All across the world today—in the shipyards of Gdansk, the hills of Nicaragua, the rice paddies of Kampuchea, the mountains of Afghanistan—the cry again is liberty.
—Reagan, “Address Before a Joint Session of the Irish National Parliament”
A Soviet official once complained, “It would evidently require a modern computer to estimate how many times Ronald Reagan used the term ‘freedom’ in his remarks.”1 Spreading freedom to new regions of the world was the cornerstone of Reagan’s foreign policy. This distinguishes him from his predecessors in the White House, who merely sought to protect freedom. The old cold war attitudes of containment and détente were replaced by the far more ambitious “rollback.” When Reagan came to Washington, many predicted that American-Soviet relations would change, and not necessarily for the better. But Reagan never attempted to accommodate the Soviet system. He wanted to bust it and expand the Kingdom of Freedom.
When Reagan was elected president in 1980, winning the cold war seemed impossible. The 1970s was a bad decade for America. The United States formally lost its first war. After defeating the Germans twice, the United States was outlasted by a ragtag crew of guerrilla warriors in the jungles of Vietnam. Our president resigned in disgrace. By the late 1970s and even through the early 1980s, the American economy was in shambles. Unemployment was over 10 percent. Inflation was nearing double digits too. Gas prices soared. In 1975 President Ford contended in his State of the Union address, “I must say to you that the state of the union is not good.” He added, “I’ve got bad news, and I don’t expect much, if any, applause.”2 Anyone who knows anything about the Carter presidency knows nothing got better once he took office, and he didn’t get any more optimistic. Again and again Carter stressed the deep problems America faced. By 1980 national productivity, the leading economic indicator for most economists, had stagnated. Americans produced fewer goods and made less money in that era than at any time since the Great Depression.
None of this deterred Reagan. Despite internal problems, Reagan refused to make the mistakes of the appeasement era, when powerful nations turned inward during the Depression, allowing evil to fester. The president pledged to reconstruct America’s military forces, effectively outspending and outlasting the Soviet Union. Shortly after entering office in 1981, Reagan invested heavily in stealth technology; submarines armed with nuclear warheads; MX, Pershing, and Tomahawk missiles; three thousand new combat aircraft; and ten thousand new tanks. It was a bonanza for the Department of Defense, totaling nearly two trillion dollars over the 1980s. Reagan even sent hundreds of missiles to Europe, to be ready for quick deployment. The cold war was renewed, but for Reagan this simply meant that the United States was one step closer to victory. The Bible is explicit: war and rumors of war precede the advent of a better world because Armageddon is followed by the return of Christ and the establishment of His kingdom on Earth.
As the cold war intensified, Reagan declared in a speech before the British Parliament:
We’re approaching the end of a bloody century plagued by a terrible political invention—totalitarianism. Optimism comes less easily today, not because democracy is less vigorous, but because democracy’s enemies have refined their instruments of repression. Yet optimism is in order, because day by day democracy is proving itself to be a not-at-all-fragile flower. . . . Must freedom wither in a quiet, deadening accommodation with totalitarian evil? In an ironic sense Karl Marx was right. We are witnessing today a great revolutionary crisis, a crisis where the demands of the economic order are conflicting directly with those of the political order. But the crisis is happening not in the free, non-Marxist West, but in the home of Marxist-Leninism, the Soviet Union. It is the Soviet Union that runs against the tide of history by denying human freedom and human dignity to its citizens. It also is in deep economic difficulty. The rate of growth in the national product has been steadily declining since the fifties and is less than half of what it was then. The dimensions of this failure are astounding: A country which employs one-fifth of its population in agriculture is unable to feed its own people.3
The Soviet Union was plagued by economic difficulties; it could be defeated. After intense struggle, freedom would win. The victory of democracy was inevitable:
Since the exodus from Egypt, historians have written of those who sacrificed and struggled for freedom—the stand at Thermopylae, the revolt of Spartacus, the storming of the Bastille, the Warsaw uprising in World War II. More recently we’ve seen evidence of this same human impulse in one of the developing nations in Central America. For months and months the world news media covered the fighting in El Salvador. Day after day we were treated to stories and film slanted toward the brave freedom-fighters battling oppressive government forces in behalf of the silent, suffering people of that tortured country.
And then one day those silent, suffering people were offered a chance to vote, to choose the kind of government they wanted. Suddenly the freedom-fighters in the hills were exposed for what they really are—Cuban-backed guerrillas who want power for themselves, and their backers, not democracy for the people. They threatened death to any who voted, and destroyed hundreds of buses and trucks to keep the people from getting to the polling places. But on election day, the people of El Salvador, an unprecedented 1.4 million of them, braved ambush and gunfire, and trudged for miles to vote for freedom.4 Everywhere around the world, the cry is for liberty.
How could Reagan be so certain that freedom was a universal principle, one that the United States must spread, and not just another example of Western imperialism? Some criticized Reagan’s actions in Central America, arguing that American involvement in these areas was no different from Soviet involvement in Eastern Europe. Why was it all right for the United States try to impose their system, they asked, but not the Soviets? These same criticisms were made against the Iraq War by those who accused the Bush administration of terrorism and imperialism. One of the principal proponents of the idea that American foreign policy is hypocritical and driven by economic interests is Noam Chomsky, whose works have condemned American “imperialism” since the 1960s. Responding to these accusations, Reagan argued, “This is not cultural imperialism, it is providing the means for genuine self-determination and protection for diversity. Democracy already flourishes in countries with very different cultures and historical experiences. Who would voluntarily choose not to have the right to vote, decide to purchase government propaganda handouts instead of independent newspapers, prefer government to worker-controlled unions, opt for land to be owned by the state instead of those who till it, want government repression of religious liberty, a single political party instead of a free choice, a rigid cultural orthodoxy instead of democratic tolerance and diversity?”5 Reagan believed the Kingdom of Freedom was meant for all to enjoy. The failures of Nazi Germany proved that some political systems could boast the moral high ground over others. Those that promoted freedom were inherently superior to those that didn’t. One did have the right to overthrow and transform the other. Economic interests didn’t determine Reagan’s cold war policies.
Reagan’s emphasis on freedom did not make him extraordinary. As Eric Foner shows, virtually all American social movements and political figures have argued their methods promote freedom. Both abolitionists and southern plantation owners believed they fought for freedom during the Civil War. Reagan’s uniqueness as president was his belief that freedom can and should be spread to countries previously outside the scope of American influence, including Eastern Europe. A belief in freedom does not distinguish Reagan; a belief in a universal Kingdom of Freedom does. Again Reagan’s Christian heritage can’t be underestimated when trying to understand his desire to spread freedom: he was merely a missionary seeking to spread the Good Word. Missionaries—those who try to convert nonbelievers—are hallmarks of Christianity. Before Christianity no one in the West attempted to convert the masses to their values. Yet even secular ideologies today have adopted the missionary as an ideal type. During every presidential campaign, thousands of ordinary Americans travel to different parts of the country, attempting to the spread the Good Word and convert nonbelievers to the values of their candidate, in the name of improving humanity.
Reagan’s political ecumenism has deep roots. Ecumenism, or universalism, has played a pivotal role in the shaping of Western civilization all the way back to the Greeks and Romans. It may be the one idea that transcends historical eras and intellectual contexts. The Greeks, the Romans, the Christians, Enlightenment philosophes, Marxists, and conservatives like Reagan all sought values that would bind all humanity together, ending discord caused by our differences.
Plato first gave expression to the universal. Truth and reality (the form/idea) was a universal, singular realm for Plato. There are a plurality of false appearances, but only one true form. This singular form gives birth to all truth and reality, all that is right and just. Plato even imagined an ideal society, ruled by philosopher-kings, protected by guardians, and fed by artisans. It applied to all civilizations, at all times. His antagonist Aristotle contested that myriad forms of government were valid; monarchy, aristocracy, and polity, under certain circumstances, could provide the best form of government, yet for Plato, all truth could be found in a singular, universal realm. Plato was the first thinker to assert a universal form of government.
Platonic philosophy became the foundation for succeeding Roman thought, and no one demonstrates this better than Cicero, Plato’s greatest disciple in the Republican era. Cicero made no distinction between human beings because all have the ability to reason and therefore discover the universal law. Law, Cicero taught, “is not a product of human thought, nor is it an enactment of peoples, but something eternal which rules the whole universe.”6 Cicero believed that law is universal and eternal, like Plato’s form. It transcends all individuals, cultures, and historical eras. We must discover the universal law through reason and live our lives according to it.
The Roman Empire was built upon the ideas (and ashes) of Cicero: it was a universal empire and it gave birth to a universal religion, Christianity. At the urging of St. Paul, the first Christian leaders deemed circumcision unnecessary, enabling the Word of God to be spread to Gentile communities. As Paul contends in Galatians 6:15–16, “It doesn’t matter whether we have been circumcised or not. What counts is whether we have been transformed into a new creation. May God’s peace and mercy be upon all who live by this principle; they are the new people of God.” The Christian God is the God of everyone. He loves everyone equally, and we should share this love with everyone. This was a critical turning point in human history because whereas Judaism is an exclusive religion, Christianity is open to all. The word “catholic” means “universal” and is derived from the Greek word katholikos, meaning “according to the whole.” The church’s greatest philosopher, St. Augustine, argued that history as we know it ends when God’s Word and the Christian Empire descended to Earth, covering all nations in God’s goodness and “the perfectly ordered and harmonious communion of those who find their joy in God, and in one another in God.”7 Augustine’s end of history is characterized by a pristine City of God, where the righteous live eternally. There are no geographic divisions in Augustine. The Kingdom of God is universal.
The Catholic Church intended to be a universal institution in the Middle Ages. Its influence spread across Europe, especially in the Age of Charlemagne, when Christianity reached central Europe. Aligning his empire with the Church, Charlemagne declared to the pope, “Your task, most holy father, is to lift up your hands to God, like Moses, so as to aid our troops, so that with your help the Christian people, with God as its leader and giver of victory, always and everywhere be victorious over the enemies of his holy name, so that the name of our Lord Jesus may be famous throughout the world.”8 Europe begins with Charlemagne, and the bond Charlemagne forged between his empire and the church lasted for centuries. With church help, Charlemagne succeeded in spreading Christianity across Europe. By the end of the Carolingian era, God’s name was indeed famous throughout Europe.
The end of the Middle Ages and the beginning of our modern era did not curb universalist ideas. The discovery of the New World in the fifteenth century fostered the expansion of Christianity and provided new opportunities to spread this universal religion. The notion of spreading the Word of God to heathens contributed to the Age of Exploration, first among explorers, and later among missionaries. Columbus’s voyages were motivated to some degree by his desire to spread the universal word of Christ. Subsequent missionary influence on early Portuguese, Spanish, and Dutch merchant ships was prominent in the New World and Asia, where missionaries like Matteo Ricci and St. Francis Xavier spread the Good News of the universal God. Western explorers looked down on the “savages” of the New World, but these people could still receive the Word of God, despite sharing nothing with Europe. Although racism permeated the early explorers’ views of the new cultures they encountered, it did not permeate theological thinking. The Catholic Church never discriminates when it comes to converts. Ecumenism is its hallmark.
Church significance waned in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, yet the ecumenical impulse continued to dominate the minds of the creators of our modern world, dominating the Scientific Revolution and the Enlightenment. The seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were periods of tremendous intellectual foment as Western civilization began questioning its Christian heritage, transitioning to our modern world. But even when a snake sheds its skin, despite surface appearances, its vital organs remain the same. The religious ecumenism of the church paved the way for subsequent scientific, philosophical, and political ecumenism. Theology gave way to science and politics as the primary methods of intellectual discourse, but theological concepts were not completely discarded. A new worldview was created, and it was built upon the old ecumenical Catholic cosmology. The culmination of the Scientific Revolution of the seventeenth century was Isaac Newton’s discovery that all earthly and heavenly bodies are governed by universal laws. The same quantifiable forces make an apple drop to earth, control the flow of the tides, and make the location of intergalactic planets predictable and sensible. As the eighteenth-century poet Alexander Pope famously exclaimed, “Nature and Nature’s laws lay hid in night: God said, Let Newton be! And all was light.”9 Newtonian science turned darkness into light by demonstrating that the entire physical universal is bound together by universal, quantifiable gravity.
The Enlightenment climaxed in eighteenth-century France, but its roots lie in late seventeenth-century England, with Newton’s friend John Locke. Locke analyzed how human beings existed in the state of nature, bereft of all external and cultural influences. By arguing that the mind is a blank slate, Locke suggested that there are no innate differences among men in the state of nature; rather all differences are merely the result of experiences. Locke insisted that all men are by nature free and equal, governed by the universal law of reason. In the state of nature everyone has the power to execute natural, universal laws that render all men free and equal. Like Cicero and St. Augustine, Locke never distinguished between time periods, cultures, and geographic regions.
Locke’s and Newton’s ideas provided the fountainhead from which all eighteenth-century Enlightenment thought flowed. With reason, one discovers the universal laws of humanity, and from these laws one creates the best political, economic, and social institutions. These ideas mark the beginning of modern political philosophy and are the foundation for modern liberal democracies that take for granted the fact that all equally have the ability to correctly reason. In arguably the final work of the French Enlightenment, Condorcet examined the human mind and envisioned a future where all beings will be free and equal:
The aim of the work that I have undertaken, and its results will be to show by appeal to reason and fact that nature has set no term to the perfection of human faculties; that the perfectibility of man is truly indefinite; and that the progress of this perfectibility, from now on words independent of any power that might wish to halt it, has no other limits than the duration of the globe upon which nature has cast us. . . . It will be necessary to indicate by what stages what must appear to us today a fantastic hope ought in time to become possible, and even likely; to show why, in spite of the transitory successes of prejudice and the support that it receives from the corruption of governments or peoples, truth alone will obtain a lasting victory; we shall demonstrate how nature has joined together indissolubly the progress of knowledge and that of liberty, virtue and respect for the natural rights of man.10
Writing mostly from a prison cell, Condorcet affirmed that humanity will universally find truth, virtue, and, ultimately, freedom and happiness.
Political universalism accordingly first flared during the French Revolution. Many of the revolutionary leaders believed that their ideas, such as liberty, equality, and fraternity, were exportable. Even more so than the American Revolution, whose leaders were more provincial and modest, the French Revolution was a revolution for all men, for all times. The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen contained rights that were applicable to all men, not just Frenchman. They are now called “human rights.” Condorcet’s Girondins sought to extend the ideas of the French Revolution across Europe; the Revolution, they felt, should be internationalized. The Girondins welcomed the American revolutionary Thomas Paine into their ranks. Paine’s Rights of Man (1791) linked the American and French revolutions by asserting that each had established “universal rights of conscience, and universal rights of citizenship.” Even Napoleon sought to expand liberty and equality to new regions of the world, audaciously even to Prussia.
Reagan and modern-day neoconservatives (those who believe American-style government to be “universal” in terms of its application) descend from this intellectual tradition. They are heirs to the Enlightenment too, specifically the notion that the world progresses when liberal democracy and human rights spread. They seek a cosmopolitan world where all men travel through free nations, complete with freedom of speech, press, and religion and free markets.
Events that occurred during 1989 provided evidence for liberal universalism and therefore contributed to the idea that human liberty is for everyone, including people in Iraq and Afghanistan. The year 1989 will be remembered in world history, just like 1066, 1517, 1789, and 1945. While 1989 did not mark the beginning of Soviet demands for democratization, as examples of Eastern Europeans clamoring for democracy can be found virtually since the inception of the Soviet Union, these voices, following Gorbachev’s policies, were given their greatest opportunity for expression. And once they were allowed to speak, the peoples of Eastern Europe used democracy to bring down the Soviet system. Eastern Europe had no real democratic tradition. Nonetheless in 1989 democratic momentum spread across Eastern Europe like wildfire as Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, and Poland all experienced turmoil. An influx of Western culture ensued—not just democracy and capitalism but also rock-and-roll music and Coca-Cola. Evidently it’s not just our political and economic systems that people around the world demand but our whole way of life.
Demands for democracy spread to non-Western regions of the world in 1989, notoriously even China. As the world watched, millions of Chinese demonstrated where the communist state had been proclaimed on October 1, 1949. Prompted by the dismissal of a liberal-minded government official, Hu Yaobang, over 100,000 people participated in what were intended to be peaceful demonstrations. A statue of the “Goddess of democracy,” modeled after America’s Statue of Liberty, was passed among the protesters. Protestors demanded serious government reform, human rights, liberal democracy, and more freedom of speech and press. This suggested to neoconservatives that Reagan was right: all people wanted freedom, American-style freedom. These events and ideas contributed to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.