constructive footing. though we will be vigorous in protecting our interests and those of our friends and allies, we do not seek to challenge the security of the society union and its people. the following year, after antropov departs, reagan wrote his successor, in thinking through this letter, reagan wrote at the end of it in april of 1984, in hand, i have reflected on some length -- at some length on the tragedy and scale of soviet losses in warfare through the ages. surely those losses, which are beyond description, must affect your thinking today. i want you to know that neither i nor the american people hold

any offensive intentions toward you or the soviet people. and this goes on. the point of it that in march of 1985, reagan was well prepared and had set the positions to work with gor ga gorbachev to achieve things. reagan, i write in my look, more than anyone else, is responsible for shifting the terms, shifting the negotiations on arms control. he predicts -- mocked the zero option when he proposed it. he was 100% earnest and honest. he changed, i think, more than anyone else, the terms from strategic arms limitations to reductions. now, i'm -- i may not get time to finish all my points here, but critics at home and within

nato were adversaries and henry now, i think, speaks, obviously, with much more experience than i in terms of having seen the president but i find in the records that this idea of an end run around the experts was critically important in terms of reagan's strategic thinking. around the time of the westminster speech, as someone mentioned earlier, the nuclear freeze movement was a phenomenon. 1 million people gathered in central park on june 12th, several days after the westminster speech and sort of old guard, old cold warriors start writing that the u.s. should consider renouncing first use of nuclear weapons. and to reagan, this was -- this was sort of -- nothing could

anger him more that the very people who had constructed the idea of this put him in the position as president of having to think about this every morning and every night when he goes to bed. that they are now coming out, having not been involved in government for at least 15 years, and basically saying that he's a warmonger, implying. if i could just close quickly, the end result of that, i think, shapes very much what reagan's efforts to engage hissed a ve y adversaries at home helps understand why we get the announcement of sdi when we do in march of '83. i think it's a way of reagan trying to sort of co-opt, to make an end run, take the sails out of the nuclear freeze movement, which was a real threat to what he perceived as things that needed to be done to redress the strategic balance. my third example, which i won't

mention because you can all get the book, is the relationship between reagan and gorbachev, which was even more remarkable now that we have the record than i think it appeared at the time. i think, in the end, reagan was sincere in this vision that the u.s. would build sdi, he would share it with gorbachev and the two nations would use that as an insurance policy for an arms control deal and as he said over and over again, to prevent a madman like gadhafi from threatening civilization. thank you. >> i would like to begin by thanking the staff and faculty

of regent university, who have worked on this series on ronald reagan for almost a decade. the determination and the heart and the organizational capacity that they've demonstrated has made this one of the most important reagan series that exists in universities and in the think tank world and in the presidential library world. so, i really would like to congratulate them. i would you can take a moment. i'd also like to say that i think it's important that this series continue on reagan at regent, because when one thinking about reagan's life, religious faith was at the core of his political and personal life. and somehow, in recent days, it seems as if some are saying that reagan was an agnostic, faith

wasn't so important to him, that he was a relativist, but that actually isn't the case. and what regent stands for as an institution of higher learning, rooted in the christian faith is consistent with how reagan -- ronald reagan governed. within moments after having been shot and arriving at the george washington hospital in washington, d.c. and then learning about what happened to him, one of his first acts was to say a prayer and ask for the forgiveness of john hinckley, jr., his would be assassin, because he believed so much in the redeckive power of forgiveness and prayer. and then, as he recovered a few weeks later, from his wounds back at the white house, he askask ed the deputy chief of staff to set up a meeting with him, with

a man of faith and quickly, there came the archbishop of the catholic diocese in new york, straight to the white house to meet with the president. he overheard them talking and heard reagan say, whatever happens to me now, i'm going to serve god. my life is in his hands. and then he quickly translated that into a belief that it was his job as the president of the most powerful nation on earth to rid the world of nuclear weapons. he'd been somewhat of a nuclear abolitionist, and that's been written about before, but i believe that reagan being shot transformed his understanding of what it meant to have a military buildup. that the buildup was part of a strategy for a very different goal. and that goal was to spread human rights around the world.

to make people free. i don't think it was so much to instill democracy in every country that he could, but to really increase the capacity of civil society and then letu9h/ñ people choose the particular form of government that they would want. he believed in the powerle eer american ideal, as has been noted earlier, but he wasn't like many in both republicans and democrats in i think recent decades, at least in the 2000s, who have seen it as the responsibility of the united states to make the world over, to nation-build in something like the united states. reagan really cared about freedom. and he believed in people. so, what i want to talk about today is how, in a counter intuitive way, we can say that reagan, ronald reagan was a human rights activist.

that will be intellectual hearsay in the academic world, and many that didn't like reagan, but i think when you look at his record, if he was anything, it wasn't that he was just trying to build up a military, trying to even end the cold war. i think he wanted to just increase the zone of free people, to unleash freedom around the world and then let people, given his belief in liberty and independence, how they work together, figure it out for themselves. that, to me, is the essence of reagan and that's why i think his having been shot was the defining moment of his presidency, because it clarified for him in his mind what his purpose was. and it was to use military and strength to achieve the goal of freedom in the world. and he focused on human rights. it is also significant, as was noted earlier, i think in will's talk, that reagan's first successful negotiation was the

soviets had nothing to do with arms control, had nothing to do with bombs and bullets and trade and commerce, but it had to do with allowing seven pentecostals who lived in the u.s. embassy in moscow for five years to exit safely to the west and reagan never talked about it. we learned about it many, many years later that it was a human rights issue, that he scored his first major victory with the soviet union. but let me talk a little bit more about why i think human rights was so important to reagan. it was important to him because people were important to reagan. reagan felt that governments existed for the people, that the people were the sovereign, whether you were an authoritarian or a totalitarian regime, that people could have the power that they naturally were given by god, not by government, that they would undo totalitarianism and

authoritarianism without war. reagan desperately wanted to avoid war. so, he focused on sovereignty. and that's something that i think mystified his critics, is that he was talking a language that they kind of agreed with, like the nuclear freeze movement, as was mentioned earlier. he shared the goals of the freeze movement. to eliminate nuclear weapons. his strategy was just very different. through calling the soviet union an evil empire. similarly, on human rights, human rights activists knew there was a new person in town, kind of a new sheriff in town that was making human rights a bigger deal at the state department, the human rights bureau took on a greater significance. got infused in all of the other regional bureaus. but for reagan, was trying to understand who the sovereign was and he was clear that it was the people, and if it was the people, then he had a special

responsibility to help protect people and make freedom important. so, a big part of the reagan story that's not known, beyond what he did on the military side, what he did in terms of economic growth was that he poured resources, millions, billions of dollars and a lot of his own personal time into the non-military dimensions of american power. the international communications agency. radio free europe and radio liberty. speeches like the westminster sweep were being listened to in real time in the soviet bloc with an intensity and a level that they had not been before, including his famous evil empire speech in march of 1983. and it was russians in their homes, not leaders in the kremlin, who were saying, he's right. our government is evil, he never called us evil, our government, our leaders, what they're doing, it goes against nature, the purpose of government and the

purpose of man's life in this world. so, reagan actually was a president who was trying to reach people until a populous manner populist manner globally. and at a level that no cold war president had ever dared try. and the rhetoric that he used always harshly about marxism and lennonism ending up in history, evil empire for the soviet government, on and on, was always about government and its people, never about people. he was always trying to find a way to empower people, to lift themselves up, to topple their own government. with the united states backing them up with the rhetoric and the policies of military and nonmilitary. make it clear that they would not be left alone. that was the core of reagan's presidency. and i think when he had the pentecostal victory, he had that

he would have many more and, in fact, he did. and in particular this outstripped all other koeld cold war presidents, as well. and other things that he helped resolve, new deal became an important part of the soviet jewelry and still is today in israel, much of that reagan had worked on in the 1970s before he became president. and that is where i believe he got the sense that if he became the occupantant of the oval office, that he was focused on human rights as his core objective. he wrote about the soviet pentecostals in his daily radio essays that he gave in the late 1970s. he gave radio statements three days -- five days a week, three minutes a day before there was talk radio. i believe reagan was the first

talk radio person. no one could talk back then. but he gave the radio script for about four years after he was governor of california and before he launched his 1980 presidential campaign. many of them were about haum rights issues like the soviet pentecostal families. he was working on their behalf as an activist speaking to about 20 million americans a week. that was a huge number in the late 1970s. he was probably talking to more americans every single day than any single politician. remember, we didn't have the internet and we didn't have cable news or just the beginning of cable news as he was winding these up. and so reagan was using the radio essay as a way to have the conversation with the american public.

people would write to him and he would tell their stories. when we listened to speeches like westminster, deeply influenced by reagan's own hand in his own writing, he's always telling a story about someone. rarely a -- story, but often about a particular individual and he also will call them by name. that is something that he forged in the late 1970s in his radio script as a way to contribute to his role as a human rights activist. and even his most dire military policies that through the greatest criticism like the strategic defense initiative itself, announced in the same as his evil empire speech, it was announced as a human purpose. reagan rejengted the notion, the conventional classical thinking of the cold war that the only way to nuclear stability was to have people on both sides, the

soviet union and the u.s., hold hostages to a nuclear conflict, thereby rejecting the possibly that either leader would pull the trigger knowing that with retaliatory power that his country, too, would be destroyed. reagan said, that's no way to run a world. and to call it nuclear stability doesn't make any sense. but it's also amoral because it doesn't allow people the decide if they, in fact, want to live this way. so fdi was about getting to a policy of human rights but would say let's make nuclear weapons irrelevant. let's develop a shield that could keep them from entering my country but why would anyone want them in the first place. so it was done for a nonmilitary reason and, in fact, in 1968 while governors -- two years into his governorship in

california ronald reagan authored a paper, a governor's role in foreign policy, a type script and we don't know if he wrote it himself, but in that, he begins to, for the first time, wonder aloud about mutual destruction which robert mcnamara, the secretary of defense, had put forth as the doctrine that would carry us through and, in fact, has from that period until now. and he said a governor has the responsibility, first and foremost, to protect the people in his or her state. so early before he became president, reagan was thinking in the human dimension about his political responsibilities. i think that's a part of the reagan story that hasn't been told. the relationship with the soviet jury, the understanding of military aspects from a human rights convention, how his own residentialus faith helped him

build this unique equation. i don't think until we understand that we can understand ronald reagan. the day before he was shot, he attended the local -- i think it was a presbyterian church and after service, he came back to the white house and began working on his speech which was given to labor union democrats and he was shot shortly thereafter the next day. and he began to write and think about the perils of a mutually shore destruction oriented world. and so at the very beginning of his presidency, day 69, the day before he was shot, reagan was thinking about how to get out of the military equation that hurts people's lives. now, that could be critical of what i have to say and i see i'm on time, but i do want to say this. but there was so much at home that looked like reagan was into human rights president. there were continual issues

around race and rights. no one can say that reagan was a race president, one that expanded the conversation around racism in the united states. i think that's not quite rise. i think reagan was a man of his time and he did talk in some pivotal speeches early in the -- after he lost to gerald ford in 1976 about making the republican party the party of lincoln. it was in january of '77. i believe that they spoke of this speech earlier at the mayflower hotel where he talked about making the republican party the party for blacks and hispanics and broadening it. i don't think the country was there. i don't think the republican party was there. i don't think the advisers around reagan were there. but i do think that he set the stage powerfully in his rhetoric if not some of his policies to make the united states domestically look like what he was fighting for

internationally, which was to increase freedom around the world. and when we look at the reagan doctrine, his policies in central america, even the iran contra scandal that almost toppled him, all of these in some ways were his attempt to make the united states a more noble place by focusing on people. iran contra was clearly a violation of laws and understanding the u.s. had with other countries, funding iran or supporting its military arms after claiming neutrality in the iran and iraq war of the 1980s. but who would have done better and who has on the issue of global terror since reagan. he was trying to get americans being held hostage in lebanon free and the hardest scenario in international relations is when you're a great power, you're a democracy, and you're transparent and your adversary is a transnational actor and it's black box and it's holding

people hostage it's such an unfair fight. so he violated the spirit of the understanding in the iran iraq war and tried to get iran to pressure hope that iran would pressure so that it would facilitate the release of americans being held hostage in lebanon. but now we have an obama administration that has negotiated and it's just very difficult. and on issues of individuals and rights, it's very extremely hard for the united states to find a way. reagan was perhaps after jimmy carter the president who faced it most immediately. carter with the iranian hostage crisis and reagan with the lebanon hostage crisis. but i don't think it suggests that reagan was not attempting to be moral and human rights oriented in his policies. he just stumbled the way every american president has. i'm over time and i thank you so much.

>> i told you to expect four engaging and informative talks and i hope you'll agree with me that our distinguished panel certainly delivered. and i hope, like me, that you learned a great deal. one thing in particular i learned is that james graham wilson has a sense of humor. i thought when he was sending me e-mails signed comrade wilson that he just spent too much time in the archives. but it turns out he was joking. it was a joke. now, as we did following the first panlt, we'll have a question and answer session of roughly 20 minutes. thanks to our -- all seven of our panelists who are keeping to their allotted time.

we are just ahead of schedule. so we will make good on our promise to get you out of here by 1:00 and we have collected and culled through the audience questions. and we're going to begin right away. the first is from jeff palmer from sarasota, florida, now a chesapeake, virginia, resident. he asked for any or all of the panelists, what lessons can we draw from reagan's strategy against the soviets? how can they apply to a new grant strategy to deal with militant islam and russian expansionism? >> i think one of the aspects of the reagan's approach to foreign policy that hasn't really been fully absorbed is the way in which he integrated the use of military extension and diplomacy. we often separate those two.

that is, we, for example -- problems by wanting to focus entirely on diplomacy as we're doing currently you could argue in the case of iran. let's negotiate and be consistent in negotiating and eventually even if in reagan's case they keep dying on us, we'll eventually make some progress. and don't maneuver with any military force before that, that is before negotiations are ended or failed. then you can use military force. but if you try to employ military strength while the negotiations are going on, that's not good. you're just going to antagonize your adversary. reagan didn't think of it that way. i thought you could do both simultaneously. as has been said, he was ready to do that from the beginning. i told george schultz when

schultz came in in the late summer of '82, he had don't be too eager to negotiate with the soviet union and there's other evidence that suggests that he knew he wasn't going to get anywhere until he revived the american economy. and until he had, in fact, or the western alliance deployed those weapons. then he thought, i'll be in a position of strength at that point and then the soviets will be in a position to negotiate. he tried to get them to negotiate. but they were clever. they said no, we're going to wait and see whether or not you can succeed in being re-elected. once that was clear, then the negotiations broke out. so the arms, the willingness to be -- you know, to take some risks, reagan took risks. my goodness, sometimes i listen to the conversations about the reagan era and i'm wondering what it was that i lived through. because i lived through 1981 and '82 when reagan was accused of being able to start a third

nuclear war. and people thought he was off the reservation and he did take some risks. but they were always for the purpose of making the negotiations succeed. because the engagement sort of forever without that kind of military strength and without an awareness on the part of your adversary that they're not going to get their goals outside the negotiations. so now they'll really be serious inside the negotiations. i think it's a point that we haven't absorbed and we're not absorbing it in the case of iran. we're negotiating with iran. but iran is achieving most of its objects outside the negotiations at this stage. they're increasing their support for terrorism, the region, most recently in yemen, lebanon, gaza, their man in syria is stronger than he was. assad.

and, by the way, they're moving towards the threshold of nuclear capability. why wouldn't they be eager to negotiate? so strength has a lot to do with this and we haven't really -- many of us are fearful of that and we don't see how you combined, as reagan did, strength and negotiations. enabling diplomacy, too often the current administration likes to think there's either force or demroemsy which, in fact, they need to be integrated. in fact, the threat, of course, is precisely weight takes to makes sure you don't have to use force. so two other points in response to mr. palmer's very good question, one would be, really, using all elements of national power. sometimes an overused phrase. but, again, the reagan administration was so adept at using the power of ideas,

broadcasting psychological warfare, economic power, economic strength, as well as building a strong, strong military. and, again, i think using all elements of national power is fighting the war of ideas against militant islam. we're not engaged on that. we're still working on how do we, you know, either kill or capture terrorists. that means we continue the need to be very aggressive on that. but also, how do we win the battle of ideas and encounter radicalization to make sure young muslims don't want to turn into terrorists, the next generation of them. how do we have greater economic engagement with eastern europe using our great energy resources here? we should be supplying more gas to eastern europe so they can't be blackmailed by the russians. that should be good for american industry, good for our allies. it's a trifecta why we're not using that more.

and the fievenl one, do we send more troops or do we sit back and nothing? reagan was reluctant. his administration was very good at arming and supporting our friends, whether it's the afghan rebels or the contras. they're willing to fight. they want american tools, american weapons, american mu initialans. don't miss the opportunity to do that with the moderate remembers before the terrorists took over? so, again, i think using -- arming and equipping and training our friend, they're the ones willing to put their necks on the line to do the fighting. they just want our support.

>> the department ends in 1992. it's comforting because the cold war ends the same way every time. i refer to my colleagues who are involved the in the current impressions. i would just say in response that one should think about in the reagan administration and maybe looking back and outside of the particular experience is a role that the relationship between conception emphasis of strength and when to negotiate. yes, i agree that the deployment of imf in the fall of '83 was tremendously important. it still gave a perception of

strength. there was in the uk and throughout western europe the members that it was not at all popular at that point. on the up swing was the crisis, what the purposes are talking about more clarity and talking about western civilization was to show to the protest movements who believes reagan was a warmonger that, in fact, there was not an equivalent between the soviet union and the united states. it is a very big moment for the administration in terms of perceptions of strategic

vulnerabilities, sudden, you know, land based mobile missiles, soviets, that becomes an issue, the confidence of the air launch cruise missiles. the administration, at the end, the u.s. was surprised by how effective it was. the b-2 bomber, its effectiveness was not at all clear in 1981 or '2or '3. there was an installation of a perception we have -- the u.s. has restored, it's almost strategic imbalances. but during that period, in '81, '83, i think reagan was prepared to negotiate and from '83 onward, they were negotiating even though they knew there were real strategic deficiencies and in the second term the money for

the defense billions up. it was not just putting the gas pedal down in terms of the -- >> i think in terms of how to deal with radical islam, reagan and jimmy carter were presidents that were faced with challenges that they lacked the intellectual metrics for when they assumed power, but it was really in the reagan period that we got the institutional building blocks for the post 9/11 world. it was in 1983 that u.s. central command came into existence. now, that was in part of a response to the iranian hostage crisis that carter suffered through and the failure to -- of the rescue mission. it made the defense department realize that not having a

military command devoted to the middle east simply was not possible. but that was due to iran. then a few years later, we got special operations command due to the fact that the united states was in a war with iran in 1987 called the tanker war when iran was menacing ships as they passed through the persian gulf. we developed two new commands basically around a handful of middle east countries with iran in the center. so ronald reagan did a lot to position the united states better in the middle east and iran. but i think he would have suffered in his policies the way this administration has for the reasons i spoke about earlier because once he would have seen americans being beheaded, it would have affected him the same

way as a americans being held hostage and some in lebanon did. i think his policies might falter because there would be no easy answer and i believe he would try to figure this out as much by himself as possible. i don't believe that he would take the advice of advisers primarily when dealing with the human dimension of policy of which he saw as his core responsibility as president. and then i agree with what james said. i believe reagan always wanted to negotiate with his adversary and would have at any point in time. it wasn't possible in the first couple of years. reagan said the soviet general secretary kept dying on him. and i think the conditions around that are fought just the american military build up, but he also had an opposite number with whom they could work more effectively. reagan believed in communication with adversaries and, in fact, the story of the pentecostal one is well before the imf

deployments in 1983. but there were earlier examples in '81 and '82 where he was trying to build some bridges, also. >> thank you. next question is from samantha penie, a graduate student in goal here at regent. and she asks, how do we preserve and further democracy if people no longer value the ideals and morals necessary to maintain it? in other words, what if the prepolitical conditions are not present? how does that affect our efforts at global democraticzation? again, any or all of the panel. >> want to start at the other end this time? >> well, that's a hard one, but reagan also cared about the ideals and idea of the west, not

just of american exceptionalism. but the basket of ideas of liberty, individual rights, man's rights coming from natural law. property rights, limited government, all of these that we have seen as the kind of western that marked off the western zone. reagan believed in that and worried about being a generation or two and not just destruction of the united states but the western world more broadly and he felt that given the fact that the west was as much an idea itself, not just the u.s. as a set of institutions and that the idea brought them more attractive than the institutions all of which he mistrusted at various times, i think he would have been deeply troubled by this current period where talking about the west, studying the west is often seen as

politically incorrect. .so i think that would have been for him a central educational issue as to educate the the youth and reeducate older people and what it means to be part of western civilization. >> i think it's important th that -- to ask whether we can meet the goals that reagan laid out directly, in bush's inaugural address in 2005 spoke of the long-term goal of ending tyranny in this world. and according to the metrics of freedom, the number of democracies in the world declined over those years. which is not to say we give up

on it, but there were things that the oois can do to marshall the strength that we do have around the world, speaking out for the rights of women in countries, the u.s. in the last year and a half, private industries have come up with an oral cure for hepatitis b that affects 200 million people in the global and the united states, that's happened in the united states and we need to focus on big things that we can do abroad that will not potentially get us into trouble. but, again, my -- end in 1992. >> three brief comments in response. first, as we've heard from the reagan quote about freedom is

always just one generation away from being lost to one generation away from tyranny, that implies responsibilities of citizenship here in the united states and many of you have probably heard the great anecdote when the constitutional convention was wrap up and he was stepping outside and a woman asks him, you know, mr. frankly, what have you done in there? what have you created? and ets, a run, man, if you can keep it. and implied in that is our founding fares may have given us the architecture and the ideals and institution, but it's up to every generation of americans to preserve it. i know that's part of the calling here and we try to cultivate that at university of texas. reagan was not a utopian, but he was an optimist.

my personal position as well as he looks at the world. and our nation, western civilization, has gone through difficult times before. in the 1930s, it looked as if the world was in worldwide great depression, it looks as if capitalism spent the day behind it, is that it was an awesome system that would not work, people were thinking that communism or fascism were the only answers and there were real questions about could democracy and capitalism even survive and thanks to great leaders like fdr and churchill, it did. in 1970s, a more recent decade of decline, our political institutions didn't seem to be working, soviet communism seemed to be advancing across the global. there was a real sense of despair and the infamous jimmy carter speech was labeled. but then we saw in the 1980s a

possible economic renewal, national security advances led by president reagan. so we've seen difficult times before and we should not let the straights we're in now discourage us too much. yes, we all have a responsibility to carry forward the inheritance of freedom here and try to share it as much as others are willing. one final thought, though, in one of my previous government roles, i had the privilege to work for condi rice. she had, well, let's remember, democracy is never imposed anywhere. it's tyranny that's always imposed.

tyranny has to be imposed on people. this is not to say there's one particular democratic government that has to be exported anywhere else around the world. it can be all sorts of flavors and expressions of it. but let's remember, it's not democracy that gets imposed on others. it's tyrannies that do. >> i like that analogy that mcfairland raised this morning, that is that that is a 1980 moment. what she meant, of course, is that we're facing this question of our relationship to opposing ideologies in the world as we were in 1980, vis-a-vis the soviet union. the real question for the next generation or maybe two generations of americans and of people around the world is the question of whether or not freedom, some