The Poorman does have an interesting post up about Reagan’s Legacy in regards to the fall of Communism, in which he quotes Lech Walesa and then states:
That’s a good deal more than nothing. Other European contemporaries of Reagan have been nearly as effusive, including Vaclav Havel, who said “He was a man of firm principles who was indisputably instrumental in the fall of Communism.” Some of this is probably colored by a desire to say nice things about the dead, but it seems sort of silly to argue that Reagan was incidental to the fall of Communism in Europe against the people who were actually there. Nor did he do it single-handedly, obviously, and this doesn’t mean that the Soviet Union was flawless in conception and excecution and would have lasted for a hundred million years. But you have to give the man a good chunk of credit for moving it along at the time and in the peaceful manner in which it happened. That is not a bad legacy.
One of the things I found most intriguing this week about the debate of Reagan and the fall of Communism was that one name seemed to be absent from every discussion. As far as I am concerned, there is another individual who should be given a great deal of credit for assisting in the demise of the Communist regimes:
Kirkland was a diehard anti-communist, a committed cold-warrior, and while not a political ally of Reagan’s, his support for the National Endowment for Democracy should not be ignored or forgotten.
JPS
Thanks for the timely reminder. I for one needed it.