Twenty-five years ago this week, President Ronald Reagan came to Orlando and delivered one of the most influential foreign-policy addresses ever given on American soil. To the text of an otherwise conventional speech to the National Association of Evangelicals, Reagan added the paragraph that marked the beginning of the end of the Cold War, the nuclear arms race, and Soviet totalitarianism:

"I urge you to beware the temptation of pride," warned Reagan, "the temptation of blithely declaring yourselves above it all and label both sides equally at fault, to ignore the facts of history and the aggressive impulses of an Evil Empire, to simply call the arms race a giant misunderstanding and thereby remove yourself from the struggle between right and wrong and good and evil," he said.

Reagan's speech in Orlando remains as inspiring and timely today as it was when he delivered it, a timeless memorial to all those who stand in defiance of evil and defense of the defenseless. . . .

Yet no suitable memorial exists to date in Orlando to commemorate the Evil Empire speech.

# posted by Michael Thielen @ 2:03 PM