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Janine, Juliette, Mr. Terry Cherry (Immediate Past President of the National Council of Social Studies), Cathy Gillespie, Jeanette Kraynak and/or our Contest Winners will provide a non-partisan, age appropriate conversation about the Constitution for any educational department: Drama classes, music classes, government and history classes, English classes and more are all welcome! Our winners will show you how they used their songs, short films, public service announcements, artwork, poems, and speeches, to both promote the U.S. Constitution, and to win scholarships, trips around the country, cash prizes and more!
We will teach your students about the U.S. Constitution – in a non-partisan way – covering a fun “Constitution Quiz” that emphasizes the roles of various branches in our government and some of the most important points about the U.S. Constitution.
This is also a unique opportunity for your students to speak with Janine about pursuing a career in Radio, Television, or Film.
These non partisan, educational internet sessions are tailored to your teaching schedule and classroom needs – we can work with speaking slots as short as 15 minutes or as long as 35 or 40 minutes and can cover specific topics upon request. These sessions are free learning opportunities for your students. There is no cost to your school! Internet sessions are perfect for home school groups, scout troop meetings, Patriot Club meetings or anywhere else that young people are gathered who want to learn about the Constitution, and our exciting “We The Future” Contest!
NEW – Our Civil Civic Conversation Program for Schools & Civic Organizations
Constituting America’s program, “How to Have a Civil Civic Conversation,” gives your students the opportunity to learn about how to have a meaningful Civil Civic Conversation. In America’s current divisive atmosphere, it is important for students to learn how to listen and become informed about opposing points of view. Through our Civil Civic Conversation process, students will discover how to be an active part of the political future of our country, exercising their first amendment rights, protected by the U.S. Constitution.
Two passionately politically opinionated students from opposing points of view will debate a difficult timely topic chosen in consultation with you, the teacher, with the class observing. The entire classroom will then be involved, learning new skills by reading two points of view on the chosen topic in order to assess the alternative point of view. This will be followed by watching a peer to peer video, discussing dialogue techniques, and then re-engaging in conversation in a newly informed calm manner.
Students will put their Civil Civic Conversation skills to practice in the final segment of the program where they will compromise in order to create a bill simulating the process in U.S. Congress. After class participation and writing their own bill, the two starring students who started by passionately opposing each other politically, will now present their bill to their U.S. Representative, having found common ground.
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What Teachers Say
“Wow! To hear someone with this much passion for making sure our youth have a thorough understanding of the Constitution is amazing. Our students at “The” Barack Obama Male Leadership Academy enjoyed the challenges presented by Janine and appreciated the opportunity to learn from a truly zealous advocate of the document that founded these United States of America. Thanks for a GREAT presentation. The students enjoyed it and so did I. They are chomping at the bit for your return.”
– Tom McLaughlin, Teacher, “The” Barack Obama Male Leadership Academy, Dallas, Texas
“Thank you and Juliette for using your time and energy to Constitute America’s young people and to make our genius Constitution accessible to them. The education you offer enefits them now, but it will also ensure freedom for their children and grandchildren if they rise to the high calling of getting involved!…You were so gracious to gift us a webcam on top of th ecopies of the test, the glossy colored contest flyer, bracelets and sunglasses and your time. Your kindness and concern for students’ futures shone through the screen and was heard in your gnetle yet passionate voice. The Constitution and the contest are the focus for the short remainder of our year. You are a true Patriot. Salute! Mrs. Moss, San Jacinto Academy, Amarillo, Texas.
Our experience with Constituting America was unique and inspirational. My students were able to make real-world connections with people who care deeply for our country’s founding documents. They were blessed to receive relevant material that bring the subject to life in a way that traditional textbooks do not. I often struggle as a teacher with a balance between that which we must learn and that which makes learning worthwhile. Constituting America brought both of those together in a memorable way that my students and I will never forget. Thank you from East Texas!
– Jeff Sims, East Texas Charter School
November 9, 1989: The Berlin Wall is Torn Down, the Cold War is Ended and America Wins
90 in 90 2020, 6. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, Blog, Tony Williams November 9, 1989: The Berlin Wall is Torn Down, the Cold War is Ended and America Wins – Guest Essayist: Tony Williams, 10. Dates in American History, 2020 - Dates in American History, 11. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, 90 Day Studies, Tony Williams“Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!” – Ronald Reagan
After World War II, a Cold War erupted between the world’s two superpowers – the United States and the Soviet Union. Germany was occupied and then divided after the war as was its capital, Berlin. The Soviet Union erected the Berlin Wall in 1961 as a symbol of the divide between East and West in the Cold War and between freedom and tyranny.
During the 1960s and 1970s, the superpowers entered into a period of détente or decreasing tensions. However, the Soviet Union took advantage of détente to use revenue from rising oil prices and arms sales to engage in a massive arms build-up, supported communist insurrections in developing nations around the globe, and invaded Afghanistan.
Ronald Reagan was elected president in 1980 during a time of foreign-policy reversals including the Vietnam War and the Iranian Hostage Crisis. He blamed détente for strengthening and emboldening the Soviets and sought to improve American strength abroad.
As president, Reagan instituted a tough stance towards the Soviets that was designed to reverse their advances and win the Cold War. His administration supported the Polish resistance movement known as Solidarity, increased military spending, started the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), and armed resistance fighters around the world, including the mujahideen battling a Soviet invasion in Afghanistan.
Reagan had a long history of attacking communist states and the idea of communism itself that shaped his strategic outlook. In the decades after World War II, like many Americans, he was concerned about Soviet dominance in Eastern Europe spreading elsewhere. In 1952, Reagan compared communism to Nazism and other forms of totalitarianism characterized by a powerful state that limited individual freedoms.
“We have met [the threat] back through the ages in the name of every conqueror that has ever set upon a course of establishing his rule over mankind,” he said. “It is simply the idea, the basis of this country and of our religion, the idea of the dignity of man, the idea that deep within the heart of each one of us is something so godlike and precious that no individual or group has a right to impose his or its will upon the people.”
In a seminal televised speech in 1964 called “A Time for Choosing,” Reagan stated that he believed there could be no accommodation with the Soviets. “We cannot buy our security, our freedom from the threat of the bomb by committing an immorality so great as saying to a billion human beings now in slavery behind the Iron Curtain, ‘Give up your dreams of freedom because to save our own skins, we are willing to make a deal with your slave-masters.’”
Reagan targeted the Berlin Wall as a symbol of communism in a 1967 televised town hall debate with Robert Kennedy. “I think it would be very admirable if the Berlin Wall should…disappear,” Reagan said, “We just think that a wall that is put up to confine people, and keep them within their own country…has to be somehow wrong.”
In 1978, Reagan visited the wall and heard the story of Peter Fechter, one of hundreds who were shot by East German police while trying to escape to freedom over the Berlin Wall. As a result, Reagan told an aide, “My idea of American policy toward the Soviet Union is simple, and some would say simplistic. It is this: We win and they lose.”
As president, he continued his unrelenting attack on the idea of communism according to his moral vision of the system. In a 1982 speech to the British Parliament, he predicted that communism would end up “on the ash heap of history,” and that the wall was “the signature of the regime that built it.” When he visited the wall during the same trip, he stated that “It’s as ugly as the idea behind it.” In a 1983 speech, he referred to the Soviet Union an “evil empire.”
Reagan went to West Berlin to speak during a ceremony commemorating the 750th anniversary of the city and faced a choice. He could confront the Soviets about the wall, or he could deliver a speech without controversy.
In June 1987, many officials in his administration and West Germany were opposed to any provocative words or actions during the anniversary speech. Many Germans also did not want Reagan to deliver his speech anywhere near the wall and feared anything that might be perceived as an aggressive signal. Secretary of State George Schultz and Chief of Staff Howard Baker questioned the speech and asked the president and his speechwriters to tone down the language. Deputy National Security Advisor Colin Powell and other members of the National Security Council wanted to alter the speech and offered several revisions. Reagan demanded to speak next to the Berlin Wall and determined that he would use the occasion to confront the threat the wall posed to human freedom.
Reagan and his team arrived in West Berlin on June 12. He spoke to reporters and nervous German officials, telling them, “This is the only wall that has ever been built to keep people in, not keep people out.” Meanwhile, in East Berlin, the German secret police and Russian KGB agents cordoned off an area a thousand yards wide opposite the spot where Reagan was to speak on the other side of the wall. They wanted to ensure that no one could hear the message of freedom.
Reagan spoke at the Brandenburg Gate with the huge, imposing wall in the background. “As long as this gate is closed, as long as this scar of a wall is permitted to stand, it is not the German question alone that remains open, but the question of freedom for all mankind.”
Reagan challenged Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev directly, stating, “If you seek peace, if you seek 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!”
He finished by predicting the wall would not endure because it stood for oppression and tyranny. “This wall will fall. For it cannot withstand faith; it cannot withstand truth. The wall cannot withstand freedom.” No one imagined that the Berlin Wall would fall only two years later on November 9, 1989, as communism collapsed across Eastern Europe.
A year later, Reagan was at a summit with Gorbachev in Moscow and addressed the students at Moscow State University. “The key is freedom,” Reagan boldly and candidly told them. “It is the right to put forth an idea, scoffed at by the experts, and watch it catch fire among the people. It is the right to dream – to follow your dream or stick to your conscience, even if you’re the only one in a sea of doubters.” Ronald Reagan believed that he had a responsibility to bring an end to the Cold War and destroy all nuclear weapons to benefit both the United States as well as the world for an era of peace. He dedicated himself to achieving this goal. Partly due to these efforts, the Berlin Wall fell by 1989, and communism collapsed in the Soviet Union by 1991.
Tony Williams is a Senior Fellow at the Bill of Rights Institute and is the author of six books including Washington and Hamilton: The Alliance that Forged America with Stephen Knott. Williams is currently writing a book on the Declaration of Independence.
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November 4, 1979: The Iranian Hostage Crisis Begins
90 in 90 2020, 6. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, Blog, Scot Faulkner November 4, 1979: The Iranian Hostage Crisis Begins – Guest Essayist: Scot Faulkner, 10. Dates in American History, 2020 - Dates in American History, 11. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, 90 Day Studies, Scot FaulknerThe long tragic road to the September 11, 2001 terror attacks began with President Jimmy Carter, and his administration’s involvement in the Iranian Revolution, and their fundamentally weak response to the Iranian Hostage Crisis.
The Iranian Hostage Crisis was the most visible act of the Iranian Revolution. Starting on November 4, 1979, and lasting for 444 days, 52 Americans were imprisoned in brutal conditions. The world watched as the Carter Administration repeatedly failed to free the hostages, both through poor diplomacy and the rescue attempt fiasco.
The result was the crippling of U.S. influence throughout the Middle East and the spawning of radical Islamic movements that terrorize the world to this day.
Islam’s three major sects, Sunni, Shiite, and Sufi, all harbor the seeds of violence and hatred. In 1881 a Sufi mystic ignited the Mahdi Revolt in the Sudan leading to eighteen years of death and misery throughout the upper Nile. During World War II, the Sunni Grand Mufti of Jerusalem befriended Hitler and helped Heinrich Himmler form Islamic Stormtrooper units to kill Jews in the Balkans.
After World War II, Islam secularized as mainstream leaders embraced Western economic interests to tap their vast oil and gas reserves.
Activists became embroiled in the Middle East’s Cold War chess board, aiding U.S. or Soviet interests.
The Iranian Revolution changed that. Through the success of the Iranian Revolution, Islamic extremists of all sects embraced the words of Shiite Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini:
“If the form of government willed by Islam were to come into being, none of the governments now existing in the world would be able to resist it; they would all capitulate.”
Islamic dominance became an end in and of itself.
This did not have to happen at all.
Iran has been a pivotal regional player for 2,500 years. The Persian Empire was the bane of ancient Greece. As the Greek Empire withered, Persia, later Iran, remained a political, economic, and cultural force. This is why their 1979 Revolution and subsequent confrontation with the U.S. inspired radicals throughout the Islamic world to become the Taliban, ISIS and other terrorists of today.
Iran’s modern history began as part of the East-West conflict following World War II. The Soviets heavily influenced and manipulated Iran’s first elected government. On August 19, 1953, British and America intelligence toppled that government and returned Shah Mohammad Reza to power.
“The Shah” as he became known globally, was reform minded. He launched his “White Revolution” to build a modern, pro-West, pro-capitalist Iran in 1963. The Shah’s “Revolution” built the region’s largest middle class, and broke centuries of tradition by enfranchising women. It was opposed by many traditional powers, including fundamentalist Islamic leaders like the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. Khomeini’s agitation for violent opposition to the Shah’s reforms led to his arrest and exile.
Throughout his reign, the Shah was vexed by radical Islamic and communist agitation. His secret police brutally suppressed fringe dissidents. This balancing act between western reforms and control worked well, with a trend towards more reforms as the Shah aged. The Shah enjoyed warm relationships with American Presidents of both parties and was rewarded with lavish military aid.
That was to change in 1977.
From the beginning, the Carter Administration expressed disdain for the Shah. President Carter pressed for the release of political prisoners. The Shah complied, allowing many radicals the freedom to openly oppose him.
Not satisfied with the pace or breadth of the Shah’s human rights reforms, Carter envoys began a dialogue with the Ayatollah Khomeini, first at his home in Iraq and more intensely when he moved to a Paris suburb.
Indications that the U.S. was souring on the Shah emboldened dissidents across the political spectrum to confront the regime. Demonstrations, riots, and general strikes began to destabilize the Shah and his government. In response, the Shah accelerated reforms. This was viewed as weakness by the opposition.
The Western media, especially the BBC, began to promote the Ayatollah as a moderate alternative to the Shah’s “brutal regime.” The Ayatollah assured U.S. intelligence operatives and State Department officials that he would only be the “figure head” for a western parliamentary system.
During the fall of 1978, strikes and demonstrations paralyzed the country. The Carter Administration, led by Secretary of State Cyrus Vance and U.S. Ambassador to Iran William Sullivan, coalesced around abandoning the Shah and helping install Khomeini, who they viewed as a “moderate clergyman” who would be Iran’s “Ghandi-like” spiritual leader.
Time and political capital were running out. On January 16, 1979, The Shah, after arranging for an interim government, resigned and went into exile.
The balance of power now remained with the Iranian Military.
While the Shah was preparing for his departure, General Robert Huyser, Deputy Commander of NATO and his top aides, arrived in Iran. They were there to neutralize the military leaders. Using ties of friendship, promises of aid, and assurance of safety, Huyser and his team convinced the Iranian commanders to allow the transitional government to finalize arrangements for Khomeini becoming part of the new government.
Many of these Iranian military leaders, and their families, were slaughtered as Khomeini and his Islamic Republican Guard toppled the transitional government and seized power during the Spring of 1979. “It was a most despicable act of treachery, for which I will always be ashamed,” admitted one NATO general years later.
While Iran was collapsing, so were America’s intelligence capabilities.
One of President Carter’s earliest appointments was placing Admiral Stansfield Turner in charge of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Turner immediately eviscerated the Agency’s human intelligence and clandestine units. He felt they had gone “rogue” during the Nixon-Ford era. He also thought electronic surveillance and satellites could do as good a job.
Turner’s actions led to “one of the most consequential strategic surprises that the United States has experienced since the CIA was established in 1947” – the Embassy Takeover and Hostage Crisis.
The radicalization of Iran occurred at lightning speed. Khomeini and his lieutenants remade Iran’s government and society into a totalitarian fundamentalist Islamic state. Anyone who opposed their Islamic Revolution were driven into exile, imprisoned, or killed.
Khomeini’s earlier assurances of moderation and working with the West vanished. Radicalized mobs turned their attention to eradicating all vestiges of the West. This included the U.S. Embassy.
The first attack on the U.S. Embassy occurred on the morning of February 14, 1979. Coincidently, this was the same day that Adolph Dubs, the U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan, was kidnapped and fatally shot by Muslim extremists in Kabul. In Tehran, Ambassador Sullivan surrendered the U.S. Embassy and was able to resolve the occupation within hours through negotiations with the Iranian Foreign Minister.
Despite this attack, and the bloodshed in Kabul, nothing was done to either close the Tehran Embassy, reduce personnel, or strengthen its defenses. During the takeover, Embassy personnel failed to burn sensitive documents as their furnaces malfunctioned. They installed cheaper paper shredders. During the 444-day occupation, rug weavers were employed to reconstruct the sensitive shredded documents, creating global embarrassment of America.
Starting in September 1979, radical students began planning a more extensive assault on the Embassy. This included daily demonstrations outside the U.S. Embassy to trigger an Embassy security response. This allowed organizers to assess the size and capabilities of the Embassy security forces.
On November 4, 1979, one of the demonstrations erupted into an all-out conflict by the Embassy’s Visa processing public entrance. The assault leaders deployed approximately 500 students. Female students hid metal cutters under their robes, which were used to breach the Embassy gates.
Khomeini was in a meeting outside of Tehran and did not have prior knowledge of the takeover. He immediately issued a statement of support, declaring it “the second revolution” and the U.S. Embassy an “America spy den in Tehran.”
What followed was an unending ordeal of terror and depravation for the 66 hostages, who through various releases, were reduced to a core of 52. The 2012 film “Argo” chronicled the audacious escape of six Americans who had been outside the U.S. Embassy at the time of the takeover.
ABC News began a nightly update on the hostage drama. This became “Nightline.” During the 1980 Presidential campaign, it served as a nightly reminder of the ineffectiveness of President Carter.
On April 24, 1980, trying to break out of this chronic crisis, Carter initiated an ill-conceived, and poorly executed, rescue mission called Operation Eagle Claw. It ended with crashed helicopters and eight dead soldiers at the staging area outside of the Iranian Capital, designated Desert One. Another attempt was made through diplomacy as part of a hoped for “October Surprise,” but the Iranians cancelled the deal just as planes were being mustered at Andrews Air Force Base.
Carter paid the price for his Iranian duplicity. On November 4, 1980, Ronald Reagan obliterated Carter in the worst defeat suffered by an incumbent President since Herbert Hoover in 1932.
Scot Faulkner is Vice President of the George Washington Institute of Living Ethics at Shepherd University. He was the Chief Administrative Officer of the U.S. House of Representatives. Earlier, he served on the White House staff. Faulkner provides political commentary for ABC News Australia, Newsmax, and CitizenOversight. He earned a Master’s in Public Administration from American University, and a BA in Government & History from Lawrence University, with studies in comparative government at the London School of Economics and Georgetown University.
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April 30, 1975: Fall of Saigon, America Losing Cold War Until Ronald Reagan Elected President
The Honorable Don Ritter, 90 in 90 2020, 6. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, Blog April 30, 1975: Fall of Saigon, America Losing Cold War Until Ronald Reagan Elected President – Guest Essayist: The Honorable Don Ritter, The Honorable Don Ritter, 10. Dates in American History, 2020 - Dates in American History, 11. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, 90 Day StudiesThe election of Ronald Reagan in 1980 marked THE crucial turning point in winning the Cold War with Russia-dominated Communism, the USSR.
Reagan’s rise to national prominence began with the surge in communist insurgencies and revolutions worldwide that began after the fall of Saigon on April 30, 1975, and all South Vietnam to the communists. After 58,000 American lives and trillions in treasure lost over the tenures of five American Presidents, the United States left the Vietnam War and South Vietnam to the communists.
Communist North Vietnam in league with fellow communist governments in Russia and China accurately saw the weakening of a new American President, Gerald Ford, and a new ‘anti-war’ Congress as a result of the ‘Watergate’ scandal and President Richard Nixon’s subsequent resignation. In the minds of the communists, it was a signal opportunity to forcibly “unify,” read invade, the non-communist South with magnum force, armed to the teeth by both the People’s Republic of China and the USSR. President Nixon’s Secret Letter to South Vietnamese President Thieu pledging all-out support of U.S. air and naval power if the communists broke the Paris Peace Agreement and invaded was irrelevant as Nixon was gone. With the communist invasion beginning, seventy-four new members of Congress, all anti-war Democrats guaranteed the ”No” vote on the Ford Administration’s Bill to provide $800 million for ammunition and fuel to the South Vietnamese military to roll their tanks and fly their planes. That Bill lost in Congress by only one vote. The fate of South Vietnam was sealed. The people of South Vietnam, in what seemed then like an instant, were abandoned by their close American ally of some 20 years. Picture that.
Picture the ignominy of it all. Helicopters rescuing Americans and some chosen Vietnamese from rooftops while U.S. Marines staved off the desperate South Vietnamese who had worked with us for decades. Picture Vietnamese people clinging to helicopter skids and airplane landing gears in desperation, falling to their death as these aircraft ascended. Picture drivers of South Vietnamese tanks and pilots of fighter planes not able to engage for want of fuel. Picture famous South Vietnamese Generals committing suicide rather than face certain torture and death in Re-Education Camps, read Gulags with propaganda lessons. Picture perhaps hundreds of thousands of “Boat People,” having launched near anything that floated to escape the wrath of their conquerors, at the bottom of the South China Sea. Picture horrific genocide in Cambodia where Pol Pot and his henchmen murdered nearly one-third of the population to establish communism… and through it all, the West, led by the United States, stayed away.
Leonid Brezhvnev, Secretary General of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and his Politburo colleagues could picture it… all of it. The Cold War was about to get hot.
The fall of the non-communist government in South Vietnam and the election of President Jimmy Carter was followed by an American military and intelligence services-emasculating U.S. Congress. Many in the Democratic Party took the side of the insurgents. I remember well, Sen. Tom Harkin from Iowa claiming that the Sandinista Communists (in Nicaragua) were more like “overzealous Boy Scouts” than hardened Communists. Amazing.
Global communism with the USSR in the lead and America in retreat, was on the march.
In just a few years, in Asia, Africa and Latin America, repressive communist-totalitarian regimes had been foisted on the respective peoples by small numbers of ideologically committed, well-trained and well-armed (by the Soviet Union) insurgencies. “Wars of national liberation” and intensive Soviet subversion raged around the world. Think Angola and Southern Africa, Ethiopia and Somalia in the Horn of Africa. Think the Middle East and the Philippines, Malaysia and Afghanistan (there a full-throated Red Army invasion) in Asia.
Think Central America in our own hemisphere and Nicaragua where the USSR and their right hand in the hemisphere, communist Cuba, took charge along with a relatively few committed Marxist-Leninist Nicaraguans, backed by Cuba and the Soviet Union, even creating a Soviet-style Politburo and Central Committee! On one my several trips to the region, I personally met with Tomas Borge, the Stalinist leader of the Nicaraguan Communist Party and his colleagues. Total Bolsheviks. To make things even more dangerous for the United States, these wars of national liberation were also ongoing in El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala.
A gigantic airfield that could land Soviet jumbo transports was being completed under the Grenadian communist government of Maurice Bishop. Warehouses with vast storage capacity for weapons to fuel insurgency in Latin America were built. I personally witnessed these facilities and found the diary of one leading Politburo official, Liam James, who was on the payroll of the Soviet Embassy at the time. They all were but he, being the Treasurer of the government, actually wrote it down! These newly-minted communist countries and other ongoing insurgencies, with Marxist-Leninist values in direct opposition to human freedom and interests of the West, were being funded and activated by Soviet intelligence agencies, largely the KGB and were supplied by the economies of the Soviet Union and their Warsaw Pact empire in Eastern and Central Europe. Many leaders of these so-called “Third World” countries were on Moscow’s payroll.
In the words of one KGB General, “The world was going our way.” Richard Andrew, ‘The KGB and the Battle for the Third World’ (based on the Mitrokhin archives). These so-called wars of national liberation didn’t fully end until some ten years later, when the weapons and supplies from the Soviet Union dried up as the Soviet Empire began to disintegrate, thanks to a new U.S. President who led the way during the 1980s.
Enter Ronald Wilson Reagan. To the chagrin of the Soviet communists and their followers worldwide, it was the beginning of the end of their glory days when in January of 1981, Ronald Reagan, having beaten the incumbent President, Jimmy Carter, in November, was sworn in as President of the United States. Ronald Reagan was no novice in the subject matter. President Reagan had been an outspoken critic of communism over three decades. He had written and given speeches on communism and the genuinely evil nature of the Soviet Union. He was a committed lover of human freedom, human rights and free markets. As Governor of California, he had gained executive experience in a large bureaucracy and during that time had connected with a contingent of likeminded political and academic conservatives. The mainstream media was ruthless with him, characterizing him as an intellectual dolt and warmonger who would bring on World War III. He would prove his detractors so wrong. He would prove to be the ultimate Cold Warrior, yet a sweet man with an iron fist when needed.
When his first National Security Advisor, Richard Allen, asked the new President Reagan about his vision of the Cold War, Reagan’s response was, “We win, they lose.” Rare moral clarity rarely enunciated.
To the end of his presidency, he continued to be disparaged by the mainstream media, although less aggressively. However, the American people grew to appreciate and even love the man as he and his team, more than anyone would be responsible for winning the Cold War and bringing down a truly “Evil Empire.” Just ask those who suffered most, the Polish, Czech, Hungarian, Ukrainian, Rumanian, Baltic, and yes, the Russian people, themselves. To this very day, his name is revered by those who suffered and still suffer under the yoke of communism.
Personally, I have often pondered that had Ronald Reagan not been elected President of the United States in 1980, the communist behemoth USSR would be standing strong today and the Cold War ended with communism, the victor.
The Honorable Don Ritter, Sc. D., served seven terms in the U.S. Congress from Pennsylvania including both terms of Ronald Reagan’s presidency. Dr. Ritter speaks fluent Russian and lived in the USSR for a year as a Nation Academy of Sciences post-doctoral Fellow during Leonid Brezhnev’s time. He served in Congress as Ranking Member of the Congressional Helsinki Commission and was a leader in Congress in opposition to the Soviet invasion and occupation of Afghanistan.
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