Twenty-one years ago today President Reagan delivered this speech in Berlin. Within a few years the wall was torn down by people on both sides, including many college students.
Today’s college students are too young to remember the Cold War. They are unlikely to recall a world threatened by Soviet domination. They may not realize that freedom’s victory was not inevitable.
They don’t remember when the “prevailing wisdom” was that America needed to stop provoking the Communists by contesting their expansion, particularly in Central America. All the “reasonable” voices preached accommodation and appeasement.
Ronald Reagan took a different, more confrontational approach. And he was right.
Those “reasonable voices” from the past sound like the “prevailing wisdom” today on Iraq, Korea and the Middle East, and the related issue of how to address the threat posed by radical Islam.
The victory of freedom over radical Islam will require political leadership, not just rhetoric.
Perhaps the fact that most college students don’t remember what it took to win the Cold War explains why Barack Obama’s plan to retreat in Iraq and practice diplomacy with those who are committed to our destruction has so much appeal among young people.
