THE FACE OF EVIL:
President Reagan addressing the convention of the National Association
of Evangelicals in Orlando, Florida in 1983 during which he called the
Soviet Union the focus of evil in the modern world
March 8, 1983
Bedeviling an Empire
By Romesh Ratnesar
Ronald
Reagan had carefully prepared for the moment, rewriting by hand several
portions of the speech. An earlier draft read, "Surely historians will
see [that the Soviets] are the focus of evil in the modern world." But
speaking before the National Association of Evangelicals in Orlando,
Fla., Reagan made the speech tougher by removing the business about the
historians. He also denounced calls for a nuclear freeze, saying that to
agree to one would be to accede to "the aggressive impulses of an evil
empire."
His uncompromising rhetoric unsettled members of the
Washington establishment, who warned that it would reheat the arms race
and threaten peaceful coexistence with the Soviets. But Reagan managed
to touch the hearts and minds of those who mattered: the rebels behind
the Iron Curtain who ultimately brought it down. Nathan Sharansky read
Reagan's speech in a cell in Siberia. Knocking on walls and talking
through toilets, he spread the word to other prisoners in the Gulag.
"The dissidents were ecstatic," Sharansky wrote. "Finally, the leader of
the free world had spoken the truth—a truth that burned inside the
heart of each and every one of us."
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