In quite tragic news for those who remember with fondness the heydays of former President Ronald Reagan’s Cold War reinvigoration of America’s domestic economy and culture while also ending Jimmy Carter’s disastrous detente and pushing back on the Soviet Union abroad, the man who defined that era in Reagan’s speeches has passed away.
That deceased speechwriter is Anthony “Tony” Dolan. Mr. Dolan was a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who became President Ronald Rean’s chief speechwriter and, through Reagan’s 1983 “Evil Empire” speech, helped define America’s late-Cold War policy and rhetorical stance on resisting global communism.
Mr. Dolan passed away on March 10, 2025, of natural causes. He was 76 years old when he passed away. Mr. Dolan is survived by, RealClearPolitics reports, “His nephew Robert A. Shortley and wife Jenn, and their daughter Violet.” RCP added, “He is preceded in death by his mother and father, Peg and Joe Dolan, brother John T. “Terry” Dolan, and sister Maiselle and her husband Robert L. Shortley.”
Posting in Mr. Dolan’s honor on X (formerly Twitter), Trump Administration advisor Peter Navarro wrote, “We all lost a great patriot in Tony Dolan. He made it all the way back to the White House with @realDonaldTrump only to fall before the first 100 days were over. Tony was one of the most important “backup singers” to the Ronald Reagan speeches and will be missed. He brought comfort and wisdom to us all in the White House. Share this with a fellow patriot in Tony’s honor.”
Reagan, during the “Evil Empire” speech that Mr. Dolan wrote and so defined his Cold War stance, began by commenting on American democracy and policy, and turned that into a discussion of fighting evil in the world. He said, about halfway through the speech, “Now, obviously, much of this new political and social consensus I’ve talked about is based on a positive view of American history, one that takes pride in our country’s accomplishments and record. But we must never forget that no government schemes are going to perfect man. We know that living in this world means dealing with what philosophers would call the phenomenology of evil or, as theologians would put it, the doctrine of sin.”
Then, a bit later on, he noted that the totalitarian states that shove their subjects into labor camps were the great bastions of evil in the world, saying, “Yes, let us pray for the salvation of all of those who live in that totalitarian darkness–pray they will discover the joy of knowing God. But until they do, let us be aware that while they preach the supremacy of the State, declare its omnipotence over individual man, and predict its eventual domination of all peoples on the earth, they are the focus of evil in the modern world.”
Reagn then quoted Christian writer C.S. Lewis to emphasize his point, Reagan then said, “It was C.S. Lewis who, in his unforgettable “Screwtape Letters,” wrote: ‘The greatest evil is not done now…in those sordid ‘dens of crime’ that Dickens loved to paint. It is…not even done in concentration camps and labor camps. In those we see its final result, but it is conceived and ordered; moved, seconded, carried and minuted in clear, carpeted, warmed, and well-lighted offices, by quiet men with white collars and cut fingernails and smooth-shaven cheeks who do not need to raise their voice.’”
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And, building on that shortly afterward, Reagan called on American Christians to resist the evil empire that was the Soviet Union, saying, “So, I urge you to speak out against those who would place the United States in a position of military and moral inferiority. You know, I’ve always believed that old Screwtape reserved his best efforts for those of you in the Church. So, in your discussions of the nuclear freeze proposals, I urge you to beware the temptation of pride–the temptation of blithely..uh..declaring yourselves above it all and label both sides equally at fault, to ignore the facts of history and the aggressive impulses of an evil empire, to simply call the arms race a giant misunderstanding and thereby remove yourself from the struggle between right and wrong and good and evil.”
Watch that here: