Evil Empire Speech: "And That Brings Me To My Final Point Today" (Lines 111-135) Summary

Here It Is: The Moment We've All Been Waiting For!

  • Reagan mentions the Soviet Union's tendency to be moral only if it's convenient, just as Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin told them to do. And the only way to unite the working class and overcome communism is to be a proponent of morality.
  • People aren't following orders—they're refusing to accept totalitarianism as the "correct" way to do things, especially in the face of Soviet threats to make use of nuclear weapons.
  • Reagan reminds his audience that the U.S. could have made use of a massive stockpile of nuclear arms, but chose not to. That said, going forward, the Soviets need to understand Americans will not do anything that compromises basic freedoms, or the nation's principles.
  • Nuclear freeze is not the way to go—it wouldn't be real peace. The only way to find real peace is to "freeze the Soviet's global desires." There's no way to be sure they've followed through with the their end of the bargain, and it would undermine all the work the western world has already done to fight communism.
  • Reagan says the Soviets would feel like they've won, that the U.S. is agreeing to a freeze because they're really afraid of what the USSR has managed to create, and that's not the way to go.