78-12-B7

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Two Worlds[edit]

Transcript[edit]

The ideological struggle dividing the world is between Communism and our own belief in freedom to the greatest extent possible consistent with an orderly society. I'll be right back.

I was going through a bundle of quotations I've collected over the years looking for something appropriate for an upcoming speech. I kept them on cards and they aren't indexed or catalogued so I literally have to shuffle through the whole stack. While doing that, a thought came to me apropos the present world situation where we continue to believe we can maintain a detente with the Soviet Union and that their leaders way deep down must be pretty much like us. I was shuffling through statements of great Americans and mixed in with them were quotes by the past and present leaders of the Soviet Union.

There was that poetry from whence comes the inscription on our Statue of Liberty.

...Her name,
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

How that contrasts with these words of the Soviet Union's founding father Nikolai Lenin: "It would not matter if three-fourths of the human race perished. The important thing is that the remaining one-fourth be Communist." and his invitation. "The Communist Party enters into bourgeois institutions not to do constructive work, but in order to direct the masses to destroy from within the whole bourgeois state machine and the parliament itself."

John Winthrop on the deck of the tiny Arbella in 1630 off the coast of Massachusetts said to the little band of Pilgrims, "We shall be as a city upon a hill. The eyes of all people are upon us, so that if we shall deal falsely with our God in this work we have undertaken, and so cause him to withdraw his present help from us, we shall be made a story and a byword throughout the world."

The oath of the Communist Party USA, written in 1930, says nothing of a city upon a hill. "I pledge myself to rally the masses to defend the Soviet Union, the land of victorious Socialism. I pledge myself to remain at all times a vigilant and firm defender of the Leninist line of the party, the only line that ensures the triumph of Soviet power in the United States."

Thomas Jefferson said, "The policy of the American government is to leave their citizens free, neither restraining or aiding them in their pursuits." And he added, "The god who gave us life gave us liberty. Can the liberties of a nation be secure when we have removed a conviction that these liberties are the gift of god."

Pravda responds with these inspiring words, "The worldwide nature of our Communist program is not mere talk but all embracing and all blood-soaked reality."

There were dozens more and from our founding fathers to the present-day leaders, the plea was for social justice, decency and adherence to the highest standards man had evolved in his climb from the swamp to the stars. From the Soviet leaders came calls for treachery, deceit, destruction and bloodshed.

Detente... isn't that what a farmer has with his turkey until Thanksgiving Day?

This is Ronald Reagan.

Thanks for listening.

 

Details[edit]

Batch Number78-12-B7
Production Date08/07/1978
Book/PageRihoH-13
AudioYes
Youtube?No

Added Notes[edit]