 President of the United States. Well, thank you and I'm delighted that we could have this get together today. I think all of you know how important I think the work of the American Security Council has been to the goals of this administration and how valuable your work has been to me personally, both before I was in this job and since. But quietly and effectively your coalition for peace through strength has made a great contribution toward restoring the credibility of America's defenses and assuring that all important margin of safety. Your work on Capitol Hill and with the public at large has been a principal factor in returning America to the days when she was militarily strong and morally principled and I think this last point is especially important. I've said many times that while military strength along with a strong economy is a prerequisite to freedom, safety and survival the critical struggle in the world today is a moral one and that the real challenge before us is the test of wills stemming from the conflict of two systems grown out of two divergent faiths. One of those faiths seeks to make man into a God himself. Cutting him off from any moral or transcendent purpose other than a lockstep subservience to the state. Communism is man's second oldest faith, what Hickor Chambers used to say. It was first preached in the Garden of Eden with the words of temptation, ye shall be as gods. And looking at the world today at places like Nicaragua who can doubt that modern communism is not about a concern for poverty but a concern for the pursuit of state power. There is another faith, the first faith, ours, which sees man as a creature of God entitled to an alienable and unalterable rights that no state or government can ever destroy or erase. As Jefferson said, the God who gave us life gave us liberty as well. For many years the Marxist Leninists have argued that we in the West no longer had the spiritual stamina to stand by this faith to testify in the face of their threats or bullying that the state is the servant of the individual and not the other way around. For many years it seemed to those of us in this room that in the West we were all too ready to cooperate in promoting that view. But lately we've seen a renaissance of Western values and faith, the restoration of our military strength in which you've played such a vital role as an outstanding example. So too are willingness to tell the unvarnished truth about our adversaries and our advocacy of human rights and personal freedom have been important. We mustn't forget that each time we publicly tell the truth about the opponents of freedom and their efforts to export totalitarianism and terror, it's an act of political resistance to tyranny and a demonstration of moral strength that makes other forms of deterrence more credible. We must never forget that each time we publicly testify to the importance of freedom, we're giving a lie to the one special claim the Marxist Leninists have always made, that they are on the winning side of history because the West cannot summon the moral resources to protect itself or promote the cause of freedom. You know, some people in Washington have the odd idea that public policy is all budget decisions, new programs, new legislative votes or new diplomatic moves. Well, we've been rebuilding our defenses, we have a strong economy again, and with our new strengths we are better able to negotiate effectively on a host of issues including regional conflicts and arms reductions. Indeed, we are prepared for peace. But we must always remember that the starting point for any public policy is its public declaration, its statement of purpose, its assertion of underlying values. Ask yourselves, what was the one enduring difference between the Chamberlain government in Britain and the Churchill government in Britain? The answer is found in Churchill's words, his rhetoric, his call to action, the will to stand up for freedom and democracy against totalitarianism. An Englishman once, only a few years after the war in London, told me about Churchill's words. When they were there he said the great despondency, the despair, he said everyone expecting the German invasion, the Nazi invasion any day, and the question in everyone's minds, what will we do? And then Churchill made that unforgettable speech, went on radio and said we will fight them on the beaches, fight them in the streets and he told me, he said the man had literally told us we would die and yet he said there was dancing in the streets. We knew what we had to do. And that's why the work of the American Security Council and the Coalition for Peace Through Strength is so valuable. By your public information programs you are helping us build the kind of national defense and strong alliances that make it clear to potential aggressors that the American people are serious about the cause of freedom. But even more than that, you have not argued for national defense in a vacuum. Your efforts have always been carried on in the context of a moral imperative to oppose tyranny and to promote mankind's inevitable march toward freedom and self-government. President Kennedy used to talk about the long, twilight struggle and the generation to whom the task had fallen to hold high the torch of freedom in the midst of that struggle. And I think the day is not far off when not just this nation but the whole world will enjoy a new birth of freedom, a day when future generations will give the credit and thanks for this renewal of freedom to those like you in this room today. Your efforts and support have been important to the cause for the past four years. Your efforts and support will be even more important in the years ahead. And I just had a little experience at the state dinner Tuesday night. The ambassador from Luxembourg was here and I reminded him of a letter I had received from him. He had been up on the East German frontier visiting the Second Armored Cavalry and he said that a young trooper, 19 years old, followed him back to his helicopter and asked him if he thought he could get a message to me. Well, being an ambassador, he allowed us how he could. And so the message that he wrote to me, the young trooper stood there and he said, Mr. Ambassador, will you tell the president? We're proud to be here and we ain't scared of nothing. There was a sequel to it that I hadn't heard until the ambassador told me Tuesday evening. Evidently, our United States Information Agency put me on the air sometime in making a speech where I told that story and they heard it over there. And the commanding officer told the ambassador that the young trooper went through the camp saying the system works. Well, thank you all. God bless you all. I want to congratulate you on your renounced tremendous mandate for peace through strength. On November 6th, you've been leading the country toward peace through strength and we especially admire your pushing on the moral offensive as you did before the British Parliament calling for a crusade for freedom, a big public diplomacy program, and we of us here together and many more besides. 240 members of Congress, over 500 universities, colleges and think tanks, and over 200 organizations have gotten together and put together a strategy for you to carry out your public diplomacy program. And we hope you'll find it useful during your second term, second under your pillow. And we promise that within our capacity we will engage in a lot of domestic public diplomacy to reeducate some of those non-believers in the House of Representatives. Thank you very much. And here's some believers. Thank you all very much.