 Please be seated. The honorary degree citation for President Reagan will be read by the Honorable Jean J. Kirkpatrick, former US representative to the United Nations, and Levy Professor in the Department of Government at Georgetown. Ronald Wilson Reagan, 40th President of the United States believes the American dream because he has lived it. Born above a store in Tampico, Illinois, in the course of a long life, Ronald Reagan has been Democrat and Republican, Union President and businessman, new dealer and free marketer, each in its season. He has lived in the Midwest and the West and the East. He has been hard up and well off. He has worked variously as sportscaster, movie and TV actor, rancher, commentator, and governor of California. Like Walt Whitman, he has heard America singing its varied carols. From this diverse experience, he forged a philosophy that is optimistic, universalistic, internationalist, and 20th century American. At its core is faith in the free individual. Throughout his presidency, Ronald Reagan has worked with strength and candor against what he termed the two great threats to life in this century, nuclear war and totalitarian rule. Though it is rarely possible to determine definitively what causes what in history, it cannot be denied that totalitarian controls have been loosened and that the threat of nuclear war and great power confrontation has significantly receded during the years Ronald Reagan has worked at the problem. His friend, the Prime Minister of Great Britain, spoke for many. When earlier this year, she said, you have done the greatest possible service, not only to your own people, but to free people everywhere. You have restored faith in the American dream, a dream of boundless opportunity built on enterprise, individual effort, and personal generosity. When we compare the mood of confidence and opportunity in the West today with the mood when you took office in 1980, we know that a greater change has taken place than ever we could have imagined. In honor of your great work for freedom and for peace, Georgetown University, with great pride and admiration, proclaims Ronald Wilson Reagan, Doctor of Humane Letters, honoris causa. By virtue of the authority vested in me by the Congress of the United States and by the Board of Directors of Georgetown University, I hereby officially confer upon Ronald W. Reagan the degree of Doctor of Humane Letters honoris causa. Ladies and gentlemen, it is now my pleasure to present to you Georgetown's newest alumnus, the President of the United States. It is indeed a great privilege in these, the closing days of my service in Washington to receive an honor such as this and a welcome such as the one that you've just given me puts me in the mind of a story about a remarkable man, a classic scholar, a scientist, a humanitarian who once received an honorary degree from a great institution of higher learning. The fellow introducing him said, we are about to hear from a great man, a noble man, a man of courage, a man of honor, yes, a man to whom the entire world owes a debt of gratitude. The man rose from his chair and took the podium, as I just did, and the crowd cheered. And he looked out at the audience and then he turned back to the other fellow and said, how come you didn't tell him about how humble and modest I am? Well, unlike him, the greeting you've just given me really does make me feel modest and humble. And so does the degree you've bestowed upon me today. It certainly would have pleased my blessed mother. She always wanted me to be a doctor. But it also means a great deal to me. We're celebrating the bicentennial of Georgetown University. I have a great affection for Georgetown. After all, it's one of the few things in this country that are older than I am. In the year that Georgetown first came to be, the political system designed by our Constitution was inaugurated as well and our first president was chosen. Georgetown is the oldest Catholic university in this country. And the political system of the United States has been the world's most stable over the course of the past two centuries. But only in the eyes of men are they old. In the eyes of God, these past two centuries have been but the briefest moment in the onrush of time whose meaning is truly known to him alone. I would hope that he would be pleased with America and Georgetown and would view both with the special fondness and perhaps the occasional exasperation that any precocious child invokes in his father. But the truth is, both Georgetown and these United States are in their infancy, experiments that test what is best and noblest in us. There was reason to imagine that the American experiment could not last and that there were moments when men of good will thought the experiment was doomed, as during those tragic civil war years when American fought against America and tore this country asunder so that it could be reassembled as a freer and better place. There have been other experiments as well during these centuries, terrible, awful experiments that demonstrate just how unyielding is God's commitment to the covenant he made with Abraham. For there must have been times in the showers of Treblinka or on the killing fields of Cambodia or in the forest of Kettin where men and women in their anguish and despair must have expected that the great flood would once again sweep away the sinning nations. Or they might have been seized with the same sentiment as the poet Yeats when haunted by the sight of a world in which the best lack all conviction while the worst are full of passionate intensity. Surely Yeats wrote some revolution, revelation I should say is at hand, surely the second coming is at hand. Well, yesterday we commemorated a dark day in the course of our century, the 50th anniversary of the signing of the Munich pact. And this day, 50 years ago, Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain returned to Britain and proclaimed that he had brought peace in our time. And 11 months later, Nazi Germany invaded Poland, hurling that nation into a nightmare from what it has yet to awake and throwing the world into war. And yet just at the very moments that the worst seemed destined to defeat the best, the best pulled something out of themselves and were not consumed. Three barbaric governments were eliminated and Germany, Italy and Japan became inseparable allies to those whom they had fought only a few years before. And though millions and millions still live under the yoke of communism, they have proved that the human spirit cannot be consumed either. There have been men and women who make us gasp with wonder that the greatness thrust upon them when oppression proved too much to tolerate. I think of the sight of Nathan Sharanski, still in the dominion of his KGB captors, zigzagging his way across the tarmac after they ordered him to walk a straight line from the plane that had carried him to freedom. It was one of those moments when laughter and tears commingle and one does not know when the first leaves off and the second begins. It was a vision of the purest freedom known to man. The freedom of a man whose cause is just and whose faith is his guiding light. At its full flowering, freedom is the first principle of society. This society, Western society, indeed from Abraham to Plato, Aristotle to Aquinas, freedom is the animating principle of Western civilization. Freedom comes in many guises in the noble words of the Declaration of Independence and in the noble souls of people like Sharanski. And yet freedom cannot exist alone. And that's why the theme for your bicentennial is so very apt, learning, faith, and freedom. Each reinforces the others, each makes the others possible. For what are they without each other? Learning is a good thing, but unless it's tempered by faith and a love of freedom, it can be very dangerous indeed. The names of many intellectuals are recorded in the roles of infamy from Robespierre to Lenin to Ho Chi Minh to Palpat. We must never forget that wisdom is impossible without learning, but learning does not, not but the longest measure, bring wisdom. It can also bring evil. What will faith without a respect for learning and an understanding of freedom bring? We've seen the tragedy of untempered faith and the hellish deaths of 14-year-old boys, small hands still wrapped around machine guns on the front lines in Iran. And what will be brought by freedom unaccompanied by learning and faith? The license of Weimar Germany and the decadence of Imperial Rome. Human behavior, untempered by a sense of moral, spiritual, or intellectual limits. The behavior G.K. Chesterton described as, the morbid weakness of always sacrificing the normal to the abnormal. And when freedom is mangled in this way, what George Orwell would have called unfreedom soon follows. So we like to believe and we pray that we'll always be so that America is different, that America's what she is because she is guided by all three, learning, faith, and freedom. Our love of knowledge has made this nation the intellectual and technological center of the world. Our commitment to protecting and preserving the freedoms we enjoy is unshakable. And our faith is what supports us. Tocqueville said it in 1835, and it's as true today as it was then. Despotism may govern without faith, but liberty cannot. Religion is more needed in democratic societies than in any others. Americans know the truth of those words. We still believe in our creator. We still believe in knowledge. We still believe in freedom. We're committed to providing the world with the bounties we enjoy, and we're sickened by those societies that do dishonor to humankind by denying human beings their birthright. We grieve for the millions who have perished even in this decade because their freedoms were denied. And we must not dishonor them by allowing those who follow us on this earth to say those millions died for nothing that we lived in an age of barbarism. No, ladies and gentlemen, I believe that if we hold fast and true to our principles, our time will come to be known as the age of freedom. There are signs, and there are only signs, that suggest the rulers who enslave and victimize the people of the earth are on the ideological defensive. Their claims for the superiority of failed and terrible philosophies are sounding ever more hollow. The societies they designed to be utopias have not, to put it mildly, turned out as planned. To save themselves, those rulers are beginning to cast their eyes toward the democratic societies they used to revile. There are signs, only signs, that these rulers are beginning to understand the secret to our prosperity. We prosper economically only because people are free. Free not only to speak and read and think, but also to create and build and barter and sell. Now we're fast approaching a turning point in the history of this age. It'll determine whether history will deem our time the age of freedom or the age of barbarism. We have been steadfast and unapologetic about our defense of our beliefs and our defense of our societies. We learned the lesson of Munich. When we were told that the time had come to accept Soviet nuclear superiority in Europe, we said we would never accept it. When we were told that the time had come to accept the Soviet dominion over Afghanistan, we said we would never accept it. And when we were told that we had no chance to dislodge Soviet proxies in Angola and Nicaragua, we said we would never accept it. And you all know what has happened. In the last eight years, not an inch of ground has fallen to communism. Indeed, we liberated the island of Grenada from the mere anarchy it had fallen into under communist rule and set it on the road to democracy. And we helped save a country from communism and watched it flower into a democracy in the midst of a civil war, the nation of El Salvador. Yes, at every point on the map that the Soviets have applied pressure, we've done all we can to apply pressure against them. And now we're seeing a sight many believe they would never see in our lifetime. The receding of the tide of totalitarianism. I want to tell you all one thing. Contrary to some of the things you've heard, I'm the same man I was when I came to Washington. I believe the same things I believed when I came to Washington. And I think those beliefs have been vindicated by the success of the policies to which we held fast. But now, just at the moment when we're required by history to hold the line, to hold true to our principles, and to apply the lessons of our learning, our faith, and our freedom, some of our most distinguished and thoughtful people have taken a look at the world today and determined that America is in decline. America in decline? Or, well, once said that some ideas were so foolish only intellectuals could believe them. Well, this is perhaps the most foolish idea of the present day. We live in the most prosperous, the freest society the world has ever known. And yet they say we're in decline. We've had almost six years of uninterrupted economic recovery. And yet they say we're in decline. They say we're in decline because they believe we're spread too thin around the globe that our military commitments are too vast and too difficult. And that we suffer from a condition called over-stretch. Over-stretch, we'll consider these truths. In 1955, we spent around 11% of our gross national product on defense. In 1988, around 6%. Not quite enough in my view, but still substantial. Some over-stretch. In 1955, we had more than 3 million Americans in uniform. Today, we have about 2 million Americans in uniform. Some over-stretch. And despite what you've heard, that the Commander-in-Chief assure you of one thing. We have not been accumulating nuclear weapons. In fact, the number of weapons in our nuclear stockpile was maybe a third higher 20 years ago. Today, our weaponry is leaner, more accurate, better equipped to keep the peace by keeping us strong. Some over-stretch. I was given the honor of manning the nation's helm these past eight years, so I think I speak with some authority. When I tell you, ladies and gentlemen, that the United States of America is not in decline. No, America is still young, still full of promise, and ready to fulfill that promise. She has not reached her apex. It's sad to say, but the false prophets of decline have needlessly lost faith at a moment when they should be talking faith. They should be taking faith in the ideas that have led us here, faith in the determination of men to be free, and faith in our destiny, our maker has written for us. And yes, ladies and gentlemen, with all my heart, I believe that this is the age of freedom. I want to thank you all for what you've given me. I want to thank Georgetown University for what she's given all of you. And all I want to say to close is, God bless you all, and may God bless America. Please be seated for a choral presentation from our students.