Brain-Jockey

Reagan Bytes: A Christmas Message and A Note About Government Betrayal

Written by Audrie Zettick on December 23, 2008

During his first Christmas season in office, President Ronald Reagan gave an address to the nation, citing the struggles in Poland.  Decades have passed, but we have much to learn from his speech, where he spoke of a government betraying its people.

 

On December 13, 1981 the totalitarian Polish government responded with brutality to the rising “Solidarity” movement led by Lech Walesa.  Threatened by the first independent trade union behind the Iron Curtain, about 20 military officials led the cracked down by declaring martial law (Stan wojenny, or “state of war”) purportedly in the defense of socialism.  

 

By the time of Reagan’s address on December 23, the Polish leadership had responded to the peaceful demonstrations of the labor union; they deployed the military, arrested most of the labor union’s leadership, closed schools and universities, and shut down phone lines.  In an “in-your-face” test of wills, factories were placed under military management with a mandated 6-day work week–the military government’s way of saying: take that and see if you can do anything about it!    

 

  (Learn more here and here and below, in a video (in Polish, but you’ll get the idea).

 

 

 

Many say that this confrontation was the beginning of the end of the Cold War.  Truly, it steeled the strength and determination that Reagan would show as he took on socialism and communism, eventually leading to the breakup of the Soviet Union.

 

That Christmas season, the former Polish Ambassador (who had asked for asylum in the U.S.) told Reagan that his countrymen were placing small candles in the windows of their homes, to show that freedom still burned in their hearts.  He asked Reagan to light a candle in the White House to show solidarity with the Polish people.  Let Reagan’s response below be a reminder of the freedom we yet cherish here in the U.S.   

 

“….an evil influence threatened that the lights were going out all over the world. Let the light of millions of candles in American homes give notice that the light of freedom is not going to be extinguished. We are blessed with a freedom and abundance denied to so many. Let those candles remind us that these blessings bring with them a solid obligation, an obligation to the God who guides us, an obligation to the heritage of liberty and dignity handed down to us by our forefathers and an obligation to the children of the world, whose future will be shaped by the way we live our lives today.”

 

President Ronald Reagan, December 23, 1981