75-10-A3
- Main Page \ Reagan Radio Commentaries \ 1975
| << Previous Broadcast | Next Broadcast >> |
"Communism, the Disease"[edit]
Transcript[edit]Mankind has survived all manner of evil diseases and plagues, but can it survive communism? I'll be right back. When a disease like communism hangs on as it has for a half a century or more it's good now and then to be reminded of just how vicious it really is. Of course those who have the disease use all kinds of misleading terms to describe its symptoms and its effects. For example, if you and I in America planted mines on our borders, ringed the country with barbed wire and machine gun toting guards to keep anyone from leaving the country, we'd hardly describe that as "liberating" the people. But we've grown so used to communist double talk I sometimes think we've lost some of our fear of the disease. We need frequent vaccination to guard against being infected until the day when this health threat will be eliminated as we eliminated the black plague. How many of us are aware of some of the differences between those who have the sickness and we who don't? Right now there are a number of Russian women who fell in love and married Americans and other foreigners who happen to be stationed in the Soviet Union for a time. Now falling in love isn't something you set out to do and among well people it isn't considered a criminal act, but these Russian women are separated from their husbands, some of them for several years, when their American husbands finished their assignments in Russia and came home. Their wives had to get Soviet government permission to go with them. Rhe Soviet government plays a heartless game of bureaucratic paper shuffling, never coming right out and saying no but just keeping them filling out papers, renewing applications and so forth-sometimes for years. There's the case of a young teacher who married an American. During the application process she was fired from her job.-Reason?-she fell in love with an American, that's reason enough where the Soviet is concerned. Her students all loved her. They presented her with a farewell gift of flowers. A Soviet official appeared in the class to tell them that for doing this, giving her the flowers, none of them would be permitted to go to college. They would all be assigned to a labor force upon graduation. Now the Associated Press brings another story from Berlin, illustrating how the communist sickness looks upon human life, even the life of a child. Berlin is divided, as you know, into the East or sick with Communism side, and the well or Western side. Between the two flows the Spree River. Around noon on May 11 a five-year-old boy fell into the river. Firemen from West Berlin started to go to his rescue. An East German patrol boat barred them from entering the water because at that point, the Spree flows wholly on East Berlin territory. The five-year-old boy drowned. The mayor of West Berlin described the refusal of the East German guards to permit the Westerners to come to his rescue as quote, "an incomprehensible and frightful act-placing political considerations before the saving of a human life." Unquote. Which is exactly what they did. Remember, they were in a patrol boat-they chose to prevent the West Germans from entering in the Eastern water rather than go to the child's rescue themselves. But they did tidy things up-three hours later East German frogmen recovered his body. Communism is neither an economic or a political system. It's a form of insanity, a temporary aberration which will one day disappear from the earth because it is contrary to human nature. But I wonder how much more misery it will cause before it disappears. This is Ronald Reagan. Thanks for listening. |
Details[edit]
| |||||||||||
Added Notes[edit]
|
