Fasttrack to America's Past
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Ronald Reagan Speaks for Freedom

The reading selections

   These reading selections are taken from two of the best known speeches by President Ronald Reagan.

   The speech at the Berlin Wall in 1987 contains his famous challenge to the Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, a call to "tear down this wall!"
 
   President Reagan believed that communism would be defeated as more and more people realized that the communist system was rotten to the core, and could never deliver on its promises.  The Berlin Wall was the most visible evidence that communism brought only oppression, not freedom.  Reagan's bold challenge highlighted that fact for all the world to consider in stark and undeniable terms.
 
   The second selection is from Reagan's Farewell Address, made in 1989 at the end of his second term.

The pictures

1.  Ronald Reagan, elected president in 1980.  Many historians believe his policies helped end the Cold War by speeding the collapse of the Soviet Union and its system of communism.

2.  A man at a bank, perhaps to deposit his paycheck.  President Reagan convinced Congress to approve a cut in the federal income tax rates.  He argued that taxes were taking too much of the money citizens worked to earn in their jobs.
 

Group discussion questions, page 231

   President Reagan's speech at the Berlin Wall draws a powerful contrast between the free side (West Berlin) and the communist side (East Berlin.)
   On the communist side, Reagan says, there is "failure, technological backwardness, declining standards of health, even . . . too little food."  On the free side is a society that is prosperous and growing, with "busy office blocks, fine homes and apartments, proud avenues, and the spreading lawns of park land."
   The challenge Reagan makes to Soviet leader Gorbachev, to "tear down this wall!" drives home a vital point.  Communist leaders claimed their system brought prosperity and justice to the masses by eliminating the capitalist system.  The Berlin Wall proved that claim utterly false, since it was built by the communist leaders to stop their own people from escaping to the other side.

   As he left office, Reagan outlined with pride the accomplishments of his eight years in office.  Economic growth had returned, promoted by policies that reduced taxes and government regulations on business.  He also points out that countries all over the globe were moving toward economic and political ideals like those in America.
   President Reagan says the positive changes in America and around the world were a result of a growing realization that too much government undermines not only economic growth but liberty itself.






Copyright Notice

   Copyright 2018 by David Burns.  All rights reserved.  Illustrations and reading selections appearing in this work are taken from sources in the public domain and from private collections used by permission.  Sources include: the Dover Pictorial Archive, the Library of Congress, The National Archives, The Hart Publishing Co., Corel Corporation and its licensors, Nova Development Corporation and its licensors, and others.  Maps were created or adapted by the author using reference maps from the United States Geological Survey and Cartesia Software.  Please see the home page for this title for more information.