The 1988 Francis Boyer Lecture on Public Policy FREEDOM AND VIGILANCE Ronald Reagan
With introductions and tributes by CHRISTOPHER C. DeMUTH GERALD R. FORD JEANE J. KIRKPATRICK IRVING KRISTOL
American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research FREEDOM AND VIGILANCE The 1988 Francis Boyer Lecture on Public Policy
FREEDOM AND VIGILANCE
Ronald W. Reagan
With introductions and tributes by CHRISTOPHER C. DeMuTH GERALD R. FORD ] EANE j. KIRKPATRICK IRVING KRISTOL
MICHAEL NOVAK
WILLARD C. BUTCHER
American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research Washington, D.C. Distributed by arrangement with
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"American Enterprise Institute" and @) are registered service marks of the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research. Printed in the United States ofAmerica American EnterpriseInstitute 1150 Seventeenth Street, N. W., Washington, D.C. 20036 CONTENTS ABOUT THE FRANCIS BOYER LECTURES ON PUBLIC POLICY, Christopher C. DeMuth vu INTRODUCTIONS AND TRIBUTES Christopher C. DeM uth 3 Gerald R. Ford 6 Jeane]. Kirkpatrick 8 Irving Kristof 10 Michael Novak 12 Presentation of Boyer Award, Willard C. Butcher 15 THE 1988 FRANCIS BOYER LECTURE ON PUBLIC POLICY "Freedom and Vigilance," Ronald W. Reagan 19 v ABOUT THE FRANCIS BOYER LECTURES ON PUBLIC POLICY The American Enterprise Institute initiated the Francis Boyer Lectures on Public Policy in 1977 to examine the relationship between business and government in Ameri can society. The lectures are made possible by a gift from the SmithKline Beckman Corporation in memory of Mr. Francis Boyer ( 1893 - 1972), the late chairman of the board of the corporation and a distinguished business leader for many decades. The lecture is given annually by an eminent thinker who has developed notable insights on the relationship between the nation's private and public sectors. It is intended to illuminate central issues of public policy in contemporary America and contribute significantly to the dialogue by which the public interest is served. The Francis Boyer lecturer is selected by the American Enterprise Institute's Council of Academic Advisers. The Boyer Lecture is delivered in Washington, D.C., during the American Enterprise Institute's annual Policy Conference. These several days of seminars bring together government policy makers, business leaders, and scholars for the purpose of exploring the major policy problems facingthe United States and the world. The Francis Boyer Award for 1988 was conferred upon President Ronald Reagan. By giving the award for Vil the first time to a sitting head of state, we intended to recognize President Reagan's singular contributions to American political dialogue and public policy as his second term drew to a close. We also wished to mark the close relationship between the Reagan administration and AEI. More than forty Institute scholars served in senior government positions under President Reagan, ranging from the cabinet departments to the White House staff, fromthe regulatory agencies to the federal courts. The president's address, Freedom and Vigilance, was delivered before an audience of 1,600 guests at AEI's annual dinner on December 7, 1988. Earlier that day the president, accompanied by President-elect George Bush, had met with the Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev at Governors Island in New York, and much of his address was devoted to this meeting and to the dramatic changes in U.S.-Soviet relations during his tenure in office. The president's address was preceded by several introductions and special tributes by AEI scholars; we have reprinted these remarks here along with the president's Boyer Lecture. CHRISTOPHER C. DeMuTH President, American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research December 1988 Vlll INTRODUCTIONS AND TRIBUTES Christopher C. DeMuth President, American EnterpriseInstitute President Reagan, you honor the American Enterprise Institute and the goals we share by being with us this evening and accepting AEI's Francis Boyer Award for 1988. Your years in office have had a transforming effect on Washington-and also on the American Enter prise Institute. AEI has been engaged in public policy research forforty-five years now. For most of these years, ours was a lonely voice crying in the wilderness. And how exhilarating, how deeply gratifying it was! As the Tom Lehrer ditty goes, "They may have had the best armies, but we had all the best songs." To dissent boldly, to demonstrate with analytical precision the follies of the great and powerful, to be gloriously on the attack against an implacable establishment-these were our accustomed roles, and we performed them with relish. But since you came to town things just haven't been the same. First you impressed into public service many of AEI's most accomplished scholars. Then, through your leadership, many of the ideas they and you had been writing about for so many years became actual policy. And finally, many of these ideas, when put to the test, yielded exactly the benefits you had predicted-for domestic prosperity, for national security and interna tional peace, for the spread of democratic capitalism around the world. CHRISTOPHER C. DcMUTH / 3 All this success has left those of us who were trained in the skills of dissent and debunking-thinking we had a lifetime's work ahead of us-in a very awkward position. The job retraining program does not apply to economists and political scientists; nor is import relief available, since your revolution has been so thoroughly American. Now I must say that AEI has not been altogether disarmed. We have, as you may have noticed, registered the occasional mild reproach, the polite and respectful suggestion for improvement; as you are yourself a man of ideas, you have surely understood our restlessness. And for all our innate skepticism, we have never been of the despairing, decline-of-the-West school of thought: from Wattenberg to Novak, from Kristal to Burns to Scalia, our iconoclasm has usually been that of the optimist and ever-hopeful reformer, just as yours has been. That you have actually achieved so many of the reforms we had hoped for is therefore reason for the deepest satisfaction-and a galvanizing reminder of the importance of our work in the years ahead, whatever transitory defeats or successes we may encounter. For you have taught us that ideas and power-the best songs and the best armies-are not the irreconcilable forces intellectuals have often (consolingly) supposed and can indeed be potent allies. At the same time, you have taught us that the policy ideas we at AEI traffic in-however true, however skillfully extracted from the tangle of human experience, however brilliantly pro pounded-are of small moment in practical affairs until they are catalyzed by that rare and ineffable human substance: political leadership. You have said, Mr. President, that facts are 4 / THE 1988 FRANCIS BOYER LECTURE stubborn things. I must quarrel (true to form!) with this proposition. Facts are not stubborn; they are merely inanimate. They acquire their capacity to stop or move the world only in the hands of men stubborn in the pursuit of large ideals-such as you have been, such as you have taught us to be. CHRISTOPHER C. DeMUTH / 5 Gerald R. Ford Thirty-eighth President ofthe United States and Distinguished Fellow, American Enterprise Institute I am delighted to be part of this tribute to President Ronald Reagan. I must say, President Reagan, you're not the first occupant of the White House to benefit from the wisdom of AEI scholars-nor the first to make ample contributions to AEI's research staff in return. Arthur Burns, Bob Bork, Nino Scalia, Jim Miller, and Larry Silberman are only a few of those who served with great distinction in my administration who later became promi nent members of the AEI team-and who were fit, willing, and able to return to public service under your admini stration. These examples illustrate the critical role AEI has come to play in American government-not only as a source of independent policy research of the highest quality but as a source of men and women who combine great intellectual abilities with practical experience in the rough-and-tumble world of politics. I know that President elect Bush-another individual who held important posts in the Reagan administration and the Ford administration and has been very closely associated with AEI over the years-will rely heavily on both the Institute's analyses and its people in the very challenging years ahead. Eleven years ago this evening I was honored to deliver AEI's first Boyer Lecture-an address that, Chris DeMuth reminds me, concluded with a ringing call for tax 6 / THE 1988 FRANCIS BOYER LECTURE reductions as the best key to economic progress. Let me assure you, it is a great pleasure and a high honor to be here tonight to hear President Reagan's address, with his views after an exciting and, I'm sure, productive day, and after eight years of outstanding leadership in the White House. President Reagan, I salute you for your superb achievements in office, and I want to assure you that there is life after Washington. We are both firm believers in individual liberty-and I know you will be as happy as I was to have a little of it back for yourself after living in the gilded cage on Pennsylvania Avenue. Betty joins me in wishing that the years ahead will be healthy, prosperous, and full of joy for you and your Nancy. GERALD R. FORD I 7 Jeane J. Kirkpatrick Senior Fellow, AmericanEnterprise Institute President Reagan honors AEI by accepting the Francis Boyer Award for outstanding contributions in public policy. It is especially appropriate that he should receive this award, since he not only contributed to restoring a more appropriate, effective balance between the public and the private sectors but also provided the leadership we needed, when we needed it most. Ronald Reagan was elected fortieth president of the United States at a time when the pendulum in our country and in the world had swung far toward reliance on government and collectivist strategies to solve per sonal, social, and economic difficulties. Inevitably policies based on these strategies failed, confidence faltered, and tyranny expanded. To a deterio rating situation, Ronald Reagan brought his vision of America and the world. It is a vision informed by freedom. Freedom, President Reagan reminded a doubting world, can solve the problems of poverty and war. Freedom can stimulate growth and enable diverse peoples to live together in peace. With a persistence and flexibility that astonished friend and foe, President Reagan worked against what he defined as the two great problems confronting mankind in our century-totalitarianism and the threat of nuclear war. 8 / THE 1988 FRANCIS BOYER LECTURE Though it is rarely possible to determine defini tively what causes what in history, it cannot be denied that totalitarian controls have been loosened and the threat of nuclear war and great power confrontation has receded significantly during the years Ronald Reagan has worked on the problems. His friend the prime minister of Great Britain spoke for many in the world when she said earlier this year, You have done the greatest possible service not only to your own people but to free people everywhere; you have restored faith in the American dream, a dream of boundless opportunity built on enterprise, individual effort, and personal generosity. When we compare the mood of confidence and opportunity in the West today with the mood when you took office in 1980, we know that a greater change has taken place than we ever could have imagined. With the Boyer Award, AEI salutes the author of these changes. JEANE]. KIRKPATRICK / 9 Irving Kristol John M. Olin Distinguished Fellow, American Enterprise Institute As Ronald Reagan prepares to leave the White House, he also leaves those of us who study American politics and American history with an interesting question: What is it that has made him so successful a president-indeed so successful a democratic statesman? A successful American statesman is one whose tenure in office is seen by his countrymen as representing a permanent contribution to the shaping of our democratic destiny. He is viewed as having expanded democratic horizons while nourishing the democratic spirit and reinforcingthe popular commitment to self-government. It is astonishing how few such presidents we have had. And it is surprisingly difficult to isolate the qualities that distinguish those few, as against the others. Apart from the Founding Fathers, who were a special case, I think there have been only four truly successfuldemocratic presidents who were also democratic statesmen: Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Ronald Reagan. There have been other very good presidents, of course, and other estimable presidencies, but-and it may just have been a case of unpropitious circumstances-none that achieved this par ticular distinction. Ronald Reagan, I think it is fair to say, is the president who has inaugurated the post - New Deal era in American history. Not by repudiating the past Americans are very traditional people who do not 10 / THE 1988 FRANCIS BOYER LECTURE repudiate their past easily. This attachment to tradition is the main anchor of democratic stability, no matter how turbulent the times or how frenetic our politics. No, what Ronald Reagan has done is to incorporate our past into a new perspective on the American future, of which he has given us the outlines. Only the outlines perhaps out of courtesy to his vice president and our president-elect, he has left us with much filling-in to do. But the outlines are clear enough-a rediscovery of the importance of individual self-reliance, without which programs incorporating political compassion end up in perpetual frustration; a renewed emphasis on those moral values that bind individuals to their familiesand communi ties and that give ultimate meaning to their lives; an affirmationof individual enterprise, energized by low rates of taxation, as the key to economic growth; and, perhaps most important, a revival of that spirit of patriotism that enables Americans to confront the world with a vigorous self-confidence that we once seemed to have lost forever. And it is not only in the United States that he has inaugurated this new era, but for much of the world as well. The impact of his presidency is being felt within the Communist world and in the nations of the developing world, as well as the democracies-something no one would have thought possible only a few years ago. In nation after nation, a new economic environment is emerging. In accomplishing this, President Reagan has been not just a successful democratic statesman for the United States but an exemplar of the successfuldemocratic statesman forhis world. In this respect, he may be the very first. So, thank you, Mr. President, foryour service to our country and to our world. It has been a privilege to be a witness to your eight years in office. IRVING KRISTOL / 11 Michael Novak George F. Jewett Scholar, American Enterprise Institute Mr. President, thank you for accomplishing what on January 20, 1981, you said you would: A New Beginning. You said on that day- I must quote your words, but if I can't quite sing your music, I hope you will forgive me: We are a nation that has a government-not the other way around. And this makes us special among the nations of the earth. Our government has no power except that granted it by the people. It is a time to check and reverse the growth of government, which shows signs of having grown beyond the consent of the governed .... It's not my intention to do away with govern ment. It is rather to make it work-work with us, not over us; to stand by our side, not on our back. If we look to the answer as to why for so many years we achieved so much and prospered as no other people on earth, it was because here in this land we unleashed the energy and individual genius of man to a greater extent than has ever been done before.... With all the creative energy at our com mand, let us begin an era of national renewal. Mr. President, permit me also to recall the First Inaugural of an earlier president: 12 / THE 1988 FRANCIS BOYER LECTURE Entertaining a due sense of our equal right to the use of our own faculties, to the acquisitions of our own industry, to honor and confidence from our fellow citizens, resulting not frombirth, but from our actions and their sense of them; enlightened by a benign religion, professed, indeed, and practiced in various forms, yet all of them inculcating honesty, truth, temperance, gratitude, and the love of man; acknowl edging and adoring an overruling Providence, which by all its dispensations proves that it delights in the happiness of man here and his greater happiness hereafter-with all these blessings, what more is necessary to make us a happy and a prosperous people? Still one more thing, fellow citizens-wise and frugal Government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government, and this is necessary to close the circle of our felicities. Thus, Thomas Jefferson in 1801. Mr. President, taking Thomas Jefferson's words as your own, you made "a new beginning" and not only for the United States. Many nations are now imitating your policies. As the main source of hope for the world's poor, they too are turning from government activists to economic activists, that is, to all the people. Historians tell us that what our framers meant by "revolution" was a turning back to foundingprinciples-in Latin, a re-volvere-a going back to true beginnings. MICHAEL NOVAK I 13 Was there a Reagan Revolution? Mr. President, it was not exactly a "Reagan" revolution. It was "the American Revolution," now well into its third century, reestablished by you upon our foundingprinciples. As the founders humbly dared to hope, Mr. President, this American Revolution heralded "a new order" of basic rights for all humanity and forall the ages. This novus ordo seclorum was conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that every man and every woman everywhere is created equal. All around the world today-even in Mr. Gorbachev's USSR, if glacially-whole peoples are turning toward these shining principles. May this revolution last forever, Mr. President, and may your name be linked with its renewal, at this time, in this age, for as many generations yet to come as God sees fit to bless America. For beginning anew the American Revolution, Mr. President, the revolution of natural liberty, the revolution that belongs to all humanity, we thank you. 14 / THE 1988 FRANCIS BOYER LECTURE Presentation of Boyer Award Willard C. Butcher Chairman, Board ofTrustees, American EnterpriseInstitute The Boyer Award and Lecture Series was established by the SmithKline Beckman Corporation in memory of its late chairman, Francis Boyer. The bearer of Mr. Boyer's tradition and the current chairman of SmithKline Beck man, Henry Wendt, is with us tonight, and I want to recognize Henry at this time. The Boyer Award and lectureship is selected by AEI's Council of Academic Advisers, chaired by Gale Johnson of the University of Chicago. It is given each year to an individual who has made notable contributions to enlarging our understanding of the proper relationship between the public and private sectors and who therefore has importantly served the public interest. Sir, in presenting this year's award to you and you to this audience, I do so with profoundrespect, everlasting gratitude, and enormous affection. WILLARD C. BUTCHER / 15 The 1988 Francis Boyer Lecture on Public Policy FREEDOM AND VIGILANCE Ronald W. Reagan FREEDOM AND VIGILANCE Ronald W. Reagan Thank you all very much. Thank you, President Ford, Jeane Kirkpatrick, Michael Novak, Irving Kristal, and Bill Butcher for those humbling words of praise. And thank you, Chris DeMuth, for the honor you have bestowed upon me. But I think the honor you pay me is more truly due to everyone here tonight. For many of the ideas that animated our administration can trace their ancestry to the pens and typewriters and word processors of all of you. Of course, it would be a massive understatement to say I see a lot of familiar facesin this room. In fact, for a minute I thought I had stumbled into the White House mess. But then I remembered you don't have to wear black tie in the mess. Well, not untiljanuary 20, anyway. As you know, I've just been to New York and back for a meeting with Mikhail Gorbachev. We were joined by Vice President Bush. Our discussions were positive and encouraging, as usual, and I was pleased by this opportu nity to have a last meeting with President Gorbachev before leaving office. The discussion covered our entire four-part agenda with the Soviet Union, and we looked in particular at what had been achieved since our last meeting in Moscow and what still needed to be accomplished in the future. I expressed to President Gorbachev my confidence that the work we began together at Geneva in 1985 will continue under the Bush administration. RONALD w. REAGAN I 19 You will not be surprised to hear that I particularly stressed the importance of human rights in U .S.-Soviet relations. I told the president that we Americans welcomed the changes that he has initiated in the Soviet Union, and we hope that much more will and should be done to benefit the Soviet people and also the relations between our countries. We also reviewed progress in arms control, resolution of regional conflicts, and our bilateral relation ship. I think we both expressed satisfaction in what we have achieved in recent years. But we also recognized that fundamental differences between our countries remain in many areas and that determined efforts by both sides will be necessary in the months and years ahead to overcome such differences. Now, I don't need to tell all of you what this may mean-it would be useless anyway, since over the course of the next few days I'll probably be reading immensely informed and pointed articles about what it means in all sorts of publications, and they'll all be by people in this room. About the Soviet unilateral troop reduction, I can only say that if it is carried out speedily and in full, history will regard it as significant. And we did see history today. An American president and vice president meeting a president of the Soviet Union under the gaze of the Statue of Liberty. It's something to be remembered. All of this is testimony to a process that was begun in 1985 in Geneva-testimony, too, to the sacrifices of the people of the freeworld throughout the postwar era. So while our hopes today are for a new era, let us remember that if that new era is indeed upon us, there was nothing inevitable about it. It was the result of hard 20 / THE 1988 FRANCIS BOYER LECTURE work-and of resolve and sacrifice on the part of those who love freedom and dare to strive for it. Let us remember, too, that at this critical juncture our responsibilities grow more, not less, serious. We must remain strong and free of illusion-for only by doing so can we reach out and embrace this new era and transform this hope of peace and freedom for all the world into reality. So the meeting today was a time forreflection and for continuity. Now let me do the same with you and consider how we have done these last eight years and whether we have done well. And I do mean "we." We have come a long way together-from the intellectual wilderness of the 1960s, through the heated intellectual battles of the 1970s, to the intellectual fruition of the 1980s. The American Enter prise Institute stands at the center of a revolution in ideas of which I, too, have been a part. Our ideas were greeted with varying degrees of scorn and hostility by what we used to call the establishment institutions. The universities, once the only real home for American scholarship, have been particularly unresponsive. And so it became neces sary to create our own research institutions as places where scholars could congregate and important studies could be produced that did not kowtow to the conventional wisdom. And your institution's remarkably distinguished body of work is testimony to the triumph of the think tank. For today, the most important American scholarship comes out of our think tanks, and no think tank has been more influential than the American Enterprise Institute. What we wanted was a chance to try our ideas out on the world stage. We have. And, my friends, I hope you are as proud as I, because, despite the naysayers and the RONALD w. REAGAN I 21 conventional wisdom, the words of the pundits, and the false prophecies of false Cassandras who proclaimed we could not succeed, we knew we were right. And I believe that, yes, we have been vindicated. And nowhere is that more true than in the realm of foreign policy.We came to Washington together in 1981, both as anti-Communists and as unapologetic defenders and promoters of a strong and vibrant America. I am proud to say I am still an anti-Communist. And I continue to be dedicated to the idea that we must trumpet our beliefs and advance our American ideals to all the peoples of the world until the towers of the tyrants crumble to dust. Yes, it seems to me that we have been as one these past eight years in an effortto establish a foreignpolicy that stood in firmopposition to the previous decade's misguided attempt to place this country on what they used to call in the 1970s the "right side of history"-by which those who used that unpleasant Marxist phrase meant we should accept the dominion of our adversaries over large parts of the world. We said no. We said we must propound and advance our national ideals abroad and once again hold high the banner for what I will, until the breath is gone from my body, continue to call "the free world." We promulgated a foreign policy whose funda mental basis was the truths all Americans hold to be self-evident: That all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. We have done this, not solely because we believe it is right, but because we know it is in our national interest to do so. A foreign policy based on our bedrock principles allows us to offer a practical solution to the suffering peoples of the world, a means of achieving the prosperity 22 / THE 1988 FRANCIS BOYER LECTURE and political stability that all Americans take forgranted as their birthright. What we are telling them-and their ofttimes recalcitrant leaders-is that they cannot achieve prosperity and stability through redistribution of resources or by taking up arms against a sea of self-inflictedtroubles. We've seen how that last monstrous idea has worked this decade-the war between Iran and Iraq, whose initial aim was control over an oil-rich province, has done more damage to both countries than ten plagues. No, we told the world the truth we have learned from the noble tradition of Western culture, and that is that the only answer to poverty, to war, to oppression is one simple word: freedom. Now, freedom is not only a moral imperative for our foreign policy, it's also-ifI may use a word forwhich fewin this room have much use-supremely pragmatic. For if there is anything the world has learned in the 1980s, it is that, as Alan Keyes has said, freedom works. That is a historic lesson, because until very recently many intellectuals believed the contrary. They supported political philosophies that argued for tyranny and, more particularly, Communist tyranny. The claim was that these tyrannies worked better than freedom and were more equitable. These intellectuals believed that the people of Mao's China, Ho's Vietnam, Castro's Cuba, and other socialist utopias were actually happy to sacrifice their freedom for food and shelter and so-called literacy programs. These noxious ideas have not, to put it mildly, withstood the scrutiny of honest scholars and the testimony of those fortunate enough to escape from those national prison camps. Refugeeshave told us what diligent research ers at AEI were meticulously demonstrating-that where there is little freedom, there is little food. RONALD W. REAGAN / 23 That where there is totalitarian indoctrination instead of education, literacy programs are a form of spiritual and psychological coercion. That in these coun tries, infant mortality is shockingly high and is getting worse. That the poverty-stricken tyrannies of the 1980s have only grown poorer and poorer. That tyranny is a parasite that saps the strength of a nation in its sway. That, like those who lived under Macbeth's tyranny, the tyran nized millions will ever cry out: "Our country sinks beneath the yoke-it weeps, it bleeds, and each new day a gash is added to her wounds." Tyranny fails. Freedom works. These facts, so little accepted only a decade ago, are now indisputable. There is little need here to rehearse the evidence in great detail. The tiny free-exchange experiments in the East bloc and the liberalization in the People's Republic of China are stunning evidence of the Communist world's desperate effortsto find a way out of the economic morass of state socialism. At the same time, the abject failureof the Sandinistas in Nicaragua a nation where the standard of living has dropped precipitously since the 1979 revolution-is stark proof of Communism's inherent inability to compel an enslaved population to do much of anything but suffer. I know it is often said of me that I am an optimist. Over the years I've been described as an inveterate optimist, an eternal optimist, a reflexive optimist, a born optimist, a canny optimist, a cagey optimist, even as "defiantly optimistic." It just goes to show, there is no word that cannot be turned into a pejorative if the pundits work hard enough at it. But yes, I am perfectly happy to admit that I am an optimist, and I would like to explain why I believe-in 24 / THE 1988 FRANCIS BOYER LECTURE contrast to some of you here tonight-that optimism is an appropriate attitude to bring to bear when thinking about our foreign policy. The story of this century is actually two stories. It's a terrible story of world wars, totalitarian enslavement, concentration camps. But it is also the story of freedom the fulfillmentof the promise of freedominside the United States and the triumph of democratic systems in Western Europe,Japan, Israel, El Salvador, and many other places. We have seen the thrilling spectacle of mankind refusing to accept the shackles placed upon us when we read the works of Solzhenitsyn and Valladares, consider the heroism of Sharansky and Sakharov, and watch in wonder these last months as hundreds of thousands throughout the captive nations gather to press forfreedom. Now, one may, if one chooses, take the firststory as the representative tale of the twentieth century. I look to the second and find glorious examples of what freedom can bring. I think of how astonishing it is that Italy and Germany and Japan, three nations that engaged us in a struggle literally to the death, have in just two score years become our brethren, our friends. The nations of Western Europe, which existed in a state you might call "cold war" for most of the past millennium with periods of real war thrown into the bargain, are now the best of friends and are on the verge of creating the world's largest free market. Latin America, once a despot's paradise, is now 90 percent democratic. The brave people of El Salvador have faced down those who would still their voices by turning out to vote in great number. In the Far East, democracy has taken unprecedented strides in such countries as South Korea and the Philippines. RONALD W. REAGAN / 25 Freedom works, and freedomis on the march, and yes, I am an optimist, and yes, I believe I have every reason to be. I am an optimist because we are rapidly developing the means to neutralize the extraordinary threat of nuclear missiles through our Strategic Defense Initiative. I am an optimist because I believe we have proved with our policy of peace through strength that when we are strong, peace and freedomwill prevail. This November, the electorate told us they agreed. But while I believe that optimism is appropriate and while I believe that freedom is on the march, I believe optimism must be tempered with prudence and its assumptions challenged every waking moment of every day. The new democracies around the world are fragile, and inattention to their fragilityand their needs may result in the end of freedomthere. In Central America, our policy of peace through strength has been undercut by a wavering Democrat controlled Congress that seems less concerned about the threat of a consolidated Marxist-Leninist regime in Nicara gua than the possibility of scoring points against a policy so closely associated with our administration. And yes, I still believe the noble freedom fighterswho have been battling forthe soul of their homeland continue to be the best hope forfreedom and democracy in Nicaragua. I am troubled by something else, as well. The 1980s have been the glory years of the NATOalliance. The Soviet deployment of intermediate-range missiles presented NATO with its greatest challenge since the construction of the Berlin Wall, and the alliance not only survived but was vindicated by the signing of the INF Treaty in Washington one year ago tomorrow. The NATO alliance is the best example we have to show the less fortunate peoples of the 26 / THE 1988 FRANCIS BOYER LECTURE world how freedom and democracy create friendship and comity between peoples and nations. But forty years after the North Atlantic Treaty, there are still some who question the alliance. Thus we hear, just months after the destruction of the firstintermediate range missile, that somehow the United States is being mistreated by our friends and allies. The argument they use is that our allies are not sharing the burden of their own defense equitably. I agree that our NATO allies could be sharing the burden better. We must also solve our economic disputes more fairly. But we must always remember the very real burden our allies bear that we never will. We must remember our allies perform a role that geography has forced upon them. They are literally on the frontlines for the West. Our fortunategeography has kept the wars of the twentieth century well away from the American mainland, but in Europe, the memory is as freshas the memories of a fifty-year-oldand the tales of a grandfather. Their soldiers, their children, their homes, their civilization itself hang in the balance every day. We cannot, we must not forget this. And we should not give in to the temptation to transmute a small difference in a historic relationship into a major disagreement that might end up damaging the greatest foreign policy success of the postwar era. I believe we can and will make progress on these matters as long as we hold true to our principles and do not give up the battle. Now, I would like to ask those of you in this room who consider yourselves foreignpolicy skeptics to do me one last favor. I want to ask you to remain vigilant. You are the people who play the vital role of reminding politicians and policy makers of many important and necessary truths we sometimes forget. RONALD W. REAGAN f 27 I It's true that sometimes you can't see the forest for the trees; indeed, sometimes you can't even see the trees for the grass that surrounds them. So please, forGeorge Bush's sake and for the sake of all we hold dear, please keep watching the forest. I take my leave of you now by offeringa finalprayer that God may bless and keep all of you all the days of your life. 28 / THE 1988 FRANCIS BOYER LECTURE The Francis Boyer Lectures Ronald W. Reagan, Freedom and Vigilance (1988) Paul A. Volcker, Public Service: The Quiet Crisis ( 1987) David Packard, Management ofAmerica )s National Defense ( 1986) Jeane J. Kirkpatrick, The United States and the World: Setting Limits ( 1985) Robert H. Bork, Tradition and Morality in Constitutional Law (1984) Alan A. Walters, The British Renaissance 1979-? (1983) Hanna Holborn Gray, The Higher Learning and the New Consumerism (1982) Henry A. Kissinger, The Realities of Security ( 1981) Paul W. McCracken, Robert H. Bork, Irving Kristo!, and Michael Novak, William]. Baroody) Sr.) Remembered ( 1980) Paul Johnson, The Things That Are Not Caesars (1979) Arthur F. Burns,The Condition oftheAmericanEconomy (1978) Gerald R. Ford, Toward a Healthy Economy ( 1977) American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research 0-8447-1387-2