-Source-Townhall
The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., and Ronald Reagan are two of the greatest leaders in American history not only because of the struggles they won but how they won them.
They were great communicators who achieved great victories without violence. And they were able to do this for the same reason: They unapologetically appealed to the ultimate truth.
In 1987, when Reagan spoke at the Berlin Wall in front of the Brandenburg Gate, the media paid most attention to his direct challenge to the Soviet leader: "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall."
But Reagan spoke even more powerful words at the end of that speech.
"The totalitarian world produces backwardness because it does such violence to the spirit, thwarting the human impulse to create, to enjoy, to worship," Reagan said.
"The totalitarian world finds even symbols of love and of worship an affront," he said.
"Years ago, before the East Germans began rebuilding their churches, they erected a secular structure: the television tower at Alexanderplatz," he said. "Virtually ever since, the authorities have been working to correct what they view as the tower's one major flaw, treating the glass sphere at the top with paints and chemicals of every kind. Yet even today when the sun strikes that sphere -- that sphere that towers over all Berlin -- the light makes the sign of the cross.
"There in Berlin like the city itself, symbols of love, symbols of worship, cannot be suppressed," said this great American president.
And the wall did fall.
Twenty-four years before Reagan delivered that speech, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was locked within the walls of the Birmingham jail for protesting segregation.
The police had arrested King -- a Baptist clergyman and president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference -- on Good Friday. Read more
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