in memoriam of Jeane J. Kirkpatrick

Jeane J. Kirkpatrick è stata la voce di Reagan all'ONU. Fu una scelta coraggiosa da parte del presidente americano, ma una scelta giusta ed opportuna.
Purtroppo la Kirkpatrick è venuta a mancare venerdì mattina.
Noi vogliamo ricordarla con uno desi suoi discorsi più celebri, pronunciato alla sua prima partecipazione ad una convention repubblicana, lei che si era sempre definita democratica a vita.
Il discorso è passato alla storia come il "Blame America first speech", di seguito mettiamo il testo.

Thank you very much for that warm welcome.
Thank you for inviting
me.
This is the first Republican Convention I have ever attended.
I am
grateful that you should invite me, a lifelong Democrat. On the other hand,
I
realize that you are inviting many lifelong Democrats to join this common
cause.
I want to begin tonight by quoting the speech of the president whom I
very
greatly admire, Harry Truman, who once said to the Congress:
"The
United
States has become great because we, as a people, have been able to
work together
for great objectives even while differing about details."
He continued:
"The elements of our strength are many. They include our
democratic
government, our economic system, our great natural resources.
But, the basic
source of our strength is spiritual. We believe in the
dignity of man."
That's the way Democratic presidents and presidential
candidates used to
talk about America.
These were the men who developed
NATO, who developed the
Marshall Plan, who devised the Alliance for
Progress.
They were not afraid
to be resolute nor ashamed to speak of
America as a great nation. They didn't
doubt that we must be strong enough
to protect ourselves and to help others.
They didn't imagine that America
should depend for its very survival on the
promises of its adversaries.
They happily assumed the responsibilities of
freedom.
I am not alone
in noticing that the San Francisco Democrats took a
very different approach.
Foreign Affairs
A recent article in The New
York Times noted that
"the foreign policy line that emerged from the Democratic
National
Convention in San Francisco is a distinct shift from the policies of
such
[Democratic] presidents as Harry S Truman, John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B.
Johnson."
I agree.
I shall speak tonight of foreign affairs even
though
the other party's convention barely touched the subject.
When the
San
Francisco Democrats treat foreign affairs as an afterthought, as they
did, they
behaved less like a dove or a hawk than like an ostrich -
convinced it would
shut out the world by hiding its head in the sand.
Today, foreign policy is
central to the security, to the freedom, to the
prosperity, even to the survival
of the United States.
And our strength,
for which we make many sacrifices,
is essential to the independence and
freedom of our allies and our friends.
Ask yourself:
What would become
of Europe if the United States withdrew?
What would become of Africa if
Europe fell under Soviet domination?
What
would become of Europe if the
Middle East came under Soviet control?
What
would become of Israel, if
surrounded by Soviet client states?
What would
become of Asia if the
Philippines or Japan fell under Soviet domination?
What would become of
Mexico if Central America became a Soviet satellite?
What then could the
United States do?
These are questions the San
Francisco Democrats have
not answered. These are questions they haven't even
asked.
Carter
Administration
The United States cannot remain an open,
democratic
society if we are left alone - a garrison state in a hostile world.
We need
independent nations with whom to trade, to consult and cooperate.
We need
friends and allies with whom to share the pleasures and the
protection of
our civilization.
We cannot, therefore, be indifferent to the
subversion
of others' independence or to the development of new weapons by our
adversaries or of new vulnerabilities by our friends.
The last
Democratic
administration did not seem to notice much, or care much or do
much about these
matters.
And at home and abroad, our country slid into
real deep trouble.
North and South, East and West, our relations
deteriorated.
The Carter
administration's motives were good, but their
policies were inadequate,
uninformed and mistaken.
They made things
worse, not better.
Those who
had least, suffered most.
Poor
countries grew poorer.
Rich countries
grew poorer, too.
The United
States grew weaker.
Meanwhile, the Soviet
Union grew stronger.
The
Carter administration's unilateral "restraint" in
developing and deploying
weapon systems was accompanied by an unprecedented
Soviet buildup, military
and political.
The Soviets, working on the margins
and through the
loopholes of SALT I, developed missiles of stunning speed and
accuracy and
targeted the cities of our friends in Europe.
They produced
weapons
capable of wiping out our land-based missiles.
And then, feeling
strong,
the Soviet leaders moved with boldness and skill to exploit their new
advantages.
Facilities were completed in Cuba during those years that
permit
Soviet nuclear submarines to roam our coasts, that permit planes to
fly
reconnaissance missions over the eastern United States, and that permit
Soviet
electronic surveillance to monitor our telephone calls and our
telegrams.
Those were the years the Ayatollah Khomeini came to power in
Iran, while in
Nicaragua and Sandanista developed a one-party dictatorship
based on the Cuban
model.
From the fall of Saigon in 1975 'til January
1981, Soviet influence
expanded dramatically into Laos, Cambodia,
Afghanistan, Angola, Ethiopia,
Mozambique, South Yemen, Libya, Syria, Aden,
Congo, Madagascar, Seychelles,
Nicaragua, and Grenada.
Soviet block
forces and advisers sought to guarantee
what they called the
"irreversibility" of their newfound influence and to
stimulate insurgencies
in a dozen other places.
During this period, the
Soviet Union invaded
Afghanistan, murdered its president and began a ghastly war
against the
Afghan people.
The American people were shocked by these events.
We were
greatly surprised to learn of our diminished economic and military
strength.
We were demoralized by the treatment of our hostages in Iran.
And we
were outraged by harsh attacks on the United States in the United
Nations.
As a result, we lost confidence in ourselves and in our government.
Jimmy Carter looked for an explanation for all these problems and thought he
found it in the American people.
But the people knew better.
It
wasn't
malaise we suffered from; it was Jimmy Carter - and Walter Mondale.
Election
of Ronald Reagan
And so, in 1980, the American people
elected a very
different president.
The election of Ronald Reagan marked
an end to the
dismal period of retreat and decline.
His inauguration,
blessed by the
simultaneous release of our hostages, signaled an end to the
most humiliating
episode in our national history.
The inauguration of
President Reagan
signaled a reaffirmation of historic American ideals.
Ronald Reagan brought
to the presidency confidence in the American
experience.
Confidence in the
legitimacy and success of American
institutions.
Confidence in the decency
of the American people.
And
confidence in the relevance of our experience to
the rest of the world.
That confidence has proved contagious.
Our
nation's subsequent
recovery in domestic and foreign affairs, the restoration of
military and
economic strength has silenced the talk of inevitable American
decline and
reminded the world of the advantages of freedom.
President
Reagan faced
a stunning challenge and he met it.
In the 3 1/2 years since
his
inauguration, the United States has grown stronger, safer, more confident,
and we are at peace.
The Reagan administration has restored the American
economy.
It is restoring our military strength.
It has liberated the
people of Grenada from terror and tyranny.
With NATO, it has installed
missiles to defend the cities of Europe.
The Reagan administration has
prevented the expulsion of Israel from the United Nations.
It has
developed
flexible new forms of international cooperation with which to deal
with new
threats to world order.
The Reagan administration has given
more economic
assistance to developing countries than any other
administration or any other
government, and has encouraged the economic
freedom needed to promote
self-sustaining economic growth.
The Reagan
administration has helped to
sustain democracy and encourage its development
elsewhere.
And at each step
of the way, the same people who were
responsible for America's decline have
insisted that the president's
policies would fail.
They said we could never
deploy missiles to protect
Europe's cities.
But today Europe's cities enjoy
that protection.
They said it would never be possible to hold an election in
El Salvador
because the people were too frightened and the country too
disorganized.
But the people of El Salvador proved them wrong, and today
President
Napoleon Duarte has impressed the democratic world with his skillful,
principled leadership.
They said we could not use America's strength to
help
others - Sudan, Chad, Central America, the Gulf states, the Caribbean
nations -
without being drawn into war.
But we have helped others resist
Soviet,
Libyan, Cuban subversion, and we are at peace.
Blame America
First
They
said that saving Grenada from terror and totalitarianism was
the wrong thing to
do - they didn't blame Cuba or the communists for
threatening American students
and murdering Grenadians - they blamed the
United States instead.
But then,
somehow, they always blame America
first.
When our Marines, sent to Lebanon
on a multinational peacekeeping
mission with the consent of the United States
Congress, were murdered in
their sleep, the "blame America first crowd" didn't
blame the terrorists who
murdered the Marines, they blamed the United States.
But then, they always
blame America first.
When the Soviet Union walked
out of arms control
negotiations, and refused even to discuss the issues, the
San Francisco
Democrats didn't blame Soviet intransigence. They blamed the
United States.
But then, they always blame America first.
When Marxist
dictators
shoot their way to power in Central America, the San Francisco
Democrats
don't blame the guerrillas and their Soviet allies, they blame United
States
policies of 100 years ago.
But then, they always blame America first.
The American people know better.
They know that Ronald Reagan and the
United States didn't cause Marxist dictatorship in Nicaragua, or the
repression
in Poland, or the brutal new offensives in Afghanistan, or the
destruction of
the Korean airliner, or the new attacks on religious and
ethnic groups in the
Soviet Union, or the jamming of western broadcasts, or
the denial of Jewish
emigration, or the brutal imprisonment of Anatoly
Shcharansky and Ida Nudel, or
the obscene treatment of Andrei Sakharov and
Yelena Bonner, or the
re-Stalinization of the Soviet Union.
The American
people know that it's
dangerous to blame ourselves for terrible problems
that we did not cause.
They understand just as the distinguished French
writer, Jean Francois
Revel, understands the dangers of endless self-
criticism and self-denigration.
He wrote: "Clearly, a civilization that
feels guilty for everything it is
and does will lack the energy and
conviction to defend itself."
With the
election of Ronald Reagan, the
American people declared to the world that we
have the necessary energy and
conviction to defend ourselves, and that we have
as well a deep commitment
to peace.
And now, the American people, proud of
our country, proud of
our freedom, proud of ourselves, will reject the San
Francisco Democrats and
send Ronald Reagan back to the White House.
Thank
you very much.