On Jan. 11, 1989, President Ronald Reagan delivered his farewell address from the Oval Office. It was the close of his second term, and Reagan was reflecting on his two terms. He asserted that his presidency was about restoring America in its role as a “shining city on a hill.”
Reagan recalled the words and beliefs of John Winthrop, an early pilgrim and “an early freedom man.” Winthrop “journeyed here on what today we’d call a little wooden boat; and like the other Pilgrims, he was looking for a home that would be free. 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.”
Reagan described his own vision of a land “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.”
Reagan took an aggressive stance toward the Soviet Union, calling it an “evil empire.” His challenge to Moscow and communism led to the end of the Cold War and the Soviet Union’s collapse. He told the National Association of Evangelicals in 1983 that the Soviets “must be made to understand we will never compromise our principles and standards [nor] ignore the facts of history and the aggressive impulses of an evil empire. To do so would mean abandoning the struggle between right and wrong and good and evil.”
Gone are the days when the GOP championed freedom and understood the threat from Moscow. The Republican Party of Reagan is dead. And that makes me incredibly sad.
As Russia sent troops into Ukraine, the U.S. and other NATO countries began imposing sanctions, targeting Russian banks and limiting Russia’s ability to access financial markets. All the while, many influential members of the Republican Party continued to side with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Somehow the GOP has lost its way and has found itself at the bottom of that hill. The fall has been deservedly bumpy.
On Feb. 23, former President Donald Trump in a radio interview called Putin’s military move on Ukraine “genius.”
Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo took to cable news and social media praising Putin and castigating President Joe Biden. Pompeo has called Putin a “very talented statesman.” In January, Pompeo went on Fox News and spoke of Putin, saying: “He was a KGB agent, for goodness sakes. He knows how to use power. We should respect that.”
Fox News host and right-wing political commentator Tucker Carlson uses his show on an almost daily basis to push Russian-style propaganda. He asserts that the “Democrats have trained us to hate Vladimir Putin,” and that Ukraine is not a democracy.
Conservative commentator Candace Owens has been suggesting that the U.S. and NATO are “at fault” for Putin’s threat to invade Ukraine.
This descent from the shining city on a hill did not just start over Ukraine. Back in 2018, Trump met with Putin in a closed-door meeting during the Helsinki summit. At a news conference after the summit, Trump was asked if he believed his own intelligence agencies or the Russian president when it came to the allegations of meddling in the 2016 elections. Trump answered, “President Putin says it’s not Russia. I don’t see any reason why it would be.”
The House speaker at the time, Republican Rep. Paul Ryan, said Trump “must appreciate that Russia is not our ally. There is no moral equivalence between the United States and Russia, which remains hostile to our most basic values and ideals.”
It was not that long ago that the Republican Party not only understood but fought for the sacred right to self-government. What Putin is doing in Ukraine is an attack on Ukraine’s national sovereignty. It is also an assault on global democracy and the very freedom that Reagan cultivated.
Will the Republican Party be able to climb back up the hill? Or will another political party attempt to make the ascent? Either way, it will be a long way back up.
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