As the nation celebrates Ronald Reagan’s birthday on Feb. 6, it is worth reflecting on his wisdom to illuminate how to face our nation’s present crises.
Known as The Great Communicator, one particular speech from Ronald Reagan offers a blueprint on how to dismantle the woke ideological agenda that is stifling our country: the “Evil Empire” speech. (RELATED: ABE HAMADEH And BRYAN LEIB: The World Needs Trump Now More Than Ever As It Teeters On The Brink Of Chaos)
President Reagan’s “evil empire” speech, delivered to the National Association of Evangelicals in 1983, was a powerful indictment of the Soviet Union’s totalitarian regime and its threat to the free world. In the speech, Reagan called the Soviet Union an “evil empire” and a “focus of evil in the modern world.” He also spoke about the importance of freedom, morality and justice, and the need to oppose secularism, abortion, infanticide and communism.
The Soviet Union reacted to Ronald Reagan’s “evil empire” speech with outrage and condemnation. Soviet officials saw the speech as a direct attack on their country and its ideology, and they accused Reagan of being a warmonger and a threat to world peace. The Soviet press called the speech “primitive anti-communism” and “a call to war.”
Today, America faces a new threat to its freedom and values: the “woke” ideology that has taken root in American media, academia and business. This ideology is a new kind of evil empire that seeks to divide Americans on the basis of race, gender, and sexual preference, and to impose its own values on the rest of the country.
It seeks to silence dissenting voices, to punish those who do not conform to its dogma, and to impose its own version of truth on the rest of us.
Woke ideology is a threat to the very foundations of republican governance, and conservatives will not accept its legitimacy to rule America. It is illegitimate because it is antithetical to the core Judeo-Christian values that America was founded upon: liberty, equality, and rule of law.
Like Reagan did to the Soviet Union, conservatives must pierce its moral claim to rule by declaring it evil.
By upholding fidelity to the U.S. Constitution, conservatives are the heirs of the Founding Era and the successive generations who fought to preserve America in the proceeding centuries. Our current generation is tasked with continuing adherence to our constitutional system, thus we must rebuke the woke ruling class’s hostility to American founding principles.
Much like the Soviets, the woke left will respond to this approach with righteous indignation. Good. Let them stew with rage.
An unapologetic proclamation that the woke ruling class is an evil empire will puncture the myth they’ve created that their credentials entitle them to assume positions of power across society’s elite institutions.
In the speech Reagan warned, “We must be cautious in claiming that our enemies are also our friends.”
The “woke” ideology is not our friend. It is an enemy of freedom, an enemy of the Constitution, and an enemy of the American way of life. Though woke ideology permeates the American ruling class, conservatives must reject its authority to rule.
Brian Hawkins is a James Madison Fellow with Hillsdale College in Washington D.C.
The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller News Foundation.
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