Reagan y Gorbachov

Según el libro de James Mann “The Rebellion of Ronald Reagan: A History of the End of the Cold War”, el presidente americano pensaba que Mijaíl Gorbachov era "capaz de cambiar el sistema soviético y la religión podría catalizar" estos cambios.

Government is the problem

El optimismo de Ronald Reagan

NUEVA YORK - En medio de una economía en dificultades y un profundo pesimismo de los votantes acerca del rumbo del país, Ronald Reagan aceptó la nominación de su partido a la presidencia en 1980 con un emotivo discurso en el que prometió mejores días en el futuro. 

"No voy a quedarme con los brazos cruzados mientras veo este gran país destruirse bajo un liderazgo mediocre que va de una crisis a la otra, erosionando nuestra voluntad nacional y nuestro sentido como nación", dijo en junio de ese año. "Ha llegado el momento, compatriotas, de recuperar nuestro destino y conducirlo con nuestras propias manos". 

Lea el artículo completo aquí. (En inglés).

Ronald Regan en Berlín

Ahora que Obama anda por Berlín donde dio un discurso bastante deslucido y poco original, les quiero recordar este famoso discurso de Reagan en la misma ciudad. "Because we remained strong, the Soviets came back to the table."

Ronald Reagan (Hora de escoger, 27 de octubre de 1964)

Those who would trade our freedom for the soup kitchen of the welfare state have told us that they have a utopian solution of peace without victory. They call their policy "accommodation." And they say if we only avoid any direct confrontation with the enemy, he will forget his evil ways and learn to love us. All who oppose them are indicted as warmongers. They say we offer simple answers to complex problems. Well, perhaps there is a simple answer--not an easy answer--but simple.

If you and I have the courage to tell our elected officials that we want our national policy based upon what we know in our hearts is morally right. We cannot buy our security, our freedom from the threat of the bomb by committing an immorality so great as saying to a billion now in slavery behind the Iron Curtain, "Give up your dreams of freedom because to save our own skin, we are willing to make a deal with your slave masters." Alexander Hamilton said, "A nation which can prefer disgrace to danger is prepared for a master, and deserves one." Let's set the record straight. There is no argument over the choice between peace and war, but there is only one guaranteed way you can have peace--and you can have it in the next second--surrender.

Admittedly there is a risk in any course we follow other than this, but every lesson in history tells us that the greater risk lies in appeasement, and this is the specter our well-meaning liberal friends refuse to face--that their policy of accommodation is appeasement, and it gives no choice between peace and war, only between fight and surrender. If we continue to accommodate, continue to back and retreat, eventually we have to face the final demand--the ultimatum. And what then? When Nikita Khrushchev has told his people he knows what our answer will be? He has told them that we are retreating under the pressure of the Cold War, and someday when the time comes to deliver the ultimatum, our surrender will be voluntary because by that time we will have weakened from within spiritually, morally, and economically. He believes this because from our side he has heard voices pleading for "peace at any price" or "better Red than dead," or as one commentator put it, he would rather "live on his knees than die on his feet." And therein lies the road to war, because those voices don't speak for the rest of us. You and I know and do not believe that life is so dear and peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery. If nothing in life is worth dying for, when did this begin--just in the face of this enemy? Or should Moses have told the children of Israel to live in slavery under the pharaohs? Should Christ have refused the cross? Should the patriots at Concord Bridge have thrown down their guns and refused to fire the shot heard 'round the world? The martyrs of history were not fools, and our honored dead who gave their lives to stop the advance of the Nazis didn't die in vain. Where, then, is the road to peace? Well, it's a simple answer after all.

You and I have the courage to say to our enemies, "There is a price we will not pay." There is a point beyond which they must not advance. This is the meaning in the phrase of Barry Goldwater's "peace through strength." Winston Churchill said that "the destiny of man is not measured by material computation. When great forces are on the move in the world, we learn we are spirits--not animals." And he said, "There is something going on in time and space, and beyond time and space, which, whether we like it or not, spells duty."

You and I have a rendezvous with destiny. We will preserve for our children this, the last best hope of man on Earth, or we will sentence them to take the last step into a thousand years of darkness.

We will keep in mind and remember that Barry Goldwater has faith in us. He has faith that you and I have the ability and the dignity and the right to make our own decisions and determine our own destiny.

Thank you very much.

Fuente:
www.reaganlibrary.com

El humor de Ronald Reagan

El sentido del humor de Ronald Reagan, uno de los presidentes más odiados y temidos a la vez por la dictadura de Fidel Castro, es harto conocido. Este video muestra algunas de sus ocurrencias. Presten atención al chiste que hace sobre Castro (4:03). Es un chiste que se hacía en Cuba en los años 80 y que quizás Jorge Más Canosa o algún otro cubano americano cercano a su presidencia le hizo y el presidente decidió repetir en un discurso.