The Reagan Prize

Jeffrey Lord just nails it. The Ronald Wilson Reagan Peace Prize, to be awarded annually in Berlin, Germany, the very symbol of the triumph of Reagan's vision of peace through strength that enabled him to win the Cold War without firing a shot.

Mr. Lord's capsule take on the Peace Prize winners of the 20th Century is brilliant, putting the bloodiest century in man's history in crystal clear perspective. At every step of the way from the end of World War I until the invasion of Norway by Hitler's Germany, the Nobel Committee awarded Prizes to those persons whose policies failed again and again to stop the world's slide into the second Great War of the century. For example, the Nobel Committee sought in many of its awards to promote policies of disarmament and appeasement, in an apparent belief that this would calm the growing tensions between Nations. The result in the 1920's and 1930's was disarmament by the non-aggressive states and re-armament by the aggressive ones, and a corresponding increase in provocative actions by the latter leading finally to World War II, the very anti-thesis of the Peace the Nobel Committee ostensibly desired.

Peace, real peace, not just breathless aspiration, was only achieved this past century through the gritty work of those with the moral clarity to defend freedom and democracy and to back it up to the death if necessary. In this sense, "peace through strength" does not refer just to huge standing armies, armed with the best killing technology available, but to the real strength behind the armies, that of leaders who envision and aspire to freedom for all mankind. Because without freedom, peace is an illusion. Without freedom, peace is just the silence of the police state, the stillness of despair.

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Reagan had an inspiring vision of peace in which the peoples of the world retained their god-given right of self-determination, and exercised that right in peaceful competition where necessary, voluntary consensus and cooperation where possible, in a spirit of true respect for the rights of self-determination of all. But he coupled this vision with a willingness to embrace the cold fact that some did not share his vision of freedom, and indeed hated it. With these, steel nerved opposition was the only negotiating position, backed up with strength both moral and military, and the transparent and unapologetic willingness to use that strength.

The Bible tells us that by their fruits shall ye know them. Reagan's fruits proved his way was best, his way was the path to true peace, as did Winston Churchill before him and countless scores of other heroes of freedom who willingly laid down their lives for the greatest moral cause of mankind, freedom.

Given the bloody failures, over and over again, of the philosophies of the Nobel Peace Prize Committee and their ilk these last 100 years, it is time for a new standard to be raised, a standard that has actually shown that it works in producing real peace for the world. It's time for a Reagan Peace Prize.

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