Posted on 12/31/2017 10:38:56 PM PST by GoldenState_Rose
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1lutYGxMWeA
Cold War Flashback *Ping*
I do miss his vision for how to be a better America.
Too bad Bushes and Clinton brought different message.
I realized the speech above is abridged...this was the part that struck me upon my initial read, but from the American Rhetoric database. Here, Reagan extols religious faith in America and had help from his advisor on Russian culture, Suzanne Massey with citing some powerful quotes from Russia’s most cherished writers regarding freedom:
“Freedom, it has been said, makes people selfish and materialistic, but Americans are one of the most religious peoples on Earth. Because they know that liberty, just as life itself, is not earned but a gift from God, they seek to share that gift with the world. “Reason and experience,” said George Washington in his farewell address, “both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle. And it is substantially true, that virtue or morality is a necessary spring of popular government.” Democracy is less a system of government than it is a system to keep government limited, unintrusive; a system of constraints on power to keep politics and government secondary to the important things in life, the true sources of value found only in family and faith.
But I hope you know I go on about these things not simply to extol the virtues of my own country but to speak to the true greatness of the heart and soul of your land. Who, after all, needs to tell the land of Dostoyevsky about the quest for truth, the home of Kandinsky and Scriabin about imagination, the rich and noble culture of the Uzbek man of letters Alisher Navoi about beauty and heart? The great culture of your diverse land speaks with a glowing passion to all humanity.
Let me cite one of the most eloquent contemporary passages on human freedom. It comes, not from the literature of America, but from this country, from one of the greatest writers of the 20th century, Boris Pasternak, in the novel “Dr. Zhivago.” He writes: “I think that if the beast who sleeps in man could be held down by threats — any kind of threat, whether of jail or of retribution after death — then the highest emblem of humanity would be the lion tamer in the circus with his whip, not the prophet who sacrificed himself. But this is just the point — what has for centuries raised man above the beast is not the cudgel, but an inward music — the irresistible power of unarmed truth.”
Reagan is still a highly respected figure in Russia. Russians respect that he stood up for them during the dark days of Communism, even if the post-Communist reality has been somewhat of a disappointment for Russians.
From my experience people seem pretty neutral and it is en vogue to dislike Gorbachev.
However: please see the quote on post 6. Unfortunately wasn’t included in prior transcript. I think this was the highlight of the speech.
That is. Reagan and FDR are two most admired US leaders in Russia for different reasons.
Obama and Clinton are least popular.
Eloquent, positive, full of hope, highly motivating.
It would be interesting to know how much the vision of the students hearing this speech was changed.
Reagan was one in a lifetime.
What a great speech...
Thanks!
“A scholar in pursuit of truth...” There’s a nifty idea. Wow.
Independent of government, yes - but not independent of each other. We have a single, associated press.
Show me a Leftist or Statist entity in which the Individuals accept Truth as an inner standard for critical thinking.
How about the Democrat Party?
The ACLU, NAACP, SPLC, CORE, BLM, Occupy (Fill in blank)
The American Mainstream Media?
Any part of American Government subsidized educational system?
American Hollywood Motion Picture Elite?
The biggest part of American Music, Stage and Literary communities?
How about even the GOP Elite and FBI cops?
NO, we live in the Era of the Ninth Commandment, the modern Western Reality is Entirely based upon the False Witness Lie, the Uniparty Deep Swamp rules with the lie, and they use Useless Idiot "Democracy" to accomplish that rule.
While Reagan was a GREAT Man, he was also tricked more than once by the Leftist Liars.
Democracy is not the solution, it is the moral and ethical value of Men themselves as Reagan noted.
They're not even independent of Government NOW!
That speech was in 1988.
Navy Patriot, you may be right...Reagan instinctually and internally knew why the Cold War would turn out in our favor but:
Even he did not make the narrative clear enough for America and the world. Hence why Soviet/Marxist values already taking hold of the West became entrenched.
And also why (even though I think these people are overly demonized) - the American reformers who sought to rebuild post-Soviet Russia with a secular Harvard-guided market-based economic model FAILED miserably.
They had zero clue on the massive, depths-defying grip the Soviet vision had on people’s souls!
I spoke to a Russian man from Odessa who came to the U.S. in the late 70s: said it took him TEN whole years to adjust to life here, even after learning English. He had to detox from all the lies, all the habits of cheating, deceit, and bribery he engaged in for survival of life under oppression - all the perceptions of his Soviet imagination ingrained in him since birth. It was collective brainwashing on an unprecedented level in human history!
(Now you can see why the post-Soviet space has struggled so much to find its footing!) And why North Korea is such a mess.
Communism is an atheist vision of the world fundamentally at odds with the reality of God and His jurisdiction over the universe. It is literally attempting on a heaven on earth without Him - and ends up creating hell instead. This is why it failed and fails and fails time and time again.
And too many Americans don’t realize how our precious free institutions are inseparable from the reality of God, from whom all fundamental laws of nature and rights of man (as His image bearer) find their origin.
“Endowed by our Creator...”
I believe, Trump — his speechwriter Stephen Miller — they have a clearer narrative about why the world looks like the way it does today and how crucial it is that America stand firm and own our place in the narrative as beacon of freedom.
Loved the “Western civilization must survive” speech Trump gave in Warsaw, Poland last spring especially.
There are no mature or senior native Russian citizens alive who did not experience this relentless absolute totalitarian Marxism.
Their reaction is entirely human, to learn how to survive and adapt what you cannot change.
That Russians did so actually speaks more to their strength than their flaws.
The Western economic effort to "rescue" Russians from Communism after the Fall of the Soviet Union was not genuine or earnest.
In fact, it was a Western Elitist attempt to secure a favorable position in ownership and control of Russian and Eastern European assets and natural resources using purchased favorable treatment from Yeltsin.
These are the same entities that attack Russia now, and demonize Russians and Russian leaders that stand up to Western exploitation as a bunch Godless Commies.
Individual Russians, and the Nation, have and will relearn how to negotiate a non Marxist, partially free market competitive system at different rates, with seniors probably the slowest (Pensioned and less involved with the workforce).
But they will learn how to be competitive with the rest of the world. Remember, the Russians now have had about Seventeen years to catch up to what America has had about 200 years to experiment with.
Russia has been out of Politically Correct Marxism since about 1995, while America and Western Europe have installed Politically Correct Marxism to the point of Tyranny staring in about 1955.
The last thing Russians need is "Help" from the West, because it is not Help, it is Socialist Tyranny and Serfdom.
Russians not only have to learn to negotiate a more Free Market, they have to learn tho watch out for themselves as individuals and Russian Nationals, and learn self sufficiency, too, while detecting and disregarding the Fake News Western Media, including some of their own.
Can they? They certainly have the smarts and the chops.
Will they? God knows.
I think you also underestimate the resilience of the West, our capacity to live up to our values.
Regardless as is true anywhere but especially after something as traumatic as the Soviet Union: Russia needs genuine spiritual revival. I am not talking about the external trappings of Orthodoxy and lip service to political incorrectness.
Here is Russia’s entry this year into the foreign language category for the Golden Globes. Almost 100 countries made submissions and Russia’s made it to the shortlist!
“Loveless” directed Andrey Zvyagintsev
In Loveless, a Broken Family and a Lost Nation.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/30/movies/loveless-review-andrey-zvyagintsev.html
“” “” “” Regardless as is true anywhere but especially after something as traumatic as the Soviet Union: Russia needs genuine spiritual revival. I am not talking about the external trappings of Orthodoxy and lip service to political incorrectness.
Here is Russia’s entry this year into the foreign language category for the Golden Globes. Almost 100 countries made submissions and Russia’s made it to the shortlist!
“Loveless” directed Andrey Zvyagintsev””” “”
That is what ‘oppressive tyranny’ like Russia does. /s
I mean exposing her ills putting it into an art form to submit for international awards entry.
Isn’t it a start in a right direction following your own logic?
As for a movie itself the problem it is telling about is not new and you can’t blame it on a ‘regime’.
Russian family is screwed up to some degree I agree but the problem is the combination of WWII and decades of socialism which did to it practically the same that the Democrats did to a black family since the Great Society.
The important point is it changes. In earlier 2000s there were up to 90 divorces per 100 marriages in Russia and now about 50.
Single motherhood is in a similar decline as well.
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