President Reagan Speech Review

635: Speech Review 01
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In 8th March 1983, President Reagan presented a speech of what is termed as the evil-empire speech. He attended the annual meeting in Orlando, Florida for the assembly of the National Association of Evangelicals. He gives a testimony about his conviction and faith. He identifies that the world is full of evil and sin, but American people are enjoined by Jesus Christ and Biblical scripture with all their might to fight against evil and sin. He speaks in front of the religious audience to advocate his belief claiming that evil and good exist in the world, and the Cold War between Soviet Union and United States is causing tension in America. He refers the Soviet Union as the evil empire; considering the country as weak because it has failed to possess a true understanding of reality. The Soviet Union is a totalitarian society that has failed to promote dignity and equal rights of humans.
In this period, United States was experiencing several challenges such as high tension of the Cold War and nuclear arms race, high rate of abortion, and high rate of infanticide. Reagan gives a speech regarding these challenging issues. He claims that there is a need to strictly prosecute people who involve in abortion, make abortion acts illegal and minimize the number of nuclear weapons both in Soviet Union and United States. Reagan applies logos and pathos in making his arguments and he uses the Bible to make references to his speech; these tools assist him to express his position to his audience.
He convinces the audience using pathos argument claiming that abortion should be made illegal. He uses emotions to appeal to his audience claiming that unless a proof can be demonstrated that the unborn babies are not living beings, they are entitled to rights of happiness, liberty and life, which must be protected. In Jeremiah 1:5, God knew Jeremiah before he was formed in the mother’s womb, and before Jeremiah came out of the womb, God sanctified him and ordained him as a prophet to the countries. Reagan shows a statistics in which lives of several unborn babies are terminated through abortion each year. He claims that abortion is a practice that would result in increase of killing innocent unborn babies. He uses emotional appeal to discourage against practices of infant mercy killings and infanticide.
Reagan uses ethos (credibility) to appear trust worthy in order to gain respect from the audience. He convinces the audience by being credible and trustworthy, and therefore he uses ethos arguments to give impression to the audience that he is somebody worth listening to and makes himself as a person with authority to talk about the issues address in his speech. He appears as somebody who is likable and worthy to be respected. He uses ethos to appear someone who is morally upright and wants to defeat evil.
He utilizes logos argumentation to convince his audience that the number of nuclear weapons should be reduced. He informs his audience not to be discouraged since America has a...