The Claremont Institute has posted a very good Reagan speech that I’d never seen. It was presented in 1991. “The Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of these United States are covenants we have made not only with ourselves, but with all of mankind,” he says. “Our founding documents proclaim to the world that freedom is not the sole prerogative of a chosen few, they are the universal right of all God’s children.” But then he speaks of the “end” of the Cold War, and what it means:
There can be not doubt that the tide of freedom is rising. At the start of this century, there were only a handful of democracies. Today more than half of the world’s people, living in over 60 countries, govern themselves. Nations as varied as Lithuania, Croatia, and Armenia have legislatures elected by the people and responsive to the people. One of the engines of this progress is the desire for economic development—the realization that it is free nations that prosper and free people who create better lives for themselves and their children. Another is the natural desire of disparate peoples for self-determination.The cult of the state may be dying, but is not yet dead. In Eastern Europe, Poland, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia now have popularly elected governments. An unwelcome army of occupation will soon withdraw. These governments now face the difficult questions of privatizing the vast resources accumulated by their totalitarian predecessors. How quickly and completely they move to a free market economy will determine the standard of living of their peoples for years to come….
It is for the people, not the state, to determine where the boundaries of civil society shall fall.
This same principle of self-determination applies to the Soviet Union’s many republics. I am not speaking here of the Baltic states. Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia were illegally occupied by the Soviet Union at the opening of World War II. They are sovereign states by right and should be freed immediately. I am speaking of the Soviet Union’s other republics. If the people of Armenia, of Georgia, and even the Ukraine, in free plebiscites, should vote to leave the Soviet empire, then they should be allowed to do so. America should not get into the business of preserving the artificial state structures established by monarchs and dictators….
Moving to China, we have seen the brutal way the Beijing regime responded to the cries of the Chinese people for democracy in Tiananmen Square. They fail to realize that you cannot crush hope with the treads of tanks; you cannot drown democratic aspirations in a hail of bullets.
In our relationship with China we should always remember what our Chinese friends on Taiwan have accomplished: A resource-poor island has become one of the major trading nations in the world; a political transformation no less dramatic than that of Europe has resulted in full fledged democracy. The implications of these changes for China’s future are profound. As President Lee Ten-hui recently remarked, “We are building a prosperous democracy—not just for the Taiwan area itself, but the whole of China. We are building a democracy for unification.” We in America can never go wrong if we do what is morally right, and keep our commitments to Taiwan….
As long as these struggles continue, freedom-loving people around the world must say: I am a Chinese imprisoned for advocating democracy at Tiananmen, I am an Afghan fighting to liberate my country from the tyranny of Marxism-Leninism, I am a Vietnamese, a Cambodian, a Hmong. I, too, am a potential victim of totalitarianism…. America’s solemn duty is to constantly renew its covenant with humanity to complete the grand work of human freedom that began here 200 years ago….
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