What Liberals & Other Pointy Head Elitist Said During The 80's About The Soviet Union

[The Finman]

I love how liberals now smugly sit back (with the benefit 20/20 hindsight) and try to play "Monday Morning Quaterback".

Now they pretend with all the sincerity they can feign that the Soviet Union was due to fall under it's own weight and that Reagan was simply the benificary of someone who was in the right place at the right time.

Well, let's just take a stroll down memory lane and see what liberals & other pointy head elitist actually said during the 80's and compare it to what President Reagan said...shall we? :cool:


<font color="#000099">"It is a vulgar mistake to think that most people in Eastern Europe are miserable." --Paul Samuelson, Professor of Economics, MIT, Nobel Laureate, Economics, 1981.


"The Soviet Union is not now, nor will it be during the next decade, in the throes of a true systematic crisis, for it boasts enormous unused reserves of political and social stability that suffice to endure the deepest difficulties." --Seweryn Bialer, Professor of Political Science, Columbia University, Foreign Affairs Magazine, 1982/3.


"I found more goods in the shops, more food in the markets, more cars on the street ... those in the United States who think the Soviet Union is on the verge of economic and social collapse, ready with one small push to go over the brink are wishful thinkers who are only kidding themselves." --Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., 1982.


"All evidence indicates that the Reagan administration has abandoned both containment and detante for a very different objective: destroying the Soviet Union as a world power and possibly even its Communist system. [This is a] potentially fatal form of Sovietphobia ... a pathological rather than a healthy response to the Soviet Union." --Stephen Cohen, Princeton University Sovietologist, 1983.


"That the Soviet system has made great material progress in recent years is evident both from the statistics and from the general urban scene...One sees it in the appearance of well-being of the people on the streets...and the general aspect of restaurants, theaters, and shops... Partly, the Russian system succeeds because, in contrast with the Western industrial economies, it makes full use of its manpower." --John Kenneth Galbraith, Professor of Economics, Harvard University, 1984.


"On the economic front, for the first time in its history the Soviet leadership was able to pursue successfully a policy of guns and butter as well as growth ... The Soviet citizen-worker, peasant, and professional - has become accustomed in the Brezhnev period to an uninterrupted upward trend in his well-being ..." --John Kenneth Galbraith, Professor of Economics, Harvard University, New Yorker Magazine, 1984.


"What counts is results, and there can be no doubt that the Soviet planning system has been a powerful engine for economic growth...The Soviet model has surely demonstrated that a command economy is capable of mobilizing resources for rapid growth." --Paul Samuelson, MIT, Nobel laureate in economics, 1985.


"Can economic command significantly compress and accelerate the growth process? The remarkable performance of the Soviet Union suggests that it can. In 1920 Russia was but a minor figure in the economic councils of the world. Today it is a country whose economic achievements bear comparison with those of the United States." --Lester Thurow, Professor of Economics, MIT, The Economic Problem, 1989.</font>




But NO ONE on the left thought Communism could be contained, much less defeated...when Reagan took office Communism was on the move and expanding into 8 countries...two years after Reagan left office Communism had fallen everywhere, but China & Cuba and both those countries saw the need for market reform.

Not matter what people say now...NO ONE on the left (and only a few on the right) believed Reagan when he said...

<font color="#000099">"The years ahead will be great ones for our country, for the cause of freedom and for the spread of civilization. The West won't contain Communism, it will transcend Communism. We will not bother to denounce it, we'll dismiss it as a sad, bizarre chapter in human history whose last pages are even now being written." --Ronald Reagan, Commencement Address at University of Notre Dame, May 1981.</font>

[Sweetpea]

Wow!

That was a great post, Finman...as usual. [img]graemlins/thumbsup.gif[/img]

[Buckley]

Finman,

I have two reactions to what the "experts" said. On the one hand, it's sweetly naive to think they actually believed in the communist system. On the other, what an anti-humanitarian thing to believe. How could they actually believe that the Soviet system was good for the people? Amazing. It's like saying the Nazi's were great at mediating racial disputes in Germany. I guess experts will believe anything.

Great post Finman.

-Buckley.