A lot can change between then and now. Just look at Miley Cyrus or antibacterial hand soap. A few years ago, consumers were all over both of those products, but now we know that they might be bad for our health.

Just kidding, Miley: nothing but love.

Anyway, way back in 1987, the overall response to Reagan's Berlin Wall speech was…lackluster. Western talking heads thought it was a weak, naïve, and idealistic little speech. Lots of journalists didn't even cover it at all. The East wasn't too stoked about it either; what was this capitalist California cowboy doing throwing shade over their wall, trying to get them to change their ways? The audacity!

So the speech kind of fizzled out for a couple years.

But fast-forward to 1989, when the Berlin Wall actually started coming down, and all of a sudden Reagan's speech is dug out of the attic, dusted off, and put on display as a clear symbol of Reagan's (and thus America's) foresight, determination, strength, and perseverance.

Fast-forward again to the present day, and this speech is one of the most famous in POTUS history. Everybody who's anybody can smile a knowing smile when someone throws "tear down this wall" into a conversation.

But with fame comes crazy fans and bitter critics, and the Berlin Wall speech has its share of each.

On the one hand are the Reaganites who heap praise on Reagan, stopping just short of crediting him with dismantling the Berlin Wall—and Soviet Union—with his own bare hands. If not for this speech, they say, who knows how long that wall would have stood? Who knows how long the repressive U.S.S.R. would've carried on with its evil antics? It might still be going on!

On the other are those who still desperately cling to that whole "weak, naïve, and idealistic" bit, refusing to acknowledge that Ronald Reagan and the U.S. had anything to do at all with the collapse of the Soviet Union. For this group, it was all internal: Gorbachev's reforms, revolutions in Soviet satellite states, and general economic woes drove the U.S.S.R. to dissolve; America and the West had absolutely zero to do with it, and that includes this zero of a speech.

Here's a free piece of advice for anyone thinking they might want to pursue a career in public policy: when it comes to interpreting political events, no one is ever completely right, and no one is ever completely wrong.

Of course one speech by one dude on one day didn't singlehandedly bring down the Evil Empire. And of course pressure from the U.S. and the West contributed to the end of the Soviet Union. Nothing ever happens in a vacuum. (Except vacuum stuff, like sucking up dog hair.)

Anyway, today, this speech stands as a shining symbol of the prevailing attitude of America and the West at the time: tear down this stupid wall because it and communism are ruining it for everybody. It may not have won "Most Popular Speech" in any 1987 yearbooks, but it definitely deserves some honorable mention now.