GORBY AND THE GIPPER

The Globe and Mail weighs in with an observation that had also occurred to me as I heard the umpteenth solemn NPR report on the funeral. Ronald Reagan did not win the Cold War, Mikhail Gorbachev did. The fall of the Soviet Union was an inside job, and Gorbachev conducted it masterfully.

Think of the magnitude of Gorbachev's achievement: he executed a conspiracy to destroy the system, under the noses of a generation of apparatchiks trained to a level of extreme paranoia to prevent just such an occurrence.

Think of what would have happened if Hitler or Stalin had woken up one day and said "you know, we've got this all wrong - we need a more open system, one in which the diversity and dynamism of the individual can help move society forward, without too much interference from the state." Molotov or Himmler would have been in power by sunset.

Ronald Reagan, rest in peace. And on this occasion, while he is still alive to appreciate it, a brief salute also to the Great Gorbachev, without whom none of it would have been possible.