Reagan used “sectarian religiosity to sell a political program”…the “evil empire” speech was “primitive”…“a mirror image of crude Soviet rhetoric”… “What is the world to think when the greatest of powers is led by a man who applies to the most difficult human problem a simplistic theology?”
-Anthony Lewis
(“Onward, Christian Soldiers,” New York Times, March 10, 1983)
Theevil empire speech was “smug,” & a “near-proclamation of holy war.”
-Tom Wicker
(“In the Nation; 2 Dangerous Doctrines”, New York Times, March 15, 1983)
“In a real dark night of the soul, it's always three o'clock in the morning, and at 3 o'clock in the morning, they've got to be crazy rightwingers; so let them.''
-Chris Matthews
(Francis X. Clines, “Reagan Plays the Issues in More than a Single Key,” New York Times, March 13, 1983)
“When a chief of state talks that way, he roils Soviet insecurities”…the speech “made a bad situation worse.”
- Strobe Talbott
(Stephen F. Knott, “Reagan’s critics—former US Pres. Ronald Reagan,” The National Interest, Summer 1996)
“The Reagan Administration has made a bad situation worse in two ways: first, by convincing the Soviet leaders that the U.S. no longer accepts military parity as the basis for relations with Moscow; second, by challenging the legitimacy of the Soviet regime, calling the U.S.S.R. an ‘evil empire’ doomed to fail.”
-Strobe Talbott
(“Behind the Bear’s Angry Growl,” Time, May 21, 1984)
“It was the worst presidential speech in American history, and I've read them all. No other presidential speech has ever so flagrantly allied the government with religion. It was a gross appeal to religious prejudice.”
-Henry Steele Commager, historian
(Bill Peterson, “Reagan’s Use of Moral Language to Explain Policies Draws Fire,” Washington Post, March 23, 1983)
“The speech left friends and foes around the world with the impression that the President of the United States was contemplating holy war.”
-The New Republic
(“Reverend Reagan,” The New Republic, April 4, 1983)
Called Reagan a “religious bigot.”
-Richard Cohen, Washington Post
(Richard Cohen, “Convictions,” Washington Post, May 26, 1983)
“There are reasons aplenty to be opposed to the freeze--policy reasons, logical reasons, intellectual reasons--without aligning it to the ‘struggle between right and wrong, good and evil.’”
-Richard Cohen, Washington Post
(Richard Cohen, “Character,” Washington Post, March 13, 1983)
“It does not build confidence for the head of one government to call its rival the ‘focus of evil.’”
-Richard Strout, “TRB” columnist
(“TRB,” “Constitutional Questions,” The New Republic, March 28, 1983)
“Outrageous.”
-David Gergen, Reagan communications director
(Paul Kengor, God and Ronald Reagan: A Spiritual Life, HarperCollins, 2005)