Evil Empire Speech: What's Up With the Closing Lines?
Evil Empire Speech: What's Up With the Closing Lines?
Yes, change your world. One of our Founding Fathers, Thomas Paine, said, "We have it within our power to begin the world over again." We can do it, doing together what no one church can do by itself. (169-171)
At the time, Reagan's speech was controversial for a number of different reasons, including how often he mentioned prayer and church, which was usually a no-no for politicians.
But, just for fun, let's replace the word church with the word voice.
When Marx wrote The Communist Manifesto, he talked about the working class banding together as a group to overthrow the bourgeoisie. Banding together—as in, creating a community of people all working toward the same thing.
The last few lines of Reagan's speech are actually rather similar to what Marx was saying. Ronnie wholeheartedly believed communism was a horrible phase in human history and no one person could fix it. Everyone had to hold hands, sing Kumbaya, and agree to start over. Whether it happened in a church, a conference room, or Walt Disney World didn't really matter, so long as it happened.