Let us take a nostalgic look back the past decade: the excitement, the drama of the Reagan years; the spills and chills, the laughs and gaffes; the passion and the glory, the ketchup as a vegetable, the welfare mother’s Cadillac, the drug lords, the Contras—but I repeat myself.

I think we have achieved enough distance that we can look back objectively and rewrite the history of this illustrious period. The purpose, the mission of the Reagan administration was, as we now know, to get Big GovaMint off our backs.  And that means, at bottom, off my back.

We started small, with the transportation industry.  We deregulated the airlines.  Then we removed restraints from the railroads—restraints such as funding.  After that we pushed out to the high frontier, the wild, wild up. We freed space, through free enterprise.  And soon we will have enterprise zones in space.  But this will not bring war to the heavens; our killer satellites will be strictly peaceful.

You know, the Soviets already have a Strategic Weapons program in place, while we have nothing.  Granted, they need it more.  But we will catch up, and we will create jobs, through our Jobs Through Peace Through Strength Through Space Program.

Now I want to be the first to admit that we have problems here at home, what with the high cost of medical care, the unemployment and homelessness.  But at least we know where these problems come from.  These problems are caused directly by Fidel Castro.  Now why did he do this to us?  Very simply, because he is a Soviet Proxy.  Now we have nothing against the Soviets, not anymore.  But their proxies, that’s quite another matter!  We’ve met many of them along the way, and I think you all know who I’m talking about.  I’m talking about the PLO-financed, Irano-narcotized Bulgaroid Pope-killers and their drug-peddling friends, the Sandinites.

In the course of our Odyssey—and what a long, strange Odyssey it’s been—we were confronted with the strangest collection of misfits, looney tunes, and squalid criminals to come down the pike since the advent of Soviet Fomentationism through Surrogate Proxies. We were hampered in our efforts to defend our National Insecurity against this Terrorist Cabal by the necessity of submitting all funding requests to the Senate Intelligence Committee.  But eventually we devised a plan that enabled us to bypass Intelligence completely. Except in the case of the Boland Amendment.  I never understood what that amend meant, but I consulted with my attorney, Fawn Hall, and we decided to go above the written law, the better to overlook it.

Real peace can only be achieved when there is just us. But now the Cold War is over, and we won.  Of course, that doesn’t mean that we’re at peace.  Because peace, real peace, is not just the absence of Cold War.  Real peace can only be achieved when there is just us.  And there are still other people out there—other kinds of people.  People with other ideas.  No, we’re not at peace.  In fact, as I speak, we’re involved in over 50 conflicts worldwide.   It’s not quite as bad as it sounds:  they’re low-intensity conflicts.  Kind of mellow, California-style disputes.  No people actually die in them—only Communists.

We don’t have class struggle in America.  We have economic policy. Now that the Soviets are getting out of everywhere, according to our instructions, we must insist that the PLO get out of Nicaragua, Nicaragua get out of Libya, and Libya get out of Liberia, because Communism is dead.  And the Communist nations know this, and that’s why they’re turning to drugs.  And they’re bringing their drugs over here, to destroy the fabric of the American family.  Because they know they can’t do that anymore with class struggle.  Why?  Because we don’t have class struggle in America.  We have economic policy.

You see, freedom isn’t free.  And it’s not something you just buy once and be done with it.  No, freedom must be paid for, at the going rate, until we have all the freedom there is, for ourselves.

In closing I’d like to welcome you into a new era, beyond the Cold War. A kinder and gentler era, with a kinder and gentler homelessness, kinder and gentler farm foreclosure, kinder and gentler coat-hanger abortion, and above all, a kinder and gentler capital gains tax cut.  Because really, isn’t that what it’s all about?