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Trifling with History
(cont.)
. . . . . .
Mr. Cronin kisses off as a mere trifle Mr. Reagan's historic
achievement. Yet, Mr. Reagan's policies not only averted Soviet aggression but ended
the Soviet Union as a threat to all humanity. He freed mankind from
impending nuclear destruction. Eastern and Central Europe, under Soviet domination for a half-century,
were liberated thanks to Mr. Reagan's foreign policy and pronouncements about the "evil empire" for which he was savagely attacked by the liberal left.
• • • •
• •
“Scorning Mr. Reagan's leadership in
winning the Cold War is akin to
ignoring
Lincoln's leadership in ending slavery” |
Nor is this mere right-wing
boasting. Russians have said
publicly it was Mr. Reagan and his "star wars" program — the Strategic
Defense Initiative — that set them on the road to ruin and collapse. Scorning Mr. Reagan's leadership in winning the Cold War is akin to
ignoring Lincoln's leadership in ending slavery.
Mr. Cronin's scholarship is lamentable in that he has ignored the volumes of letters and manuscripts published in a recent book titled
Reagan, In His Own Hand: The Writings of Ronald Reagan That Reveal His
Revolutionary Vision for America. This document was so stunning a revelation that Lou Cannon, Mr. Reagan's biographer, has begun revising his earlier volume to address its implications.
Even more lamentable is that few, if any, of the obituaries will remember
Reagan's unequaled eloquence at the Bergen Belsen dedication of the Holocaust Museum:
"Here lie people — Jews — whose death was inflicted for no other reason than their very existence. Here death ruled. ... As we flew here,
over the greening farms and the emerging springtime, I reflected that there must have been a time when the prisoners of Bergen-Belsen and
those of every other camp must have felt that the springtime was gone forever from their lives.
Here they lie. Never to hope. Never to pray. Never to love. Never to heal. Never to laugh. Never to cry. Never again.... "
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