Wednesday, June 13, 2012

Building the Infrastructure of Democracy: Reagan's Legacy 30 Years Later

John Sullivan of the Center for International Private Enterprise has a nice homage to President Reagan's Westminster Address and it's role in fostering the expansion of democracy around the world.

During the last 30 years, totalitarian regimes have fallen and democracies have risen in all corners of the world, proving that people do strive, inexorably and eventually, toward freedom. At the end of his speech at Westminster, President Reagan harkened back to Sir Winston Churchill, who so masterfully led the British people through the Blitz, "So let us ask ourselves, 'What kind of people do we think we are?' And let us answer, 'Free people, worthy of freedom and determined not only to remain so but to help others gain their freedom as well.'" This is a generational task, one (as the president pointed out) that will not be accomplished in the span of a single generation. But it is a legacy not only for President Ronald Reagan but for all of those involved. It is a legacy well worth pursuing.

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