OPINION:
“General Secretary Gorbachev, if you seek peace, if you see prosperity for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, if you seek liberalization, come here to this gate. Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate. Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!”
President Ronald Reagan spoke these words on June 12, 1987, to a massive crowd in front of the Berlin Wall by the Brandenburg Gate. Two and a half years later, the wall came crashing down, and with it, the fall of communism in the Soviet empire.
The new movie “Reagan,” which opens nationwide in theaters today — Aug. 30 — masterfully explains our 40th president’s obsession with defeating Soviet-style communism.
As a boy growing up in Dixon, Illinois, Reagan was baptized by the pastor at the church where his mother taught Sunday school. The spark of his opposition to communism and the Soviet Union came later, after a young Ronald Reagan heard a Soviet defector speak at his church about the religious persecution he faced in his former homeland. It moved the future president.
Reagan’s time in Hollywood fanned the flame of his opposition to communism. As president of the Screen Actors Guild, he pushed back against Herbert K. Sorrell, who wanted one union in town and was backed by the Soviets. Reagan led the fight and stopped Soviet-funded communists from taking over Hollywood, where they had hoped to influence American audiences.
Later, Reagan continued his push against communism during his run as host of “General Electric Theater.” When Soviet tanks rolled into Hungary, Reagan ended the television show by saying: “Ladies and gentlemen, about 160,000 Hungarian refugees have reached safety in Austria. More are expected to come. These people need food, clothes, medicine and shelter. You can help.”
It was his first public acknowledgment of the problems caused by communism.
Actor Dennis Quaid does an amazing job portraying Reagan from his days in Hollywood until his last ride at his mountaintop retreat, Rancho del Cielo. One of his many great scenes in the movie comes from Reagan’s speech just before the 1964 presidential election.
In what we now call “A Time for Choosing,” Reagan closed with this powerful statement: “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.”
He declared, “You and I have a rendezvous with destiny.”
Mr. Quaid does a remarkable job of portraying the president without being a caricature. This is not easy, but he pulls it off. If it were not for the movie’s content, Mr. Quaid would easily receive a nomination, as would Penelope Ann Miller for her role as Nancy Reagan. They are a convincing couple on a mission to save the world from the horrors of Marxism.
With his wife by his side, Ronald Wilson Reagan took the oath of office as 40th president of the United States on Jan. 20, 1981. Moments later, he sent a clear message to the Kremlin in his inaugural address: “As for the enemies of freedom, those who are potential adversaries, they will be reminded that peace is the highest aspiration of the American people. We will negotiate for it, sacrifice for it; we will not surrender for it, now or ever.”
He was sending a clear message to the leaders of the Soviet Union. Reagan’s objectives were clear: “We win. They lose.”
Reagan later defined the battle as moral in an address to the National Association of Evangelicals.
In his remarks, he said: “So, I urge you to speak out against those who would place the United States in a position of military and moral inferiority. You know, I’ve always believed that old Screwtape reserved his best efforts for those of you in the church. So, in your discussions of the nuclear freeze proposals, I urge you to beware the temptation of pride — the temptation of blithely … declaring yourselves above it all and label both sides equally at fault, to ignore the facts of history and the aggressive impulses of an evil empire, to simply call the arms race a giant misunderstanding and thereby remove yourself from the struggle between right and wrong and good and evil.”
Reagan’s “Evil Empire” speech got plenty of attention at home and abroad.
The movie does an excellent job of adapting the work of “The Crusader,” a book by Paul Kengor. It chronicles Reagan’s lifelong obsession with fighting communism. Parts of the movie were filmed at the Reagan Ranch, which is now owned and operated by Young America’s Foundation. We also hosted Mr. Quaid at Reagan’s boyhood home in Dixon, Illinois, where we had an advance screening of the film in the town’s historic 900-seat theater.
Now, we are connecting students with free tickets to the movie and those who want to support it at ReaganRanch.com. We need young people to understand the failures of communism. As Reagan himself said, freedom is “never more than one generation away from extinction.”
That means we have to fight to protect it — and we will.
We win. They lose.
• Scott Walker is president of Young America’s Foundation and served as the 45th governor of Wisconsin from 2011 to 2019.
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