[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 150 (2004), Part 9]
[House]
[Pages 11803-11804]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                         PEACE THROUGH STRENGTH

  (Mr. STEARNS asked and was given permission to address the House for 
1 minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. STEARNS. Mr. Speaker, what distinguished President Reagan among 
American Presidents in the last century? Where many Chief Executives 
saw gray and moral relativism on the international landscape, he saw 
good and evil, right and wrong.
  What relationship should we in the United States have with the Soviet 
Union, a tyranny that trampled freedom, starved its people, imprisoned 
dissidents, choked its economy and

[[Page 11804]]

wrapped its tentacles around its neighbors? Do we engage them? Do we 
fight them in one corner of the world while doing business with them in 
the other? Can we coexist under the constant threat of mutual 
destruction and endless arms races? Do we practice detente, 
containment?
  Ronald Reagan was the President who said, Americans cannot live like 
this, and I do not think the world's other citizens should. The day he 
stood at the Berlin Wall and defiantly challenged the Soviet tyranny 
with the unforgettable words, Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall, was 
the beginning of the end of the Cold War. God bless President Reagan.

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