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Reagan, in His Own Hand: The Writings of Ronald Reagan That Reveal His Revolutionary Vision for America

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Introduction

Ronald Reagan wrote, in his own hand, from his high school years
right through his presidency and on into retirement -- until
Alzheimer's disease wreaked its gradual destruction. He wrote not
only letters, short fiction, poetry, and sports stories, but
speeches, newspaper articles, instructions to his cabinet and
staff, and radio commentary on public policy issues, both foreign
and domestic.
Nevertheless, many of the writings under his name -- including
the two books, Where's the Rest of Me? and An American
Life
-- were partially written by ghostwriters. A few of his
presidential speeches were drafted personally, but most were
written in interaction with White House speechwriters. Most of his
original writings -- those we are absolutely sure are his -- were
pre-presidential. As Nancy Reagan recalls, "He continued to write
in the White House. He wrote speeches in the Oval Office, and he
had his own desk in the living quarters of the White House. He was
always sitting at his desk in the White House, writing. He was so
used to writing his own speeches that it took him a while to
realize that, as president, he just wasn't going to have the time
to write, though he could go over a speech draft and edit and
correct. But to take the time to write a whole speech? He soon
realized he wasn't going to have that time."
From
his high school and college years, seventeen handwritten
manuscripts (and a French quiz) written between 1925 and 1931 have
been preserved, mostly short stories. The high school yearbook (on
which he worked) has a story and a poem he wrote. In college, he
wrote for the weekly newspaper. Reagan wrote a weekly sports column
for the Des Moines Dispatch while he worked as a radio
announcer at WHO. When he went to Hollywood, he wrote, with the
cooperation of Warner Bros. but not, according to Reagan himself,
with their help, a series of seventeen articles about his
experiences for the Des Moines Sunday Register.
Nothing has thus far been found in his own hand of the speeches
he gave to employees at General Electric's 135 plants between
September 1954 and 1962 (although he often used a
question-and-answer format on these occasions) or the many other
speeches he gave during this time. It is quite possible that they
were his own creations, but we cannot be sure. A number of these
speeches appeared in print in various publications with titles such
as A Time for Choosing, Encroaching Control, and Losing
Freedom by Installments.
We have excluded them from this book
in order to focus on the substantive writings from the immediate
pre-presidential years that exist in his own handwritten
drafts.
We
know that Reagan wrote extensively during 1975-79, between his
years as governor of California and his inauguration as president.
He spent these years giving speeches, writing a newspaper column,
and giving over a thousand radio addresses. The idea of the radio
broadcasts and newspaper columns was developed in 1974 during
Reagan's final months as governor of California. Peter Hannaford,
assistant to the governor and director of public affairs during
Reagan's final year, conferred with Ed Meese, then Reagan's chief
of staff, and Michael Deaver, and suggested that the governor
consider the offer of Harry O'Connor, the head of O'Connor Creative
Services in Hollywood, to produce "a five-day-a-week, five-minute
RR [radio] commentary program, to be syndicated
nationally."
One
weekend in October 1974, Hannaford and Deaver presented a
comprehensive plan to Reagan -- including newspaper columns, radio
commentary, and several speeches a month. Reagan agreed to do it
under the management of a new firm, Deaver & Hannaford,
Inc.
On
December 30, 1974, Governor Reagan announced his plans at the Los
Angeles Press Club. The radio broadcasts were produced by Harry
O'Connor and titled "Viewpoint." Though Reagan relied on Hannaford
to draft most of the newspaper columns, he enjoyed writing the
radio broadcasts himself, and eventually wrote most of those
essays.
In a
letter dated September 19, 1978, Reagan explained to a private
citizen how his radio broadcasts were written: "I write many of my
commentaries while I'm traveling and this [the one requested by the
citizen] was done on a cross country plane trip." Reagan taped the
broadcasts in batches of fifteen at a recording studio. O'Connor
Services would distribute them with suggested airing dates, but
radio stations would broadcast them according to their schedules.
The dates used here are taping dates, except as noted.
In a
memo to Reagan on May 23, 1975, five months after the commentaries
and columns began, Peter Hannaford reported that the broadcasts
were being heard on 286 radio stations, and the columns were being
printed in 226 newspapers. Similar numbers were reported by
Hannaford two years later. In correspondence on October 30, 1978,
Reagan estimated that through his daily radio broadcasts and
biweekly newspaper columns he was in touch with "20 million
Americans each week."
The
radio broadcasts began in January 1975. Reagan suspended the
broadcasts when he ran for the presidency in the late fall of 1975.
The broadcasts were resumed by Reagan after he lost the Republican
Party's nomination to President Gerald Ford in the summer of 1976.
He ended his broadcasts in October 1979 as he was preparing to
announce his 1980 presidential aspirations.


Only a few people who worked with or were close to Reagan, like
Nancy Reagan, knew that the governor wrote most of the radio
broadcasts. "He worked a lot at home," Nancy recalled in an
interview. "I can see him sitting at his desk writing, which he
seemed to do all the time. Often he'd take a long shower because he
said that was where he got a lot of his thoughts. He'd stand in the
shower and think about what he wanted to write. And then, when he
got out, he'd sit down and write....Nobody thought that he ever
read anything either -- but he was a voracious reader. I don't ever
remember Ronnie sitting and watching television. I really don't. I
just don't. When I picture those days, it's him sitting behind that
desk in the bedroom, working."
Martin Anderson recalls traveling with Reagan in 1976. On
airplanes, Reagan always sat by the window, and whoever was
traveling with him took the aisle seat next to him as a "blocker."
As soon as the airplane lifted off the runway, he would reach for
his briefcase. The briefcase contained articles to read, stacks of
4- by 6-inch cards that contained speech drafts written in his
shorthand, pens and pencils, and a supply of writing paper, which
was almost always lined, yellow, legal-size paper.
When
Reagan wrote, he didn't scribble or scrawl, he wrote in a clear
script. He rarely stopped to cross things out or edit. When he
reached the bottom of the legal pad, he carefully flipped the page
over, tucked it in on the back side of the pad, and proceeded on to
the second page. The desired length of one of his radio essays was
two full legal pages, and his words almost always just filled that
second page -- rarely shorter or longer.
Dennis LeBlanc, a young member of the California State Police,
was assigned to the security detail of Governor Reagan in 1971.
After Reagan left office, LeBlanc stayed on with Reagan to do all
his scheduling and advance work, and became the only man to travel
continually with Reagan for the next three years, often traveling
alone with him.
"He
was constantly writing," declared LeBlanc; "a lot of the time it
was on a legal pad, where he'd write things out longhand. Other
times it would be taking speeches that he wrote out longhand, and
then putting it on 4 by 6 cards in an abbreviated way, using the
special shorthand he had developed.
"But
all the time he was writing. He would always fly first class. He'd
sit by the window, and I'd sit in the aisle seat next to him. It
didn't matter whether or not there was a movie being shown and all
the lights were out -- he'd turn on his reading lamp and would
constantly be writing."
Beginning in early 1975, Reagan, with the help of LeBlanc and
Barney Barnett, a retired California highway patrolman who had been
Reagan's driver when he was governor, spent a lot of time
rebuilding the ranch property he had recently bought.
"We
drove up to the ranch from Los Angeles and back down the same day
many, many times for the next two years," recalls LeBlanc. "Either
Barney or I would drive, and Reagan would sit in the backseat with
his legal pad, writing.
"The
car we used was a red 1969 Ford station wagon, because Mrs.
Reagan's favorite color was red. Barney and I and Reagan would
leave Los Angeles at seven o'clock in the morning, and it would
take us about two and a half hours to get to the ranch. All the way
up Reagan would be writing.
"When we got to the ranch, we'd put in eight or nine hours of
work. We ripped out walls and really gutted the place, so you
couldn't stay overnight there. Then we'd drive back. He would be
writing in the backseat when we drove back. There was some idle
chitchat and stuff, but he never fell asleep and he never read --
he was just always writing.
"What was amazing to me," said LeBlanc, "was the fact that
Ronald Reagan never slept on planes when he was traveling. It was
the same way when I was with him in the station wagon. It was like
-- you're wasting time if you are sleeping. You know, everyone's
got things to do. And his thing to do when I was with him was his
writing."
David Fischer, Reagan's executive assistant in 1978 and 1979,
had similar memories. "The minute the meal service was done, he'd
whip out the legal pad and start writing. He wrote to fit the exact
time he needed to record. I was always amazed at how hard he
worked. I'd be exhausted from traveling with him; I could start
reading something and quickly fall asleep, and when I woke up he'd
still be working, just writing away."
Michael Deaver and Ed Meese, his two top advisers since the
mid-1960s, both confirm the same story. In addition to the
broadcasts, Ed Meese remembers that he wrote many of his own
speeches, at home on weekends. "He would come in on Monday morning
with six, eight, or ten pages from his legal pad, all in his own
handwriting. One day we found him in his office checking the typed
copy of one of his speeches against his written copy to make sure
it was accurate, and then he took the written pages, tore them up
and put them in the wastebasket. I'm afraid a lot of his
handwritten documents ended up that way."
It
may partly be luck that so many handwritten drafts of the policy
essays Reagan wrote for his radio broadcasts survived. William P.
Clark, who served as chief of staff to Governor Reagan in
California and later followed him to Washington and became his
national security adviser, recalled the difficulty his staff had in
preserving documents while he was governor.
"Yes, he was a writer," said Clark about Reagan, but
"unfortunately, he maintained one habit we were unable to ever
break other than by scouring his trash basket.
"He
threw away his longhand notes. Insisting that the top of his desk
must be clear at the end of each day, he would carefully place a
paper or two in his top desk drawer to age for the morrow's review
and action. Then, a few informational items would go into a folder
or small leather briefcase for completion at the residence. But
then his longhand notes would go into the wastebasket unless
intercepted. With our admonition that these could be important to
historians some day, he would respond, 'Well, OK, OK.' Helene or
Kathy (his secretaries) would take possession of our catch as he
moved toward the door, giving his own cheery admonition, 'All
right, you good people, goodnight and get home to your
families.'
"Nodding, we always remained."As
Hannaford recalls, Reagan would write large numbers of radio
addresses at a time. "I can still see him coming into the office in
Los Angeles after these trips, often with a sheaf of yellow pages
in his hand and a big grin on his face. He would hand the
handwritten pages triumphantly to Elaine Crispen [at the time our
chief administrative assistant], saying: 'There you are, Elaine,
three weeks' worth of radio scripts for typing.'"
Elaine Crispen (now Elaine Sawyer) was the person who took the
handwritten drafts that Reagan produced and typed them for his
recording sessions. She worked for Reagan during the five years he
had his radio program. "As I remember it," recalled Elaine, "he
would go to the recording studio on a Saturday. He had written a
lot of the radio scripts while he was out on the road. When he came
back to the Los Angeles office, he would give them to us. We had to
have a hard copy that you could read from, because sometimes his
handwriting was not that easy to read. We typed every one of his
handwritten yellow sheets so that he could go to the studio and
read them in clear print....We had devised a system so that his
handwritten yellow sheets were never to be thrown out. We were
supposed to save them and file them. Probably some of us knew that
maybe someday they would be valuable historically."


We have included very few speeches in this book, because apparently
few survive in his own hand. We do know that he wrote many of his
pre-presidential speeches. His use of notecards for their delivery
became famous, although the details of how he did it have not been
widely shared.
Over
the years Ronald Reagan wore either eyeglasses or contact lenses
for reading, and felt that any serious policy speech -- with its
myriad facts and numbers -- had to be written out in advance and
read to avoid errors. But as he once explained, he didn't like to
wear eyeglasses; when he wore contact lenses, he could see the
audience but could not read his speech because the writing blurred,
and finally, he felt the audience did not like anyone to read a
speech.
Reagan's solution to this problem was twofold. First, he
figured out how to read a speech draft without wearing his glasses.
En route to his speech, he wore his long-distance contact lenses.
They were the older, fairly small, hard plastic lenses. Just before
he arrived at the speech site, while sitting in a car or in an
airplane, he would lean forward, bring both hands to his face, and
then with his forefinger and thumb pluck out the lens that was in
his right eye. After popping the lens in his mouth for a quick
wash, he carefully placed the lens into a small case and dropped it
into his coat pocket.
Now
Reagan had one long-vision eye and one near-vision eye, and he had
learned how to use them separately. With his naked right eye, he
could read. But when he looked out at the audience, he focused on
them with his lens-clad left eye. Throughout his speech he would go
back and forth, reading with one eye, watching the audience with
the other.
As
for the text, he disliked reading speeches typewritten on regular
letter-sized paper. Carrying a speech when he walked up to the
lectern was obvious, and on a windy day at an outside lectern it
was difficult to hold and turn the pages -- and more than one
presidential candidate has lost pages of a speech in this
situation. What he settled on were index cards, medium size, 4- by
6-inch cards that would fit into the side pocket of his suit
coat.
He
would take the speech draft he had written out longhand, and
transfer it directly to the cards for reading. The problem was that
the speeches were written on yellow legal pads, 14 by 8 1Ž2
inches in size -- five times bigger than those 4- by 6-inch cards
that fitted so nicely in his suit coat pocket.
So
Reagan invented his own shorthand.
He
would spend hours changing the penned words into this shorthand.
Some words in the original draft were left out. Other words he
shortened by dropping vowels or using special abbreviations. Every
now and then he would make coded letters to represent words. All
the shorthand writing was block printed on the cards, in capital
letters -- usually in black ink. Once he had rewritten a sentence
of his original writing into shorthand, he would draw a line above
and below the new writing so it would stand out. To further pack
even more text onto a card, he eliminated all indentations and
paragraphs. One sentence followed another, separated only by the
thick black lines.
Using this technique, Reagan could copy much of the writing
that filled one page of a legal pad onto a 4-by-6 card. Each card
was then numbered in the upper right-hand corner so he could keep
track of them. Finally, the finished pack of cards was bound
together with an elastic band. A major speech filled twenty-five to
thirty cards.
Reagan's speech system gave the appearance of being casual and
spontaneous, while in reality his speeches had the cold precision
of any carefully researched and typed speech manuscript.
He
would walk across the stage to the lectern to address his audience,
both arms swinging back and forth, often waving to the audience,
giving no sign whatsoever of a prepared text. After he reached the
lectern, only those seated behind him could notice, if they watched
very closely, his left hand drop into his jacket pocket and pull
out a packet of those cards. Laying the cards on top of the
lectern, he would glance down, read the top card, and begin to
speak.
It
helped a lot that he had a gift for remembering all that was on
that card. As he spoke, his hands were sorting the cards, slipping
the top card to the bottom of the deck, while his naked eye glanced
down every now and then to read the next card. When his speech was
over, he quickly scooped the cards together, and as one hand
dropped them back in his coat pocket his other hand was waving to
the audience.
The
system also made it easy to edit and prepare new speeches. To cut
part of a speech, he just removed some cards. To add something, he
prepared new cards and slipped them in the deck. To prepare a new
speech, Reagan often combined sections of two or more speech card
decks, producing a brand-new speech from old material.
Later, when he became president, he did not have time to
prepare speeches this way, and he relied on speechwriters to
prepare drafts, which he edited, and TelePrompTers to read them.
But while he was writing his own material, the cards served him
well.


The manuscripts from which this book is drawn were discovered by
accident. Kiron Skinner was the first scholar since Edmund Morris
to be granted access to the private papers of President Ronald
Reagan. She found several boxes of handwritten drafts of radio
broadcasts, speeches, and correspondence by Reagan, and with
Annelise Anderson and Martin Anderson, undertook to prepare a
selection of these documents for publication, with Skinner focusing
on the foreign and defense policy essays and the Andersons on
domestic and economic policy. Together, the editors realized that
they had a treasure trove of documents that showed Reagan grappling
with the major policy issues of the time.
Although the handwritten broadcasts and other pre-presidential
papers are stored at the Reagan Library, the National Archives does
not have authority over them because they are President Reagan's
private papers and not those of the U.S. government. The
president's personal papers have been kept in boxes for many
decades. Some boxes contain archival folders that separate
documents by subject or chronology; others contain hundreds of
disorganized pieces of paper. The index to the collection is
incomplete, but a database of the radio broadcasts developed by
Annelise Anderson is produced here in the Appendix.
Reagan's work is presented as he wrote it. The book offers
Reagan's own words in his own hand, including personal edits and
even a few errors. Everything here, including the marginal
comments, is Reagan's own. The Note on Editorial Methods (page xxv)
explains the conventions used to display his handwritten drafts in
type.
In
reading these first rough drafts it should be kept in mind that
they are first rough drafts. They were never intended to be
published. They were written to be edited and typed, and Reagan
took shortcuts while writing.
When
Reagan wrote he often used abbreviations and some of the shorthand
he used on his speech cards. This was especially true when he was
writing something that would be typed before he recorded it as a
radio broadcast or gave it as a speech. His secretaries knew his
abbreviations and shorthand and turned them into clean English as
they typed.
For
example, he would write "nat." for nation, "ec. & pol." for
economics and politics, "burocracy" for bureaucracy. He was often
casual about where he placed apostrophes, if he used them at all,
and they can be found hovering over a word that needed one. After
writing the teaser with which he began all his radio essays, he
usually wrote "I'll be right back." But sometimes he wrote "I'll be
rite back."
If
you look back at his speech card on page xix, you can see the full
use of this technique: "Ending" becomes "Endng" -- and "fight"
becomes "fite."
Reagan's essays and other writings constitute many hundreds of
pages of original first drafts. We have tried to select documents
so that they represent a fair sampling of Reagan's views on a wide
variety of specific issues over the five-year period he was
broadcasting the radio commentaries.
In
writing these daily essays on almost every national policy issue
during the 1970s, Reagan was acting as a one-man think tank. He
drew upon hundreds of sources, and his drafts contain thousands of
facts and figures. Sometimes he lists his sources in accompanying
documents. In one case, for an essay on oil, he appended them. At
times he cites his sources in the text. And in many cases he simply
does not mention the specific sources.
Because he was writing on topical subjects in the 1970s, it is
sometimes difficult, many years later, to determine sources. We
have checked dozens of references in his writings and, in virtually
all cases, Reagan correctly cited or quoted his sources.
In
Martin Anderson's experience, while advising Reagan during his
presidential campaigns and in the presidency, whenever aides
challenged him on some fact he had used, Reagan produced a source
for his statements. In rare cases the source itself might not have
been entirely accurate.
As
our memory of events in the 1970s recedes, some of the events that
Reagan reports might seem questionable. For instance, in one of his
radio commentaries he writes about the plan of the People's
Republic of China to "liberate Taiwan," as presented in a private
speech given by Foreign Minister Huang Hua on July 30, 1977. After
considerable searching, we found a copy of Huang Hua's speech,
"Report on the World Situation," in a Taiwanese journal, Issues
and Studies: A Journal of China Studies and International
Affairs.
We
have not fact-checked everything that Reagan writes about in his
radio commentaries, but we have checked numerous events he cites --
and they are discussed in our footnotes.
The
bulk of the original handwritten documents reproduced in this
volume are stored at the Reagan Presidential Library in Simi
Valley, California, in the "Pre-Presidential Papers, 1921-1980"
(PPP) collection of papers. The original handwritten drafts of
radio broadcasts are mainly found in boxes 12, 14, 15, and 21.
Typescripts of the radio broadcasts are found in these boxes and
others throughout the PPP collection. Typescripts are also found at
the Hoover Institution Archives in the Citizens for Reagan (CFR)
Collection, the Peter Hannaford (PH) Collection, and the Ronald
Reagan Subject Collection (RRSC). The main boxes for locating
typescripts of the radio broadcasts at Hoover are CFR 35, 39, 104,
and 105; PH 2 and 3; and RRSC 8.
In
addition to the radio scripts, we have included examples of the
other kinds of documents that exist in his handwriting. Most of
these documents are found in the President's private papers at the
Ronald Reagan Library. A few of Reagan's other writings included in
this book come from private collections.
The
last document he wrote, a letter Edmund Morris calls "a masterly
piece of writing" with "the simplicity of genius," is of course the
1994 letter to the nation about his Alzheimer's. Nancy recalls that
she "had somebody ask me just the other day about the Alzheimer's
letter. 'Did he just sit down and write it? Or did he do some
drafts?' I said, 'No, he just sat down and wrote it.'"
From Part One: Reagan's
Philosophy
The eight radio addresses in this section express concepts
and themes found in many of Reagan's handwritten manuscripts for
radio commentaries and speeches given in his pre-presidential
years. Taken together, the essays state the political and
philosophical views on which his policies as president, both
foreign and domestic, were based.
As we look back on what he wrote in the late 1970s from the
perspective of the post-Communist era, in a time of economic
vitality and with the United States as the world's only superpower,
it is easy to forget how at odds his views were with the accepted
wisdom of the day. The late 1970s was a period of high inflation,
low economic growth, relatively high unemployment, and questions
about the influence of the United States on the world scene. Many
believed that the political systems of the United States and the
Soviet Union were gradually converging. Some doubted that a
political system based on individual freedom and free markets could
compete effectively with a centrally controlled command economy
that could override and repress political dissent.
Reagan had no such doubts. In spite of the economic and
political problems, he found America's strength in its political
system -- in liberty, in the system that freed, as he put it, the
individual genius of man -- a system that, he said, has given the
country political stability, the creativity of private enterprise,
advanced technology, and a generosity of spirit. He also considered
virtue fundamental to representative government and argued against
expediency rather than principle in foreign policy.
His condemnation of communism, in words written in 1975, is
powerful. Communism, he wrote, is neither an economic nor a
political system, but a form of insanity, an aberration. He wonders
"how much more misery it will cause before it disappears." In
comparing the statements of past and present leaders of the two
systems, he quotes, as he often did, John Winthrop's 1630 statement
on the deck of the
Arbella: "We shall be as a city upon a
hill." But as the complete quotation Reagan uses makes clear, the
significance of the city's location on a hill is not only that it
is blessed, but that it is open to observation and judgment by the
entire world.
The great challenge of the world situation was, Reagan says
in 1975, maintaining peace and avoiding the catastrophe of nuclear
war, and doing so not through surrender but through military
strength backed by economic vitality and credibility. In a radio
address that is an elaboration of his extemporaneous speech at the
Republican National Convention in 1976 after losing the nomination
to Gerald Ford, he tells of writing a letter for a time capsule to
be opened one hundred years later. He turns again to the question
of nuclear Armageddon, of the potential of the two superpowers to
fire missiles at one another. The challenge is not only preserving
the beauty he sees as he travels the Pacific Coast Highway, but of
preserving a world of peace, prosperity, and freedom of
choice.
Reagan reiterated the same themes and concepts of these
eight essays in his farewell speech from the Oval Office on January
11, 1989. Not even he had known how far-reaching his philosophy and
policies would be, for, he says, "We meant to change a nation, and
instead, we changed a world."

Peace

April 1975

How
much is it worth to not have WWIII

I'll
be right back.


While in London I had an opportunity to visit with various govt.
officials including those concerned with foreign affairs.
Inevitably the conversation turned to the world situation & how
to maintain peace. in the world. And just as inevitably the
Soviet U. was automatically accepted as the possible threat to
peace just as 40 yrs. ago it was Nazi Germany that loomed as the
storm cloud on the horizon. And of course that storm cloud did
eventually fill the sky & raining rain
fire & brimstone on all the world.
The
leaders of that generation saw the growing menace & talked of
it but reacted to the growing mil. might of Germany with anguished
passiveness. Will it be said of todays world leaders th as it was
of the pre W.W.II. leaders "they were better at surviving the
catastrophe than they were at preventing it?
Several times in the discussions at WhitehallW.W.II did not happen because the Nat's. of the free world
engaged in a massive mil. buildup. The opposite is true. In
most countries including our own, "too little too late" described
our the reaction to the Nazi mil.
colossus.
What
does it take for us to learn? On every hand here & abroad when
the suggestion is made that we strengthen the mil. capability of
Nato the reply is that it's not politically expedient to incrs.
spending for armaments because the people are against it. Our own
Congress which is willing to run an $80 Bil. deficit for every kind
of social experiment screams long & loud for reduction of the
budget for defense. But have any of the pol. leaders laid the facts
out for the people? Of course the overtaxed citizenry in Europe
& America want govt. spending reduced. But if we are told the
truth, namely that enough evidence of weakness or lack of willpower
on our part could tempt the Soviet U. into as it once
did tempted Hitler & the mil. rulers of Japan I
believe our decision would be in favor of an ounce of prevention.
Certainly we havent forgotten that after W.WII the Japanese told us
they they were tempted decided on war when
they saw our army staging war games with wooden guns. They also
took note that
One month before Pearl Harbor Congress
came within one a single vote of abolishing the draft
& sending the bulk of our army home.
It
has recently been revealed that for 12 yrs. a behavioral scientist
at the U. of Hawaii has headed up a team of distinguished
colleagues in a Federally-Funded, computerized study of
International behavior. Summed up in one sentence they have learned
that "to abdicate power is to abdicate the right to maintain
peace."
The
study focused mainly upon Red China, Russia & the US. Every bit
of data from trade to tourism -- from threats to treaties -- was
fed into the computers. The findings prove conclusively that
what Laurence Beilenson wrote in his book "The Treaty Trap" is
true. "Nations that place their faith in treaties & fail to
keep their hardware up don't hang around to stick around
long enough
to write many pages in history."
According to the report (quote) "It is not equality in
power," "that reduces hostility & conflict. Rather it is power
dominance or submission." -- Peace is purchased by making yourself
stronger than your adversary -- or by dismantling power &
submitting to ones enemies." (unquote).
Power is not only sufficient military strength
but it's also a sound economy, a reliable energy supply and
credibility -- the belief by any potential enemy that you will not
choose surrender as the way to maintain peace. Thomas Jefferson
said "The American people won't make a mistake if they are given
all the facts."
It's time we were given the facts aboutPerhaps Cong. should be given some facts about us, namely that
we'd rather prevent a war by being well armed than by
surrendering.
This
is Ronald Reagan. Thanks for listening.

Shaping the World for 100 Years to Come

September 1, 1976

In
this election year many of us talk about the world of
tomorrow but do we really think about it? I'll be right
back.


Sometimes it's very easy to get very glib about how
the decisions we are making will shape the world for a hundred
years to come. Then A few weeks ago I found myself faced
with having to really think about it. what we are doing
today & what people (not history) PEOPLE LIKE OURSELVES will
say about us.

I'd
been asked to write a letter for a "time capsule" which would be
opened in Los Angeles 100 yrs. from now. It will be
The occasion will be the Los Angeles Bicentennial & of course
our countrys tri-centennial. It was suggested that I mention some
of the problems confronting us in this election year. Since I've
been talking about those problems for about some 9
months that didn't look like too much of a chore.
So
riding down the coast highway from Santa Barbara -- a yellow tablet
on my lap (someone else was driving) I started to write my letter
to the future.
It
was a beautiful summer afternoon. The Pacific stretched out to the
horizon on one side of the highway and on the other the Santa Ynez
mt's. were etched against a sky as blue as the Ocean.
I
found myself wondering if it would look the same 100 yrs. from now.
Will there still be a coast highway? Will people still be
travelling in automobiles, or will they be looking down at the
mountains from aircraft or moving so fast the beauty of all I
saw
this would be lost?
Suddenly the simple drafting of a letter became a rather
complex chore. Think about it for a minute. What do you put in a
letter that's going to be read 100 yrs. from now -- in the year
2076? What do you say about our problems when those who read the
letter will alr know what we dont know -- namely how well we
did with those problems? In short they will be living in the world
we helped to shape.
Will
they read the letter with gratitude in their hearts for what we did
or will they be bitter because miserable the heritage we
left them was one of human misery?
Oh I
wrote of the problems we face here in 1976 -- The choice we face
between continuing the policies of the last 40 yrs. that have led
to bigger & bigger govt, less & less liberty,
redistribution of earnings through confiscatory taxation or trying
to get back on the original course set for us by the Founding
Fathers. Will we choose fiscal responsibility, limited govt, and
freedom of choice for all our people? Or will we let an
irresponsible Congress take the final set us on the road our
English cousins have already taken? The road to ec. ruin and
state control of our very lives?
On
the international scene two great superpowers face each other with
nuclear missiles at the ready -- poised to bring Armageddon to the
world.
Those who read my letter will know whether those missiles were
fired or not. They Either they will be surrounded by
the same beauty I knew as I wrote the letter we know
or they will wonder sadly what it was like when the world was
still beautiful. before that awful day when civilization
broke down.
If
we here in this election year of our Lord 1976 today
meet the challenge confronting us, -- those who open that time
capsule in 2076 100 yrs. from now will do so in a
place of
beauty knowing peace, prosperity and the
ultimate in personal freedom. consistent with an orderly,
civilized society.
If
we dont meet keep our rendezvous with destiny, the letter
probably will never be read -- because talk of individual
freedom will not be permitted in that world 100 yrs. from now which
we are shaping and
they will live in the world which we had
a hand in shaping and
we left them, a world in which no
one is allowed to read or hear such terms as of
individual liberty or
freedom of choice. & individual
liberty.

Communism, the Disease

May 1975

Mankind has survived all maner manner of evil
diseases & plagues -- let's hope he can [but, can
it
] survive Communism?
I'll
be rite back.


When a disease like communism hangs on as it has for a half century
or more it's good, now & 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 it's symptoms and it's
effects on the human system One We should remember one of the
characteristics of the ailment is double talk beginning

For example if you and I in America planted land mines on
our borders, ringed the country with barb 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 doubletalk I sometimes think we've
lost some of our fear of the disease. We need a frequent
vaccination to guard against being infected until one
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 of us
who have the sickness & we who are well [don't?]
Right now there are a number of Russian women who fell in love
& married Americans & other foreigners who happened to be
stationed in the Soviet U. 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 Am. husbands for example finished whatever
[their] assignments they were on in Russia and
came home their wives had to get [Soviet government]
permission to leave go with them. from the Soviet
govt. And
The Soviet govt. plays a heartless game of burocratic
paper shuffling -- never coming right out & saying "no," but
just keeping them filling out papers, renewing applications etc. --
sometimes for years.
There is 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 visited dropped in on the class to tell them
that for doing so they giving the teacher [that
for giving the] flowers
none of them would be permitted to go
on to college. They were all would all be assigned to
the 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 an innocent a child.
Berlin is divided, as we [you] know,
between into the East or sick-with-communism Berlin
side and the well or Free Berlin Western side.
Between the two flows the Spree river. Around noon on the 11th
of
May 11, a 5-year-old boy fell into the river. at
the point where the entire stream is in East Berlin.
Firemen
from W. Berlin started to go to his rescue. An East German
patrol boat barred them from entering the water because at that
point the stream flows wholly on East Berlin territory. The 5 yr.
old boy drowned.
The
Mayor of W. Berlin described the refusal of the E. German guards to
either permit the Westerners to come to his rescue as "an
incomprehensible and frightful act -- placing pol. considerations
before the saving of a human life." Which is exactly what they did.
Remember they were in a patrol boat -- they chose to prevent the W.
Germans from setting foot [entering] in their Eastern
water rather than go to the child's rescue themselves. But they did
tidy things up -- 3 hrs. later E. German frog men recovered the
body.
Communism is neither an ec. or a pol. system -- it is a form of
insanity -- a temporary aberration which will one day disappear
from the earth because it is contrary to human nature. I wonder how
much more misery it will cause before it disappears.


Excerpted from REAGAN, IN HIS OWN HAND © Copyright 2001 by
Ronald Reagan, et al. Reprinted with permission from The Free
Press, an imprint of Simon and Schuster. All rights
reserved.

Reagan, in His Own Hand: The Writings of Ronald Reagan That Reveal His Revolutionary Vision for America
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  • Genres: Nonfiction
  • hardcover: 576 pages
  • Publisher: Free Press
  • ISBN-10: 074320123X
  • ISBN-13: 9780743201230