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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: MrLucky who wrote (27566)	8/31/2006 11:13:35 AM
From: JohnM	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 541387

How many of your friends thought RR was crazy when he called the USSR an evil empire and told Gorbachev to tear down that wall? Hard to know what this has to do with my response to your "better red than dead" assertion. Gosh! America showed strength and conviction and the wall came down. There are a great many explanations for why the Soviet Union failed. I find it hard to believe it occured because Reagan asked Gorbachev "to tear down that wall." I think you actually mean to argue that it was the US military build up that, so the argument goes, forced the Soviet Union to do likewise, which, in turn, broke the bank. That's a strong explanation. But there are others and before putting one out as _the_ explanation, it makes sense to make your case against the ones you dismiss. There is the argument, for instance, that the Soviet economy had been in a long term decline, that Gorbachev and his leadership cohort had been aware of this for some time and were looking for ways to go beyond a detente with the US. The US military buildup may have contributed to a trend already underway but can't be credited as _the_ reason. Gorbachev, so this argument goes, was simply ready to do the detente. Frankly, however, I don't think either of us wishes to go back over this ground. It's the present we care about. The point, I take it, we differ about is whether criticism of Rumsfeld, Bush, and Cheney constitutes an act of disloyalty. My own present take is the same as Olbermann stated in his soliloquy, patriotism is an act of criticism, suppression of criticism is the problem.