US Presidency
2003

The great democratic movement President Reagan described was already well underway. In the early 19I am, there were about 40 democracies in the world. By the middle of that decade, Portugal and Spain and Greece held free elections. Soon there were new democracies in Latin America, and free institutions were spreading in Korea, in Taiwan, and in East Asia. This very week in 1989, there were protests in East Berlin and in Leipzig. By the end of that year, every communist dictatorship in Central America * had collapsed. Within another year, the South African government released Nelson Mandela. Four years later, he was elected president of his country ascending, like Walesa and Havel, from prisoner of state to head of state. As the 20th century ended, there were around 120 democracies in the world and I can assure you more are on the way. Ronald Reagan would be pleased, and he would not be surprised. We've witnessed, in little over a generation, the swiftest advance of freedom in the 2,500 year story of democracy.