Spencer Cox: “Mr. Speaker, when President Reagan took office on that cold day in 1981, the world needed a hero, and on that day…”

“Mr. Speaker, when President Reagan took office on that cold day in 1981, the world needed a hero, and on that day President Reagan sent a message to every American and to every human being enslaved by the Soviet empire. Confronting not the armies of Saddam Hussein or Slobodan Milosevic, but the largest military machine in the history of the world, President Reagan simply said, ``No weapon in the arsenals of the world is so formidable as the will and moral courage of free men and women.'' Then he led a worldwide movement for individual liberty and the human rights of all people. Today the Soviet Union sits on the ash heap of history, and the Reagan legacy can be measured in lives liberated and dreams fulfilled. Before Ronald Reagan became President in 1981, there were 56 electoral democracies on Earth. Today there are 117. Today more than a billion more people are living in freedom than on the day that he took office. President Reagan also liberated America, the land that he called the last best hope of mankind.”