MM#328--The Book I Wish Was Written 30 Years Ago

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Welcome to the Theory to Action podcast, where we examine the timeless treasures of wisdom from the great books in less time, to help you take action immediately and ultimately to create and lead a flourishing life.

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Now here's your host, david Kaiser flourishing life.

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Now here's your host, david Kaiser.

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Hello, I am David, and welcome back to another Mojo Minute.

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Just last week I finished another book that blew me away Blew my socks off, as the old people like to say.

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The title of the book is A Pope and a President by Paul Kengor, and its subtitle is John Paul II, ronald Reagan and the Extraordinary, untold Story of the 20th Century.

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Now, the reason it blew me away is because I have studied Ronald Reagan and St John Paul II for over 40 plus years.

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In fact, some 30 years ago it was the fall of 1996, the start of fall quarter at Ohio Northern University.

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I was a senior there and I was fresh off a spring quarter spent in Washington DC, working in our nation's capital for a prominent congressional committee.

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This was back when I thought, and most Americans thought, washington DC was a cool place, when Washington DC still had some smart people legislating within its ranks and when most Americans, or at least most legislators, actually balanced budgets.

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You know that stuff of really governing a country.

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Well, nowadays they say balanced budgets are like a medieval practice or something.

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It's bizarre.

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Modern monetary theory is the new in vogue thing.

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That's how real governments work, is what they tell us yeah right, that city right now is devoid of all intelligence.

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You can hear the great sucking sound from here in the Midwest where they just suck all the intelligence and common sense out of anyone who spends too much time in its orbit.

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Anyone who spends too much time in its orbit.

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Well, back in the fall of 1996, I just sat down with my senior advisor who asked this question David, your senior thesis has many requirements.

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Have you thought about the subject matter or a topic you would like to explore?

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You would like to explore.

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I blurted out yes.

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I have Then proceeded to tell Dr Andrew Ludani, my senior advisor, all about how there had to be a connection between US foreign policy and the downfall of communism in the former Eastern Bloc countries of the former USSR.

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Now I will say that Dr Lutani reacted with quite surprise because here was a kid in front of him me who displayed no other talent during his three years than being an average student with average analytical skills, and of which applied himself with, as you guessed it, average gusto and average precision.

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You can sense a theme here Average was all about my college life.

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I will say that I'm a proud graduate of Ohio Northern university and I did graduate with a higher GPA from college than from high school.

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So, yes, I am very proud about that.

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But and this is all in the days before uh, inflated GPAs, gray point averages, uh, so that GPA was actually the real deal.

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There's no inflated stuff that we have to deal with nowadays.

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Now back to my senior thesis.

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I have never put more effort or applied myself to one project, one singular project, more than I did to that thesis.

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In fact, to this day, I will credit Dr Ludani for teaching me how to write.

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Yes, right, my first draft was, I think, so disjointed and such a mess that he called me into his office and proceeded to tell me he could not follow the train of thought that I was trying to express in the written word.

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He said and I still remember this to this day he said, from now on, when you use a word in a sentence, that I had to keep a dictionary beside me when I was writing and I had to look up that word in every word to know its meaning before I used it in a sentence.

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So still to this day, I'm laughing out loud.

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I wish I had a copy of that rubbish of a first draft to see how far I've come, or maybe see how far I have not come, not sure.

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But back to this book.

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A Pope and a President.

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This book is the book I wish I had back then.

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This tells the story that I thought was there the whole time, in fact.

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Let me share some quotes to make this argument Go on to the book.

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Of course, the similarities ran even deeper than that.

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John Paul II and Ronald Reagan shared some important core convictions, principles that stemmed from their religious faiths.

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Weigel wrote that John Paul II understood human wickedness and the enduring power of evil in history and how these could be overcome by the power of truth and by a shrewd sense of how the children of light could work to bend more events in a more human direction.

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Bill Clark said much of the same about Ronald Reagan.

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The President and the Pope, clark observed, saw atheistic communism as an evil.

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Both men came to understand this evil very early, when others did not.

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John Paul II when he was a student in Reagan during his acting days.

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Weigel adds that both men were positive anti-communists his emphasis who sought to counter communism with a positive alternative of human rights and freedom.

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Their fierce anti-communism did not prevent them from being nuclear abolitionists.

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Only now do scholars recognize this aspect of Reagan's perspective.

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At the time, few appreciated that Reagan abhorred nuclear weapons, in part because of their unconventional paths to leadership.

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Both men were initially underestimated, said Clark.

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Observers did not at first perceive their strength of intellect, courage and vision.

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And yet, he added, both persevered in translating their personal vision into an underlying policy and strategy to defeat Soviet oppression and aggression.

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Weigel suggests that they were successful because they were creative and dynamic in their approach, not locked into the standards of quote conceptual categories of real politic or, for that matter, ostpolitik, and Detente.

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Weigel adds that both were unafraid to challenge the conventional wisdom of their diplomats and bureaucracies.

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Bingo.

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The first nugget of wisdom that I sense from listening to John Paul II and Ronald Reagan is that they just both, at their very core, were fiercely anti-communist.

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Why?

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Because communism at its core is atheistic.

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That political system has no room for religious freedom.

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When Ronald Reagan called the USSR an evil empire, he was right.

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Reagan called the USSR an evil empire, he was right.

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John Paul II sensed in the president the same worldview as his own, and this was different.

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You have to remember that John Paul II was looking out at a world stage in 1978 when he was elected pontiff and found no one, zero zilch, that was anywhere close to his worldview.

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No leaders anywhere in the world were close to his way of thinking, to his Christian, authentic worldview.

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American leaders for most of John Paul II's lifetime were detente types, which was a failure in foreign policy.

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Folks like Ike, dwight D Eisenhower, lbj, nixon, ford and then, ashamedly, jimmy Carter.

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Let's keep going from the book.

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And ashamedly Jimmy Carter, let's keep going from the book.

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Reagan and John Paul II believed in God's will and had a faith-based optimism about the future.

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The Pope, in his own words, held a self-professed quote, conviction that the destiny of all nations lies in the hands of a merciful providence.

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Reagan had the same conviction.

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Moreover, said Clark, they shared a view that each had been given a quote, special mission, a special role in the divine plan, end quote.

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This shared conviction would become abundantly clear during their first meeting in June 1982.

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Later on down the page, we pick up the book here.

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Beyond their faith-based understanding of the evils of communism and their belief in a merciful providence, john Paul II and Reagan embraced other principles in common.

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For example, they insisted on the reinforcing relationship between faith and freedom.

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They unapologetically supported the sanctity and dignity of human life.

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They championed the singular importance of the individual over the state, and they both adhered to what in Catholic social thought is called subsidiarity, which holds that small or local organizations, rather than large centralized authorities, should handle public functions that they can perform effectively.

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This last principle animated Reagan's passionate belief in limited government.

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To understand the philosophical kinship that Reagan and John Paul II must have felt, well beyond their anti-communism, consider just two of those categories.

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The first is faith and freedom.

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Ronald Reagan's understanding of freedom was not a libertarian one.

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One of the many leading philosophical spokesmen for conservatism whom Reagan knew and read was Russell Kirk.

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It was in his 1974 classic the Roots of American Order that Kirk wrote of the need for quote ordered liberty, for ordering ourselves internally so as to secure the nation's external order.

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George Washington made the point in his first inaugural address when he said that the foundations of our national policy will be laid in the pure and immutable principles of private morality.

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In other words, self-government requires just that.

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Self-government government.

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Ah, that is so good.

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Ken Gore's analysis here is profound.

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He gets it exactly right.

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Plus, how about this nugget about Reagan, that Reagan had read Russell Kirk's 74 classic, the Roots of American Order.

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When I heard that I thought man.

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Of all the biographies I read about Reagan, no one got that right.

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Luke Cannon's.

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You know, one of the most famous biographies, luke Cannon's, the Role of a Lifetime.

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The first biography and perhaps the best at the time when I was researching all this back in 1996, did not cover this important fact.

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Russell Kirk's classic the Roots of American Order, is big.

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It has a ton of philosophical advice and if Reagan had read it then you would start to understand where he was coming from.

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In fact, canon Luke Cannon describes Reagan as an intellectual lightweight who just read to fall asleep at night, barely kept up with his reading of policy papers.

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Furthermore, cannon missed much of what Ken Gore captures in this book.

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Now, yes, I will concede that Ken Gore is a conservative and Luke Cannon was a liberal veteran Washington Post reporter, but he had covered Reagan back all the way to his days as governor of California.

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So and yes, I'll concede that Luke Cannon was get or grasp Ronald Reagan's reading habits.

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Come on, I guess with time adds tons of clarity, but we're sticking with the big things.

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Paul Kangor gets right and this book is especially very, very good on the big stuff, most especially Poland and Communism.

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Cannon's biography didn't capture anything about Poland and Communism other than the day-by-day tit-for-tat.

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No mention of John Paul II's trip to Poland in June 1979, when Reagan wasn't president but he was in fact glued to the television, ken Gore reports.

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In fact, let's go to the book.

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The 68-year-old former governor of California was emotionally affected by the Pope's nine-day pilgrimage.

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He sensed the larger importance of the visit and of the Pope himself.

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In early June 1979, richard V Allen was again at Reagan's home.

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Just the two of them.

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Allen became the closest foreign policy mind, witness and observer to Reagan in the formative three to four years before he became president.

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A year earlier he had accompanied the former governor to the Berlin Wall, where Reagan's reaction was sheer revulsion.

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This time Allen watched Reagan's reaction.

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That was sheer inspiration.

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Allen and Reagan were having another long discussion when they decided to take a break.

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Turning on the television in Reagan's study they watched news footage of the Polish pontiff in his homeland.

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They glimpsed the massive crowds.

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Both men were, by Allen's description, quote astounded.

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Reagan became, quote intensely focused, said Allen.

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Reagan remained silent for the longest time and then I glanced at him, saw that he was deeply moved and noticed a tear in the corner of his eye.

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Alan said that only seldom had he seen tears in Reagan's eyes, but this, he thought, was the tear of pride, of admiration, perhaps of astonishment of what he was witnessing.

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Reagan reached a conclusion quote.

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He said there and then that the Pope was the key figure in determining the fate of Poland.

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And Allen went on.

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He was overcome by the outpouring of emotion that emanated from the millions who came to see him.

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For Reagan, this helped solidify a deep and steadfast conviction that this pope would help change the world.

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In short, said Allen, reagan viewed the pope's visit as an extraordinary wedge into the very center of the communist domain.

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Allen and Reagan spoke few words as they watched.

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As always with Reagan, something remained unsaid, allen remembered.

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Nonetheless, reagan's body language was unmistakable.

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The future president had been deeply impressed by the papal visit and did not need to explain how he felt impressed by the papal visit.

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And did not need to explain how he felt.

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Allen said that seeing Reagan so visibly affected by the Pope's historic visit deeply moved him.

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Clearly, reagan had discerned a kindred spirit in John Paul II, someone willing to speak out against evil, and even more so you can see the two worldviews of John Paul II and Ronald Reagan just coming together.

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I think Ken Gore describes it right as a kindred spirit.

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But going back to Lou Cannon, did he ever interview Richard Allen?

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Allen was the most formative person, foreign policy mind, witness and observer to Reagan in the formative three to four years.

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Did Lou Cannon ever ask him hey, what made Reagan tick?

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Did you ever observe the president getting emotional over anything?

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Alan would had to have come up, come back to this story, had to have come up, come back to this story.

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Going back to the book, to Reagan and to John Paul II, genuine freedom was not mere license.

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Freedom carried responsibilities rooted in faith.

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This is the Christian conception of freedom.

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In the New Testament, galatians 5.13 and 5.14 states For you were called for freedom, brothers, but do not use your freedom as opportunities for the flesh, rather serve one another through love.

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For the whole law is fulfilled in one statement, namely, you shall love your neighbor as yourself.

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Without the rock and rudder of faith, john Paul II said, freedom can become confused, perverse or even lead to the destruction of freedom for others.

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John Paul II's successor, pope Benedict XVI, said the West suffers from a confused ideology of freedom.

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One has unleashed a modern quote dictatorship of relativism.

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A second area of philosophical harmony centered on the sanctity of human life.

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Like John Paul II, reagan believed that the right to life is the first and most fundamental of all human freedoms, without which other freedoms cannot exist.

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Quote my administration is dedicated to the preservation of America as a free land, he stated.

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And there is no cause more important for preserving that freedom than affirming the transcendent right to life of all human beings, the right without which no other rights have any meaning.

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That statement is essentially identical to John Paul II's affirmation in his encyclical Evangelium Vitae, which referred to the right to life as the first of the fundamental rights.

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Both the president and the pope called the right to life God's greatest gift, and later on we pick up the book with this paragraph.

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This core conviction about the inherent dignity of human life, more than any other, led both John Paul II and Ronald Reagan to oppose international communism so passionately.

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They did not, as so many dupes during the Cold War did, see the Soviet Union as a different but still quote legitimate political entity.

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They viewed atheistic Soviet communism as a monstrosity, primarily because it trampled on the first and most fundamental of all human rights.

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No other system was such an affront to the beliefs they held sacred.

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It was evil, and they would not shy away from calling it such.

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Now, growing up in the 1980s and 90s, during my formative time, there was no better speakers on the world stage than John Paul II and Ronald Reagan.

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It was very hard to find original recordings of John Paul II, but for Ronald Reagan, I was absorbed by everything he said.

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I thought he was, and still is, one of the top five greatest presidents ever in US history.

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We'll study more in these Mojo Minutes and Liberty Minutes about Ronald Reagan, but in today's Mojo Minute let us all benefit from the hindsight with this book, paul Kengor's Monumental Masterpiece.

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It's a monumental masterpiece of research and discovery and the most especially in how Kengor writes and crafts the story.

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This book a pope and a president, john Paul II's, ronald Reagan and the Extraordinary Story of the 20th Century Is a fantastic, fantastic read.

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And again, I wish I had this book when I was a senior in college, writing that air prone senior thesis which actually concluded wrongly I concluded wrongly at the very end of that senior thesis that there was really no connection between you and US foreign policy and the downfall of Eastern European communism.

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In fact, as we know now, most especially with this book, there was a connection, a deep connection, and that connection was with two leaders, the Pope and the President, and their similar worldviews and kindred spirits.

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Worldviews and kindred spirits, and perhaps perhaps there was a touch of the divine plan as well, a divine plan that St John Paul II spoke about when he said quote there's a conviction that the destiny of all nations lies in the hands of a merciful providence.

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Now, if you liked this podcast, if you found it interesting and you want to learn more about St John Paul II's trip to Poland in 1979, please check out our extensive podcast we did on that very topic.

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I'll put a link in the show notes.

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The title of that episode is those Nine Days in June.

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And come back next time, where we will talk about Our Lady's Call back in 1917 and a Protestant president, because it is a fascinating tale.

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You won't want to miss it, I guarantee it.

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I guarantee it.

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Thank you for joining us.

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We hope you enjoyed this Theory to Action podcast.

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Be sure to check out our show page at teammojoacademycom, where we have everything we discussed in this podcast, as well as other great resources.

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Until next time, keep getting your mojo on.

MM#328--The Book I Wish Was Written 30 Years Ago

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