[MRM]

WWB, with all due respect, the American left has been preaching the matra that Communism isn't bad, per se, but the governments that have adopted it were corrupted. This view doesn't pass serious examination. Communism is unique for requiring the death of its oponents as well as anyone who gets in the way. I reccomend some reading on communism from post-soviet era writers, including the execclent (if dry) biogrophy of Stalin by Simon Sebag Montefiore. The universal opinion of serious scholars is that the death and privation that occurred under every communist government to exist was not a matter of perverting communism but came about as the nature of communism itself.

As for the wall falling on its own, you should not put much faith in the glib comments of a trader you met on the street. I would have said something similar to impress you had I met you in East Berlin or Beijing in 1986. The fact of the matter is that The Wall was built to keep the people from escaping and the second it failed at that task the regime collapsed. People were being killed trying to escape just weeks before The Wall fell. Whether traders who could pay off border officails with hard currency would pass at will is irrelevant, and only makes my point, if anything.

The fact of the matter is that the Soviet Union was funding world revolution as far flung as the IRA, Castro, Daniel Ortega, the ANC, Yasir Arafat, and the various Eurpean revolutionary groups until Ronald Reagan challenged Gorby to tear down The Wall. And within months of the challenge, the Soviet Union wasn't funding anything.

What happend? The end of Apartheid in South Africa because the communist outside influence of the ANC was not longer an issue. The IRA was forced to enter into peace talks. Yasir Arafat won the Nobel Peace Prize, South and Central America turned to democracy, Daniel Ortega lost an election and his country became a home to investment. And you and I lived better lives spending the peace dividend.