Several Fox News personalities smeared President Obama as an appeaser for using the phrase “peace in our time” during his second inaugural address. But President Reagan used the same words in a speech.

During his second inaugural address, Obama committed to “defend our people and uphold our values through strength of arms and rule of law.” He added that the United States will support democracy across the globe and be “a source of hope to the poor, the sick, the marginalized, the victims of prejudice.” Obama explained that we must do this “not out of mere charity, but because peace in our time requires the constant advance of those principles that our common creed describes:  tolerance and opportunity, human dignity and justice.”

Fox contributors Jonah Goldberg, Charles Krauthammer, and John Bolton seized on Obama's use of the words “peace in our time,” claiming that Obama's use of the term recalled former British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, who used a similar phrase in 1938 when he announced that he had made a deal with Adolf Hitler to allow Nazi Germany to take over part of Czechoslovakia without firing a shot.

But Obama is not the only president to use the words “peace in our time.” In a 1983 speech at a presentation ceremony for the Peace Corps Awards, Reagan said:

I am very pleased to honor these six fine Americans who have volunteered their time, skills, and experience to the cause of peace.

Seldom are we able to point to one person's work and pronounce it not only good and worthwhile but also a step toward building peace in our time. And today, we enjoy that good fortune and we can measure it sixfold. We're honoring six Americans who have dedicated themselves to the cause of peace -- Americans who have traveled voluntarily to unfamiliar lands to help citizens of developing nations. [emphasis added]

In 1985, the leading rabbi of the American conservative Jewish movement also used the phrase “peace in our time” while discussing potential arms talks between Reagan and Soviet premiere Mikhail Gorbachev.

This history leaves us with the question: Do Goldberg, Krauthammer, and Bolton think Reagan was an appeaser?