Editing 78-09-B5 (section)

=== Transcript ===
On the last broadcast I quoted from the June Harvard graduation
address by Alexander Solzhenitsyn. It was a very frank description
of how our society appears to this man who lived through the horror of
the Soviet Gulag and still had the courage to defy the slave masters
of his homeland. I've quoted him because he does not see in us the
same courage.

Speaking of the Vietnam conflict he said: "The American intelligentsia
lost its nerve and as a consequence thereof, danger has come much closer
to the United States. But there is no awareness of this. Your short
sighted politicians who signed the hasty Vietnam capitulation seemingly
gave America carefree breathing pause; however, a hundred fold Vietnam
now looms over you." He continued, "That small Vietnam had been a
warning and an occasion to mobilize the nation's courage. But, if a
full-fledged America suffered a real defeat from a Communist half
country, how can the West hope to stand firm in the future?"

If the West doesn't have the will to stand firm, Solzhenitsyn says,
nothing is left then but concessions and betrayal to gain time. He
criticized our diplomats at the Belgrade Conference who backed away
from any confrontation over Soviet violations of the Human Rights
provision in the Helsinki pact. This is the provision for which men
like Orlov have gone to Siberia and others have died. It reminds us
of the arrogant statement by the chief Soviet delegate at Belgrade
who said, "If you take out everything we don't like, it's quite a good
document."

Then he said that while the next world war would probably not be
an atomic one, still it might very well bury Western Civilization
forever. He said he wasn't "examining the case of a world war disaster
and the changes it would produce in society. There is a disaster,
however, which has already been under way for quite some time. "I am
referring," he said, "to the calamity of a despiritualized and irreligious
humanistic consciousness. We have lost the concept of a Supreme
Complete Entity which used to restrain our passions and our responsibility.
We have placed too much hope in political and social reforms, only to
find that we were being deprived of our most precious possession: our
spiritual life."

Solzhenitsyn told the Harvard graduating class that since our
bodies are all doomed to die, our task while on earth must be of a
more spiritual nature. He left them with this charge, "that one's
life journey may become an experience of moral growth, in that one
may leave life a better human being than one started with."

Isn't it too bad that young men and women graduating from the
University of Moscow can't have a speaker like Alexander Solzhenitsyn. 

This is Ronald Reagan.

Thanks for listening.
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