 |
|
The Kosher Gourmet by Megan Gordon With its colorful cache of purples and oranges and reds, COLLARD GREEN SLAW is a marvelous mood booster --- not to mention just downright delish
April 18, 2014
Rabbi Yonason Goldson: Clarifying one of the greatest philosophical conundrums in theology
John Ericson: Trying hard to be 'positive' but never succeeding? Blame Your Brain
The Kosher Gourmet by Julie Rothman Almondy, flourless torta del re (Italian king's cake), has royal roots, is simple to make, . . . but devour it because it's simply delicious
April 14, 2014
Rabbi Dr Naftali Brawer: Passover frees us from the tyranny of time
Eric Schulzke: First degree: How America really recovered from a murder epidemic
Georgia Lee: When love is not enough: Teaching your kids about the realities of adult relationships
Gordon Pape: How you can tell if your financial adviser is setting you up for potential ruin
Dana Dovey: Up to 500,000 people die each year from hepatitis C-related liver disease. New Treatment Has Over 90% Success Rate
Justin Caba: Eating Watermelon Can Help Control High Blood Pressure
April 11, 2014
Rabbi Hillel Goldberg: Silence is much more than golden
Susan Swann: How to value a child for who he is, not just what he does
Susan Scutti: A Simple Blood Test Might Soon Diagnose Cancer
Chris Weller: Have A Slow Metabolism? Let Science Speed It Up For You
April 9, 2014
Jonathan Tobin: Why Did Kerry Lie About Israeli Blame?
Samuel G. Freedman: A resolution 70 years later for a father's unsettling legacy of ashes from Dachau
Jessica Ivins: A resolution 70 years later for a father's unsettling legacy of ashes from Dachau
Matthew Mientka: How Beans, Peas, And Chickpeas Cleanse Bad Cholesterol and Lowers Risk of Heart Disease
April 8, 2014
Dana Dovey: Coffee Drinkers Rejoice! Your Cup Of Joe Can Prevent Death From Liver Disease
Chris Weller: Electric 'Thinking Cap' Puts Your Brain Power Into High Gear
April 4, 2014
Amy Peterson: A life of love: How to build lasting relationships with your children
John Ericson: Older Women: Save Your Heart, Prevent Stroke Don't Drink Diet
John Ericson: Why 50 million Americans will still have spring allergies after taking meds
Sarah Boesveld: Teacher keeps promise to mail thousands of former students letters written by their past selves
April 2, 2014
Dan Barry: Should South Carolina Jews be forced to maintain this chimney built by Germans serving the Nazis?
Frank Clayton: Get happy: 20 scientifically proven happiness activities
Susan Scutti: It's Genetic! Obesity and the 'Carb Breakdown' Gene
|
| |
Jewish World Review
Jan. 20, 2006
/ 20 Teves, 5766
Saboteurs of the status quo
By
Rich Lowry
| 
|
|
|
|
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
John Lewis Gaddis, author of a half-dozen books on the topic, is the nation's foremost historian of the Cold War. So when in the 1980s he dismissed Ronald Reagan's goal of ending the Cold War, arguing instead that the American-Soviet competition had settled into a stable "long peace," it would have been natural to conclude that Gaddis, the august expert, was right.
He was wrong, of course. Gaddis explains why in his crackling-good, recently published book, "The Cold War: A New History." It holds lessons for today in its reminder of how inspired people, armed with truth and morality, can force epochal historical changes.
In the 1970s, the Cold War had entered its detente phase, which for the U.S. meant managing the Cold War, not winning it. This seemed reasonable enough. "It took visionaries — saboteurs of the status quo —to widen the range of historical possibility," Gaddis writes. In the West, these saboteurs were Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher and Pope John Paul II. In their qualities and in their arguments, there is the distinct echo of George W. Bush.
As Gaddis puts it, "An entire generation had grown up regarding the absurdities of a superpower stalemate — a divided Berlin in the middle of a divided Germany in the midst of a divided Europe, for example — as the natural order of things." It fell to the saboteurs to remove the world's "mental blinders."
"They used to the utmost," he writes, "their strengths as individuals: their personal character, their perseverance in the face of adversity, their fearlessness and frankness, but above all their dramatic skill, not only in conveying these qualities to millions of other people, but also in persuading those millions themselves to embrace those qualities."
When the might of the rival superpowers was measured in material terms — how many missiles, with how much throw-weight — they realized the power of "a moral and spiritual critique of Marxism-Leninism." When stability had come to be valued above all, they sought change. When the truth — most importantly about the nature of the Soviet Union system itself— had become obscured, they spoke it.
Gaddis quotes Thatcher: "I had long understood that detente had been ruthlessly used by the Soviets to exploit western weakness and disarray. I knew the beast." Gaddis comments, "Not since Churchill had a British leader used language in this way: suddenly words, not euphemisms, were being used again to speak truths, not platitudes."
Bush looks at the absurdity of a Middle East blotted with dictatorships, and of a great religion producing monstrous suicide bombers, and dares to try to create something better. He realizes the moral and spiritual bankruptcy of the status quo in the Middle East and in the precincts of Islam that tolerate mass murder, and says so unapologetically. This doesn't make him the next Reagan or Thatcher by any means, but he has some of their vision and fearlessness.
How Bush's struggle turns out is anybody's guess, but no one should doubt that the status quo is again in danger of sabotage. The difficulties in Iraq have made some commentators — on both the right and the left — vest too much faith in the power of inertia. A couple of millennia after Heraclitus declared that all things are flux, they think that they are all stasis.
It is true that history often stands in place, but sometimes it gallops. This is why it is foolish to make sweeping statements about which countries are inherently suited for a given political system. Was Afghanistan fated to live under a monarchy as it did in the 1950s? Or under a Soviet puppet regime as it did in the 1980s? Or a fanatic theocracy as in the 1990s? Or an American-influenced democratizing government as it does now?
Fate has little or nothing to do with it. As Gaddis reminds us, even Karl Marx acknowledged, "Men make their own history." They did during the Cold War. They do now.
Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.
Comment by clicking here.
Rich Lowry Archives
© 2006 King Features Syndicate
|
|
Columnists
Toons
Lifestyles
|
