WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:03.759 Welcome back to The Deep Dive. Today we are unpacking 00:00:03.759 --> 00:00:07.179 two words, just two words. Just two. Yeah. But 00:00:07.179 --> 00:00:11.279 these two words arguably defined the entire latter 00:00:11.279 --> 00:00:13.640 half of the Cold War. They terrified some people, 00:00:13.820 --> 00:00:16.960 thrilled others, and, you know, completely reshaped 00:00:16.960 --> 00:00:18.940 the way the world looked at the standoff between 00:00:18.940 --> 00:00:21.300 the United States and the Soviet Union. It really 00:00:21.300 --> 00:00:23.679 is a fascinating case study in the power of rhetoric. 00:00:24.100 --> 00:00:27.260 We're talking, of course, about the phrase The 00:00:27.260 --> 00:00:29.940 evil empire. The evil empire. I mean, it sounds 00:00:29.940 --> 00:00:31.760 like something from a movie poster, right? Like 00:00:31.760 --> 00:00:33.960 Star Wars. Exactly. Sounds like Star Wars. But 00:00:33.960 --> 00:00:36.640 this wasn't George Lucas. This was geopolitical 00:00:36.640 --> 00:00:39.520 strategy. And what I love about this story and 00:00:39.520 --> 00:00:41.539 what we're going to really dig into today is 00:00:41.539 --> 00:00:45.640 where this geopolitical thunderclap actually 00:00:45.640 --> 00:00:47.840 happened. Because you'd imagine a moment this 00:00:47.840 --> 00:00:50.359 heavy taking place at the United Nations or maybe 00:00:50.359 --> 00:00:52.219 the Oval Office. Or standing in front of the 00:00:52.219 --> 00:00:54.950 Berlin Wall. Right. But it didn't. No, it really 00:00:54.950 --> 00:00:57.950 didn't. It happened in Orlando, Florida, specifically 00:00:57.950 --> 00:01:01.289 at the Sheraton Twin Towers Hotel in the Citrus 00:01:01.289 --> 00:01:03.850 Crown Ballroom. Which is such a juxtaposition. 00:01:04.010 --> 00:01:06.409 I mean, you have this heavy, almost apocalyptic 00:01:06.409 --> 00:01:09.370 language about totalitarian darkness being delivered 00:01:09.370 --> 00:01:12.569 in a hotel ballroom usually reserved for wedding 00:01:12.569 --> 00:01:15.629 receptions and trade shows. It's wild. So here 00:01:15.629 --> 00:01:17.670 is our mission for this deep dive. We're going 00:01:17.670 --> 00:01:21.560 back to March 8th, 1983. the Cold War is at its 00:01:21.560 --> 00:01:24.900 absolute height. We're going to look at how this 00:01:24.900 --> 00:01:27.299 speech to a religious convention rewrote the 00:01:27.299 --> 00:01:30.400 rulebook on nuclear diplomacy, why Ronald Reagan's 00:01:30.400 --> 00:01:32.620 own staff desperately tried to kill the phrase 00:01:32.620 --> 00:01:35.420 before he ever said it, and then and this is 00:01:35.420 --> 00:01:38.079 my absolute favorite part, the massive plot twist 00:01:38.079 --> 00:01:40.519 that happened five years later. And just to be 00:01:40.519 --> 00:01:42.420 clear for you listening, we are pulling all of 00:01:42.420 --> 00:01:44.200 this from the historical record, specifically 00:01:44.200 --> 00:01:46.640 the Wikipedia entry for the evil empire speech, 00:01:47.040 --> 00:01:49.019 alongside analysis from historians like John 00:01:49.019 --> 00:01:51.790 Lewis Gaddis. We aren't taking sides on the politics 00:01:51.790 --> 00:01:53.829 here, just impartially reporting on the arguments 00:01:53.829 --> 00:01:55.450 from the sources. Right. Just laying out the 00:01:55.450 --> 00:01:57.530 history. Exactly. So let's set the scene. It's 00:01:57.530 --> 00:02:00.609 1983. Tensions are incredibly high. The Soviet 00:02:00.609 --> 00:02:03.109 Union is in Afghanistan. The nuclear arms race 00:02:03.109 --> 00:02:06.390 is spiraling. And Reagan walks onto that stage 00:02:06.390 --> 00:02:08.969 in Orlando. And he doesn't mince words right 00:02:08.969 --> 00:02:11.689 off the bat. He describes the Soviet Union as 00:02:11.689 --> 00:02:14.870 the focus of evil in the modern world. He urges 00:02:14.870 --> 00:02:17.069 the audience to pray for the salvation of those 00:02:17.069 --> 00:02:20.169 living in totalitarian darkness. It's incredibly 00:02:20.169 --> 00:02:22.150 biblical language for a foreign policy speech. 00:02:22.469 --> 00:02:25.990 It is. And that wasn't an accident. To understand 00:02:25.990 --> 00:02:29.389 why this speech was so shocking and so effective, 00:02:29.710 --> 00:02:31.930 depending on your view, you really have to understand 00:02:31.930 --> 00:02:34.669 the argument Reagan was making. It wasn't just 00:02:34.669 --> 00:02:36.860 name -calling. Right. He wasn't just shouting 00:02:36.860 --> 00:02:39.759 insults across the Iron Curtain. He was constructing 00:02:39.759 --> 00:02:42.699 a specific philosophical argument against something 00:02:42.699 --> 00:02:45.360 called moral equivalence. OK, let's unpack that 00:02:45.360 --> 00:02:47.740 for a second. Moral equivalence. What was he 00:02:47.740 --> 00:02:50.139 actually arguing against there? Well, at the 00:02:50.139 --> 00:02:52.539 time, there was a growing movement. especially 00:02:52.539 --> 00:02:54.900 among Western intellectuals and some diplomats, 00:02:55.240 --> 00:02:58.340 to treat the Cold War as a giant misunderstanding. 00:02:58.560 --> 00:03:00.639 Oh, like they're both just to blame. Exactly. 00:03:01.099 --> 00:03:03.300 The idea was that both superpowers were just 00:03:03.300 --> 00:03:06.060 two scorpions in a bottle, both equally paranoid, 00:03:06.240 --> 00:03:08.900 both equally at fault for the arms race. Reagan 00:03:08.900 --> 00:03:11.539 hated that idea. He didn't see it as two scorpions. 00:03:11.580 --> 00:03:14.199 He saw it as a sheriff and a bandit. Precisely. 00:03:14.280 --> 00:03:17.460 In the speech, he specifically warns the audience 00:03:17.460 --> 00:03:20.259 against the temptation of pride. He tells them 00:03:20.259 --> 00:03:23.340 not to blithely declare themselves above it all 00:03:23.340 --> 00:03:26.719 and label both sides equally at fault. He was 00:03:26.719 --> 00:03:29.020 framing the conflict not as a political dispute 00:03:29.020 --> 00:03:31.979 over territory or economics, but as a literal 00:03:31.979 --> 00:03:34.939 spiritual struggle between right and wrong, and 00:03:34.939 --> 00:03:37.639 good and evil. And there was a very specific 00:03:37.639 --> 00:03:39.960 policy he was attacking here, right? It wasn't 00:03:39.960 --> 00:03:41.800 just abstract philosophy about good and evil. 00:03:41.840 --> 00:03:44.199 He was talking about the nuclear freeze. That's 00:03:44.199 --> 00:03:46.319 right. The nuclear freeze proposals. This was 00:03:46.319 --> 00:03:48.460 a very popular movement at the time to just stop 00:03:48.460 --> 00:03:50.199 building weapons right where everyone stood. 00:03:50.280 --> 00:03:54.020 Just freeze the arsenals. Hit pause. Right. But 00:03:54.020 --> 00:03:56.460 Reagan's argument was that if you ignore the 00:03:56.460 --> 00:03:59.099 aggressive impulses of an evil empire just to 00:03:59.099 --> 00:04:01.500 get a quiet life or to get a freeze, you are 00:04:01.500 --> 00:04:03.520 actually removing yourself from the moral struggle. 00:04:03.900 --> 00:04:05.960 You're ignoring the facts of history. And looking 00:04:05.960 --> 00:04:08.240 at the source material, The Room, which was the 00:04:08.240 --> 00:04:11.659 National Association of Evangelicals, they absolutely 00:04:11.659 --> 00:04:14.379 ate this up. Oh, they loved it. They applauded. 00:04:14.620 --> 00:04:17.819 And the details from the sources are so cinematic. 00:04:18.980 --> 00:04:21.120 After he finishes this speech about spiritual 00:04:21.120 --> 00:04:24.480 warfare and the struggle against darkness, a 00:04:24.480 --> 00:04:27.879 band plays him off the stage with onward Christian 00:04:27.879 --> 00:04:31.329 soldiers. That is just, wow. That really paints 00:04:31.329 --> 00:04:33.149 a picture of the room. OK, so that's the speech. 00:04:33.209 --> 00:04:35.810 That's the thunderclap. But here is where it 00:04:35.810 --> 00:04:38.769 gets really interesting to me. The origin story 00:04:38.769 --> 00:04:41.850 of this phrase. Because you'd think Evil Empire 00:04:41.850 --> 00:04:43.610 was something Reagan had just been saying his 00:04:43.610 --> 00:04:45.649 whole life. You would think that. But it turns 00:04:45.649 --> 00:04:48.889 out the phrase had a very specific author and 00:04:48.889 --> 00:04:51.790 a very surprising inspiration. Right. The speechwriter 00:04:51.790 --> 00:04:54.410 was a man named Anthony R. Dolan. He was the 00:04:54.410 --> 00:04:56.670 chief speechwriter at the time. But the concept. 00:04:57.040 --> 00:04:59.300 That actually didn't come from an American. This 00:04:59.300 --> 00:05:01.060 completely blew my mind when I saw it. The big 00:05:01.060 --> 00:05:03.139 aha moment for me in the research was the Singapore 00:05:03.139 --> 00:05:06.720 connection. Yes, Lee Kuan Yew, the founding father 00:05:06.720 --> 00:05:09.740 and prime minister of Singapore. So back in 1981, 00:05:10.100 --> 00:05:12.279 which is two years before the speech, Lee Kuan 00:05:12.279 --> 00:05:15.420 Yew is meeting with Reagan. And Lee refers to 00:05:15.420 --> 00:05:17.639 the Soviet Union as an empire, which extended 00:05:17.639 --> 00:05:20.060 across Eurasia. And the sources say Reagan's 00:05:20.060 --> 00:05:22.379 ears just pricked up at that word. He loved the 00:05:22.379 --> 00:05:25.610 word empire because it implied domination. It 00:05:25.610 --> 00:05:28.550 implied expansion. It wasn't just a nation or 00:05:28.550 --> 00:05:31.269 a union of states. According to Lee Kuan Yew's 00:05:31.269 --> 00:05:34.170 memoirs, Reagan immediately turned to his national 00:05:34.170 --> 00:05:36.769 security adviser, Richard Allen, and told him 00:05:36.769 --> 00:05:38.930 to use that word more frequently. So you have 00:05:38.930 --> 00:05:41.290 the empire part coming from Singapore, and then 00:05:41.290 --> 00:05:44.269 Anthony Dolan adds the evil part later. But here's 00:05:44.269 --> 00:05:47.610 the drama. The White House staff hated it. They 00:05:47.610 --> 00:05:50.569 absolutely hated it. This is a classic example 00:05:50.569 --> 00:05:52.490 of the tension between a president's political 00:05:52.490 --> 00:05:55.009 instincts and the diplomatic caution of his staff. 00:05:55.370 --> 00:05:57.410 Anthony Dolan had actually tried to sneak the 00:05:57.410 --> 00:06:00.129 phrase evil empire into a text a year earlier 00:06:00.129 --> 00:06:03.029 in 1982 for a speech to the British House of 00:06:03.029 --> 00:06:04.970 Commons. And the reviewers just crossed it out. 00:06:05.050 --> 00:06:07.649 Red pen everywhere. They cut it completely. They 00:06:07.649 --> 00:06:09.329 thought it was way too provocative for the British 00:06:09.329 --> 00:06:12.430 Parliament. So fast forward to the Orlando speech 00:06:12.430 --> 00:06:17.050 in 83. Dolan tries again. He puts evil empire 00:06:17.050 --> 00:06:19.910 in the draft. And again, the State Department 00:06:19.910 --> 00:06:22.329 and White House staffers, people like David Gergen, 00:06:22.930 --> 00:06:25.829 they repeatedly struck it from the drafts. They 00:06:25.829 --> 00:06:28.269 kept deleting it. So how did it survive? Did 00:06:28.269 --> 00:06:30.310 Reagan just sneak it back in at the last second 00:06:30.310 --> 00:06:33.879 or something? Well, partly. But also the staff 00:06:33.879 --> 00:06:36.220 made a pretty massive miscalculation. They looked 00:06:36.220 --> 00:06:38.860 at the schedule and saw National Association 00:06:38.860 --> 00:06:41.819 of Evangelicals, Orlando, Florida. And they thought, 00:06:41.899 --> 00:06:44.279 well, this is a minor event. Oh, wow. They concluded 00:06:44.279 --> 00:06:46.519 it was unlikely to attract much attention. They 00:06:46.519 --> 00:06:48.300 let their guard down because they literally didn't 00:06:48.300 --> 00:06:49.860 think anyone on the world stage would be listening. 00:06:50.019 --> 00:06:52.180 That is hilarious in hindsight. Probably the 00:06:52.180 --> 00:06:54.259 most famous phrase of his entire presidency. 00:06:54.360 --> 00:06:56.360 And the staff let it slide because they thought 00:06:56.360 --> 00:06:59.060 it's just a ballroom in Orlando. Who cares? Exactly. 00:06:59.240 --> 00:07:02.100 But there's another layer to this drafting process 00:07:02.100 --> 00:07:05.519 that tells us a lot about Reagan himself. He 00:07:05.519 --> 00:07:08.170 reviewed the draft personally. And he didn't 00:07:08.170 --> 00:07:11.509 just passively accept Dolan's work. He made his 00:07:11.509 --> 00:07:14.329 own edits. And one of the edits is really revealing 00:07:14.329 --> 00:07:16.730 about his mindset at the time. Oh, I saw this 00:07:16.730 --> 00:07:18.730 in the notes. This is about the domestic section 00:07:18.730 --> 00:07:21.569 of the speech, right? Yes. Because the speech 00:07:21.569 --> 00:07:24.050 wasn't just about the Soviets. It was about morality 00:07:24.050 --> 00:07:27.209 in general. Dolan had written a line about abortion 00:07:27.209 --> 00:07:30.290 on demand being a great moral evil. But Reagan 00:07:30.290 --> 00:07:32.589 actually crossed that out. Wait, he softened 00:07:32.589 --> 00:07:34.449 the language. He changed the fundamental argument. 00:07:34.569 --> 00:07:37.350 He rewrote it to be much more legalistic, more 00:07:37.350 --> 00:07:39.410 rooted in American constitutional tradition. 00:07:40.009 --> 00:07:41.970 He wrote that, until it could be proven that 00:07:41.970 --> 00:07:44.709 the unborn child is not a living entity, its 00:07:44.709 --> 00:07:47.250 right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness 00:07:47.250 --> 00:07:50.589 must be protected. So he's directly invoking 00:07:50.589 --> 00:07:52.769 the Declaration of Independence there. Right. 00:07:53.029 --> 00:07:55.290 But the key takeaway here is that he was very 00:07:55.290 --> 00:07:58.470 hands -on with this text. He softened the abortion 00:07:58.470 --> 00:08:01.290 line, but he looked at the evil empire phrase, 00:08:01.750 --> 00:08:04.069 the exact one his staff had been trying to kill 00:08:04.069 --> 00:08:07.389 for a year, and he left it right there. He wanted 00:08:07.389 --> 00:08:10.029 that specific confrontation. And confrontation 00:08:10.029 --> 00:08:12.069 is exactly what he got. Let's talk about the 00:08:12.069 --> 00:08:14.769 fallout from this, because today we look back 00:08:14.769 --> 00:08:17.949 and say, oh sure, the evil empire speech, classic 00:08:17.949 --> 00:08:21.550 Reagan. But at the time, people freaked out. 00:08:21.790 --> 00:08:24.139 Freaked out is a very fair assessment. The domestic 00:08:24.139 --> 00:08:26.300 press criticism was immediate. They called it 00:08:26.300 --> 00:08:28.860 inflammatory. The Christian Science Monitor, 00:08:29.079 --> 00:08:31.699 which is a very respected publication, argued 00:08:31.699 --> 00:08:33.899 that this kind of rhetoric was downright dangerous. 00:08:34.179 --> 00:08:36.100 They said it would encourage an arms race and 00:08:36.100 --> 00:08:38.879 that in logic, it pointed toward war. Basically, 00:08:38.960 --> 00:08:40.700 the logic is you don't call the guy with his 00:08:40.700 --> 00:08:42.700 finger on the nuclear button evil unless you're 00:08:42.700 --> 00:08:45.019 actually planning to fight him. Exactly. And 00:08:45.019 --> 00:08:47.279 if you think the American press was harsh, you 00:08:47.279 --> 00:08:48.940 should see what Moscow had to say about it. Oh, 00:08:48.940 --> 00:08:50.740 I can only imagine. What was the official line 00:08:50.740 --> 00:08:53.549 from the Kremlin? The Soviet press agency. TSS 00:08:53.549 --> 00:08:56.549 went on the counter -attack immediately. They 00:08:56.549 --> 00:08:59.330 said this speech proved that the Reagan administration 00:08:59.330 --> 00:09:02.250 could only think in terms of confrontation and 00:09:02.250 --> 00:09:06.169 bellicose. Lunatic anti -communism. Lunatic anti 00:09:06.169 --> 00:09:07.929 -communism. They weren't holding back either. 00:09:08.029 --> 00:09:10.490 Not at all. And they tried to completely flip 00:09:10.490 --> 00:09:12.850 the script. They claimed that the United States 00:09:12.850 --> 00:09:15.570 was the actual imperialist superpower trying 00:09:15.570 --> 00:09:18.029 to dominate the world and that the Soviet Union 00:09:18.029 --> 00:09:20.620 was just fighting in the name of humanity. It's 00:09:20.620 --> 00:09:23.340 the classic, I know you are, but what am I, defense? 00:09:24.899 --> 00:09:27.659 But seriously, this raises a huge strategic question 00:09:27.659 --> 00:09:30.019 for you to think about as a listener. If you 00:09:30.019 --> 00:09:31.779 are the president of the United States and you 00:09:31.779 --> 00:09:33.899 define your enemy as evil, not just a rival, 00:09:33.960 --> 00:09:36.100 not just a geopolitical competitor, but inherently 00:09:36.100 --> 00:09:38.480 evil, how do you ever negotiate with them? I 00:09:38.480 --> 00:09:40.240 mean, you can't compromise with the devil. And 00:09:40.240 --> 00:09:42.299 that was precisely the fear among diplomats at 00:09:42.299 --> 00:09:45.000 the State Department. If you paint the adversary 00:09:45.000 --> 00:09:48.019 as irrational and morally bankrupt, you essentially 00:09:48.019 --> 00:09:50.970 define diplomacy as appeasement. It seemed to 00:09:50.970 --> 00:09:52.570 just close the door on any kind of meaningful 00:09:52.570 --> 00:09:55.649 peace talk. Which makes what happens next so 00:09:55.649 --> 00:09:58.549 incredible. Because the door didn't close. In 00:09:58.549 --> 00:10:01.049 fact, five years later, the door swung wide open. 00:10:01.710 --> 00:10:04.809 Let's fast forward to the plot twist, 1988. The 00:10:04.809 --> 00:10:07.009 scene has changed completely. We aren't in a 00:10:07.009 --> 00:10:09.730 hotel ballroom in Florida anymore. We are in 00:10:09.730 --> 00:10:12.889 Red Square in Moscow. And Reagan is there, walking 00:10:12.889 --> 00:10:15.409 around with Mikhail Gorbachev. The general secretary 00:10:15.409 --> 00:10:17.799 of the Communist Party. the head of the evil 00:10:17.799 --> 00:10:19.840 empire, they are strolling through the Kremlin 00:10:19.840 --> 00:10:22.460 grounds, and a reporter yells out a question. 00:10:22.759 --> 00:10:25.399 They ask Reagan, do you still think the Soviet 00:10:25.399 --> 00:10:28.299 Union is an evil empire? I feel like every staffer 00:10:28.299 --> 00:10:30.080 was holding their breath in that exact moment. 00:10:30.159 --> 00:10:32.879 What did he say? He said, I no longer do. Just 00:10:32.879 --> 00:10:34.799 like that, I no longer do. He followed it up 00:10:34.799 --> 00:10:37.419 by saying that was another time, another era. 00:10:37.559 --> 00:10:39.860 Another era. It was five years ago. I know, but 00:10:39.860 --> 00:10:42.240 in the timeline of the Cold War, those five years 00:10:42.240 --> 00:10:45.179 were a lifetime. But think about that recantation. 00:10:45.279 --> 00:10:48.419 He stands in the capital of the rival superpower 00:10:48.419 --> 00:10:51.500 and just takes back the insult. And Gorbachev 00:10:51.500 --> 00:10:54.379 heard this. He did. The sources say Gorbachev 00:10:54.379 --> 00:10:56.860 definitely took note of it. The journalist Lou 00:10:56.860 --> 00:10:58.980 Canning concluded that Gorbachev listened very 00:10:58.980 --> 00:11:01.919 carefully to that message. It was a clear signal 00:11:01.919 --> 00:11:04.460 that the relationship had fundamentally shifted. 00:11:05.139 --> 00:11:07.879 So this brings us to the big analysis, the so 00:11:07.879 --> 00:11:09.919 what of this deep dive. We had the speech, the 00:11:09.919 --> 00:11:12.299 massive backlash, and then the recantation in 00:11:12.299 --> 00:11:15.029 Red Square. Why did this matter? Was it all just 00:11:15.029 --> 00:11:17.590 theater? It was theater. But in the Cold War, 00:11:17.889 --> 00:11:21.070 theater was strategy. Historians like G. Thomas 00:11:21.070 --> 00:11:23.149 Goodnight and John Louis Gaddis look at this 00:11:23.149 --> 00:11:25.370 speech and they call it a rhetorical offensive. 00:11:25.509 --> 00:11:27.870 A rhetorical offensive, like attacking with words 00:11:27.870 --> 00:11:30.789 instead of missiles. Exactly. Along with the 00:11:30.789 --> 00:11:33.110 Star Wars Missile Defense Program and the Zero 00:11:33.110 --> 00:11:35.409 Option on Missiles, this speech was designed 00:11:35.409 --> 00:11:38.029 to kill detente. It's not being the general idea 00:11:38.029 --> 00:11:40.389 of live and let live. Right. The idea that the 00:11:40.389 --> 00:11:43.330 Soviet Union had earned a certain legitimacy, 00:11:43.649 --> 00:11:47.129 geopolitical, moral, economic legitimacy. Reagan 00:11:47.129 --> 00:11:49.269 wanted to strip that away by calling them an 00:11:49.269 --> 00:11:51.409 evil empire. He was saying they are illegitimate. 00:11:51.629 --> 00:11:54.110 They are historical error. And by doing that, 00:11:54.309 --> 00:11:57.129 he justified rejecting any peace proposals he 00:11:57.129 --> 00:12:00.309 thought were weak. So by being the bad cop in 00:12:00.309 --> 00:12:03.210 1983, he created the leverage he needed to be 00:12:03.210 --> 00:12:05.940 the good cop in 1988. That is the charitable 00:12:05.940 --> 00:12:08.899 interpretation, yes. Gaddis argues it was calculated 00:12:08.899 --> 00:12:11.179 to feed the anxieties of the Soviet leadership. 00:12:11.460 --> 00:12:13.740 It made them paranoid. It made them spend more 00:12:13.740 --> 00:12:16.200 money on defense. And eventually it forced them 00:12:16.200 --> 00:12:19.000 to the negotiating table. There is also a domestic 00:12:19.000 --> 00:12:21.179 angle here that we shouldn't overlook. We mentioned 00:12:21.179 --> 00:12:24.220 the audience earlier, the evangelicals in Orlando. 00:12:24.740 --> 00:12:27.519 Yes. And the scholar Liro Medavoy points this 00:12:27.519 --> 00:12:30.240 out in the source material. This speech wasn't 00:12:30.240 --> 00:12:32.600 just foreign policy. It was a very calculated 00:12:32.600 --> 00:12:36.049 culture war move. By delivering this anti -Soviet 00:12:36.049 --> 00:12:38.889 speech to a religious group, Reagan was intentionally 00:12:38.889 --> 00:12:41.409 connecting the Cold War to domestic issues. Right, 00:12:41.470 --> 00:12:43.389 because he talks about liberalism and secularism 00:12:43.389 --> 00:12:46.029 in the exact same breath as totalitarianism. 00:12:46.230 --> 00:12:48.529 Exactly. He framed American liberals and the 00:12:48.529 --> 00:12:51.070 Soviet Union as sort of two sides of a coin common 00:12:51.070 --> 00:12:54.029 enemies in a test of moral will and faith. So 00:12:54.029 --> 00:12:56.370 he was rallying his base at home just as much 00:12:56.370 --> 00:12:58.750 as he was scaring the Politburo in Moscow. It 00:12:58.750 --> 00:13:02.029 really is a master class in multitasking. You 00:13:02.029 --> 00:13:03.950 scare the Soviets, you rally the evangelicals, 00:13:03.950 --> 00:13:06.370 and you annoy the press all before lunch. And 00:13:06.370 --> 00:13:08.570 you do it all from a hotel ballroom in Orlando. 00:13:08.730 --> 00:13:11.330 It's wild. So let's recap this journey we've 00:13:11.330 --> 00:13:13.649 been on. We started with a draft that the smart 00:13:13.649 --> 00:13:15.830 people in the White House tried to delete. They 00:13:15.830 --> 00:13:17.649 thought it was too dangerous. They thought the 00:13:17.649 --> 00:13:20.350 event was too minor. But Reagan, with an assist 00:13:20.350 --> 00:13:23.070 from Lee Kuan Yew and Anthony Dolan, pushed it 00:13:23.070 --> 00:13:25.990 through anyway. He drew a line in the sand. You 00:13:25.990 --> 00:13:28.750 define the conflict as good versus evil. The 00:13:28.750 --> 00:13:30.970 world held its breath. People thought war was 00:13:30.970 --> 00:13:33.230 just around the corner. And yet five years later, 00:13:33.370 --> 00:13:35.610 the man who said those words is standing in Red 00:13:35.610 --> 00:13:39.129 Square saying that was another era. It leaves 00:13:39.129 --> 00:13:41.529 us with a really provocative final thought for 00:13:41.529 --> 00:13:44.590 you to mull over. And it comes back to that tension 00:13:44.590 --> 00:13:47.889 between the 1983 speech and the 1984 presidential 00:13:47.889 --> 00:13:51.370 debate. In the debate, Reagan reiterated that 00:13:51.370 --> 00:13:54.090 the Soviets were evil. But he also said, we have 00:13:54.090 --> 00:13:56.110 to live with each other. Wow, those two ideas 00:13:56.110 --> 00:13:58.870 side by side. Right. So the question is, was 00:13:58.870 --> 00:14:01.870 the evil empire speech a moment of dangerous 00:14:01.870 --> 00:14:04.450 instability that we were just lucky to survive? 00:14:04.809 --> 00:14:07.990 Or was it the necessary calculated pressure that 00:14:07.990 --> 00:14:10.110 eventually allowed him to stand in Moscow and 00:14:10.110 --> 00:14:13.129 say peace? Did he have to almost break the world 00:14:13.129 --> 00:14:15.330 in order to fix it? That is the question history 00:14:15.330 --> 00:14:17.490 is still debating today. Something for you to 00:14:17.490 --> 00:14:19.250 think about the next time you hear a politician 00:14:19.250 --> 00:14:22.340 using absolute language. Words shape history, 00:14:22.480 --> 00:14:24.820 sometimes in ways we don't understand until years 00:14:24.820 --> 00:14:27.620 later. That's it for this deep dive. Thanks for 00:14:27.620 --> 00:14:29.039 listening, and we'll catch you next time.