I’ve spoken of the shining city all my political life, but I don’t know if I ever quite communicated what I saw when I said it. But in my mind it was a tall proud city built on rocks stronger than oceans, wind-swept, God-blessed, and teeming with people of all kinds living in harmony and peace, a city with free ports that hummed with commerce and creativity, and if there had to be city walls, the walls had doors and the doors were open to anyone with the will and the heart to get here. That’s how I saw it and see it still.
Ronald Reagan
If you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, if you seek liberalization: Come here to this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!
Ronald Reagan (Speech at the Brandenburg Gate, Berlin, 1987)
Every now and then one reads something that sheds new light on the state of our union. That happened today. The above quotes are two of the most famous spoken by an American leader in the past 50 years and are pivotal to understanding the significance of this post. What I read documents with certainty that conservatives are losing the hearts and minds of American youths. If conservatives don’t start winning some battles then this nation is lost. Reagan’s “shinning city” will look like Moscow or Tehran.
The Advanced Placement Test will be taken by a half million of the smartest young persons in our population. These students want to get the answer “right.” Therefore, they must know what the College Board sees as “the right answer.”
[Source: The End of History, Part II. The new Advanced Placement U.S. history exam focuses on oppression, group identity and Reagan the warmonger, by Lynne V. Cheney]
President Reagan’s challenge to Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev remains one of the most dramatic calls for freedom in our time. Thus I was heartened to find a passage from Reagan’s speech on the sample of the new Advanced Placement U.S. history exam that students will take for the first time in May. It seemed for a moment that students would be encouraged to learn about positive aspects of our past rather than be directed to focus on the negative, as happens all too often.
But when I looked closer to see the purpose for which the quotation was used, I found that it is held up as an example of “increased assertiveness and bellicosity” on the part of the U.S. in the 1980s. That’s the answer to a multiple-choice question about what Reagan’s speech reflects.
No notice is taken of the connection the president made between freedom and human flourishing, no attention to the fact that within 2½ years of the speech, people were chipping off pieces of the Berlin Wall as souvenirs. Instead of acknowledging important ideas and historical context, test makers have reduced President Reagan’s most eloquent moment to warmongering.
My friends, this is a travesty and one which speaks volumes about the twisted notions of progressive/statist/altruists. I spent my youth wondering whether some insane Russian dictator would start nuclear armageddon. The Cold War was very real and extremely dangerous. Ronald Reagan ended that war without firing a shot. That remarkable achievement turned me from a Democrat to a Republican. But the “altruists” see this monumental moment in American history as a sign that the United States of America, not the USSR, was the “evil empire.” If this is what our youth believes, we are doomed!
And thanks (I think) to HP for sending this to me.
Roy Filly
The Rugged Individualist 
Our nation is intentionally being dismantled brick by brick! Who’s behind this treason? Good question!
I kept thinking about your statement all week-end and realized why: it’s because we don’t know when the next attack will come, nor from where. We have learned we are under attack, but it’s the ambushing that’s making us nuts. We don’t know where to prepare next, so are always caught short. You are right, it is intentional, and, of course, only works because “they” have the game plan. We are playing catch-up. I need wisdom to be able to handle the thought of the imminent train wreck. Can we use the forced changes to our advantage after 2016? Can we even survive until January, 2017?
First and foremost, Happy Easter to you, Sir. Thank you for the post. There is an insidiousness, an evil intent, afoot in this country, and the institutions that we have trusted most, are at the forefront of our dissolution. I just finished reading Jason Riley, Please Stop Helping Us, and it actually represents a microcosm of what is happening in our country, and in our schools. The intent is to wipe out the existence of thought in America.
Mr. Dietrich is correct, our nation is intentionally being dismantled and, I, also, question who would be at the heart of this. I do know one thing, though. Mao’s Little Red Book speaks of encouraging drug use in the destruction of a country. I read that in the 1970s. It is not just the destruction of the will that drugs bring, but also the destruction of the brain. The subject is taboo, or vilified. I am learning to pray.