Thursday, October 13, 2011

Mikhail Gorbachev: We should have preserved the Soviet Union

This on the 20th anniversary of the dismantling of the Soviet Union. He also says the U.S. should have done more to bail him out during the attempted coup. Mmmmm, nope. Good riddance to the Soviet Union, the most evil regime to have ever arisen in Europe. Not Nazi Germany? No. Hitler was as evil as Lenin and Stalin, but he didn't have the means or the time to match their body count. Plus, he lacked their friends in the West. Nazism was based on racial hatred, while socialism is based on class hatred. By the 1930s, racism was becoming an atavism, whereas the Depression had given socialism renewed appeal to the herd of independent minds. The Nazis never claimed to be slaughtering their millions for the salvation of all mankind. So the luckless victims of socialism were done in on a more resplendent altar in a better-attended political temple.

It all reminds me of this old Jules Feiffer cartoon, shortly after the Soviet Union dissolved.

When that fool, Reagan, called the Soviet Union `the evil empire', I knew we were headed for war.
When that fool, Reagan, gave a blank check to the arms race, I knew the odds favored nuclear annihilation.
When that fool, Reagan, launched star wars on the premise that the Soviet Union would go broke trying to keep up, I knew he was a dangerous kook living in a never-never land.
When the Soviet Union went broke, surrendered its empire and called off the cold war, I knew it was Gorbachev's genius and Reagan had nothing to do with it.
Because if that fool, Reagan, was right all along...
What kind of fool am I?