The U.S. had a beef with the Soviet Union because the two countries had very different ideas of what ...

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The U.S. had a beef with the Soviet Union because the two countries had very different ideas of what a government should be able to do. Here's the thing about the USSR that really ruffled Ronald Reagan's feathers: millions of Soviet citizens were killed fighting for basic human rights. Yeah…that's bad. By the time he appeared in front of the National Association of Evangelists, Ronnie'd had enough. He and the Soviet Union were in talks to limit production of nuclear weapons, and while that was definitely a relief, it was only part of the problem—like wearing a bicycle helmet without knowing how to first ride a bicycle. But Reagan knew what he was doing, and while everyone else was focused first and foremost on this intense game of nuclear freeze tag, he took the training wheels off and decided to play hardball. "The Evil Empire" speech focused on highlighting the evil of the Soviet Union, which really wasn't anything new. However, after spending the first half of his speech airing some of America's dirty laundry, he emphasized that ideological disagreements wouldn't be solved on battlefields. Those kind of shenanigans were so last war season. Instead, the Soviet Union needed to learn from their mistakes the same way we had to learn from ours. President Reagan's speech marked a change in U.S. foreign relations with the Soviet Union. He stood up and called the USSR an evil empire (ooh, sick burn) and insisted no godliness or goodness could ever really exist in nations under communist control. In other words, no more Mr. Nice Guy—Reagan wasn't getting what he wanted in negotiations, so he stood up in front of the world and said the Soviet Union was evil, and only through a strong belief in a higher power could western goodness overcome them. And the reason he could say such a thing? The U.S. had some experience with evil—you remember that dirty laundry we were talking about earlier? Well, as leader of a country that had buckled down and tried to fix the dark parts of the past, the whole world listened when Ronnie said the key to playing nice with the Soviets was there all along, nestled all comfy-cozy in the very foundation of American society.