Since the obituaries and eulogies for Ronald Reagan have now been read, I think it’s reasonable to take a critical look at his historical contribution. It’s often argued that Reagan accelerated the end of the Cold War by raising US military expenditure, thereby forcing the Soviet Union to increase its own military expenditure and crippling its economy. I think this argument has some plausibility in relation to the dissolution of the Soviet Union itself, though not in relation to the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Communist governments in Eastern Europe[1].
So granting that this analysis is correct, should Reagan be praised? For the argument to work, the buildup must have raised the probability of nuclear war, unless you suppose (improbably) that the Russians were absolutely convinced of the peaceful intentions of the West and responded to Reagan purely to build up their own offensive capability[2]. Let’s suppose that the annual risk of war was raised by one percentage point. Then over the eight years Reagan was in office, there was a cumulative 8 per cent chance of a war that would certainly have produced tens of millions of deaths, probably billions and possibly the extinction of the human race. Against this, the early collapse of the Soviet Union produced benefits (mixed, but still positive on balance) for people in the Soviet Union, and perhaps also a reduction in the likelihood of an accidental nuclear war in the period since 1990. These benefits are small in relation to the potential cost.
As I’ve argued previously, if you think that a good policy is one which, in expectation, has good consequences, Reagan’s policy fails this test. On the other hand, standard accounts of consequentialism say that a good policy is one that has good actual consequences. If you accept this, and the assessment of the facts given above, Reagan’s historical record looks pretty good.
fn1. It had been obvious for many years that these governments were sustained only by the threat of Soviet military intervention. Gorbachev still had the military capacity to intervene in 1989 (in fact, on the argument presented above, the Russians had a bigger military than they would have had if Reagan had not been elected), but he chose not to do so. As soon as this became evident, the Communist bloc governments collapsed.
fn2. As an aside, in debate at the time, it was widely asserted that the Soviet government was actively planning an attack on the West, to be undertaken if Western defences could be weakened sufficiently. Has the collapse of Communism produced any archival or similar evidence on this? I would have thought that the Warsaw Pact countries would have had to have had a fair degree of involvement, and, since they are now in NATO, there would be no reason to keep any secrets.
{ 32 comments }
Sam 06.08.04 at 2:31 am
I would challenge your very first premise: that Reagan’s defense spending forced the Soviets to spend themselves into oblivion. The most common form of this argument – one that you wisely avoid – is the Star Wars variant. In short, the prospect of keeping up with US spending on offensive weapons in space was simply too much for the Soviets. The thing that is most often forgotten in this account is that the countermeasures to Star Wars would most likely have been cheaper than the cost incurred by the US to develop and deploy the magic weapons (which we have yet to develop!). The Soviets undoubtedly knew this. They could have kept up with Star Wars without spending as much money.
Your second point is the most important: Gorbachev could have chosen to suppress the East Germans but he did not. That was the first, most important decision. The final fall of the Soviet Union itself was also due to the long, ineluctable (there’s a good Leninist term!) sapping of the will to repress, this time at home. Reagan did not “win” the Cold War. Gorbachev chose to give it up, pretty much as Kenan predicted would eventually happen.
richard 06.08.04 at 2:53 am
A couple of problems with your argument. Most obviously, but tangentially, the math is off. Under no circumstances does raising the chance of war one percentage point a year for eight years lead to a “cumulative 8% chance of war”. The cumulative increase depends on what you assumed the chance of war was before the build up – at most the increase is 7.72% if you assume the probability was nil before the increased defense spending. But if you assume that the probability was that low before the build up, then your “one percentage point” increase seems less plausible. I know this is not directly relevant to your overall argument, but it’s a pet peeve of mine when people just blithely add probabilities.
Second, aren’t you just tossing aside the MAD doctrine without explaining why? Isn’t a build up, particularly of, say, cruise missiles in Europe, supposed to decrease the likelihood of war because of the assurances of annihilation. Now, you could have argued that Star Wars, by delivering a perceived defense to one side, might have upset that balance and made war more likely. But you didn’t, you just assumed defense build up = higher chance of war.
Third, unless you really are assuming that the chance of war before Reagan was nil, you have to add back in the benefit of being more prepared for a war that was already a possibility. Again the assumption make all the difference, but if greater spending made war slightly more likely, but made us much more likely to “win” (or at least not be wiped out), then that should be weighed in the policy’s favor as well.
Thorley Winston 06.08.04 at 3:28 am
Was that indeed the case? Meaning did the USSR increase its military expenditures in response to the United States and if so, how significant was that in collapsing the Soviet economy?
If as you say in your footnotes that those governments were only sustained by the threat of Soviet military intervention, then it would seem that there was a “domino†effect of sorts that in dissolving the Soviet Union, it also topples the regimes that were either a part of or propped up by the Soviet Union.
q 06.08.04 at 3:39 am
_should Reagan be praised_
Foreign policy evaluations are liable to hocus pocus – Reagan’s foreign policy was in my opinion not good and does not deserve praise. However, I think it is better to evaluate presidents by their effect on domestic society, rather than foreign policy.
The best US president is one who delivers to the world a US which is happier, more efficent and fairer. According to that criteria, FDR, Kennedy-LBJ, Reagan and Clinton all score some points. For this Reagan should be praised.
John Quiggin 06.08.04 at 3:46 am
Richard, your point is a valid one in general. But, as your correction indicates, small probabilities are approximately linear. Given the obvious imprecision of the initial estimate, there’s no real problem in adding rather than multiplying.
To get a handle in this, suppose the cumulative chance of war during Reagan’s term was no more than 20 per cent. Then the error associated with adding probabilities in the way I did is bounded above by 20 per cent. Given that the initial number was plucked out of the air for illustrative purposes, an error of 20 per cent can safely be disregarded.
John Quiggin 06.08.04 at 3:49 am
Thorley, as with other controversial figures like cost of nuclear power, it’s hard to tell. In addition, it’s hard to pick the right counterfactual. This survey is useful, but inconclusive in relation to the point at issue.
Robert Lyman 06.08.04 at 4:03 am
John, why do you bother? You know full well it’s impossible to estimate 1) the increase in the risk of war and 2) the number of years, if any, this policy took off the lifespan of Communism. Freed from any need to worry about reality, I choose to estimate the increased risk of war at 10^-6%, and assume Communism would have lasted for 10,000 years and taken over our universities (oh, wait…). Voila! Thank you Reagan!
Prove me wrong. I dare you.
I like your analytical framework (it’s important to reveal hidden assumptions), but it’s just silly to plug in actual numbers an then draw conclusions from them. Which you clearly do: “Reagan’s policy fails this test,” not “Using these numbers, which I plucked from various convenient orifices, Reagan’s policy fails.”
Worrying about statistical niceties on made-up numbers is kind of…odd.
Frank Wilhoit 06.08.04 at 4:06 am
You mistake the real risk that Reagan took, its irresponsibility and its failure.
The Actual Consequences of Mr. Reagan have everything to do with the Disunited States of America and nothing to do with the rest of the world. What was once by many measures the world’s greatest nation is now an ungovernable, demented shambles, blindly convulsing and soiling itself and its surroundings.
This didn’t have to happen. Mr. Reagan brought it about in the process of losing his big bet, which was that the American liberal and intellectual traditions were so weak that he could jawbone them out of existence. It didn’t work. The only effect was to divide America into two equal camps, each of which has descended into insanity, totally blinded and paralyzed by its hatred of the other. (Note that I am not asserting moral equivalence. One side was the aggressor and the other was the victim, so there is a moral distinction; but it is not a distinction that has any practical consequences, because both sides are damaged beyond hope of recovery.)
So thanks to Reagan, this country has no future. What price two hundred and eighty million wasted lives? Even if we assume what for many reasons cannot be proven, viz. that he may have somehow benefited some number of Eastern Europeans, I assert without apology that they don’t rate beside the harm to America.
q 06.08.04 at 4:25 am
Frank W: I am sorry you feel this bad. I suggest you try a warm apple and syrup muffin, a warm hot chocolate and some sleep. Sweet dreams! Tomorrow is another day.
JRV 06.08.04 at 5:14 am
I would recommend taking a look at the excellent insights of William Wohlforth, in his empirical analysis of defense spending towards the end of the cold war (here the article is only cited),
Go to Article citing Wohlforth.
We live today in a unipolar world, as distressing as that may be for many people. Reagan’s pragmatic leadership avoided any large wars during that time, while at the same time dramatically weakening his opponent.
neil 06.08.04 at 5:42 am
JQ’s argument would have to include the change in probabilty of a war associated with alternative stratergies that were not undertaken. Perhaps the risk would have been greater. Maybe less.
But as he admits that Reagan’s stratergy may have reduced the risk of an accidental nuclear war in the 90s then perhaps these cancel out.
Dutch 06.08.04 at 5:55 am
Getcha Hitch on yo Gip on.
y81 06.08.04 at 6:05 am
Statesmen are also remembered, for good or ill, for the quality of their thinking. Reagan, as I recall, described Communism during his presidency as “a sad, bizarre chapter of human history whose last pages are even now being written.” No academic, at least not at the fancy schools I attended, said any such thing. Consider, e.g., Paul Kennedy. So having out-thought the Harvard faculty, Reagan is entitled to rest in peace.
Sebastian Holsclaw 06.08.04 at 7:34 am
“It had been obvious for many years that these governments were sustained only by the threat of Soviet military intervention. Gorbachev still had the military capacity to intervene in 1989 (in fact, on the argument presented above, the Russians had a bigger military than they would have had if Reagan had not been elected), but he chose not to do so. As soon as this became evident, the Communist bloc governments collapsed.”
Since this footnote is related to your contention that Reagan had little to do with the collapse of Communism in Eastern Europe you imply the following:
That the collapse of governments propped up by the USSR was not closely related to the weakening of the USSR.
AND
That the decision not to use the military of the USSR in Eastern Europe in 1989 had little to do with the weakening of the USSR which you admit was related to Reagan’s actions.
But when made explicit, those assumptions look a bit strained unless you have some other compelling explanation for your decoupling of the two.
It also flies in the face of what people like Lech Walesa and Vaclav Havel believe was Reagan’s contribution.
playrink 06.08.04 at 7:36 am
perfection: a man of stunning achievement, courage & character dies, people all over the world mourn, yet highly-educated profoundly self-regarding tools & twerps desperately scramble to limit his legacy. Talk to heartbreaking dissidents from tyrannies the world over, actually listen to what they say, then rejoin your graceless, twisted cohort of demented turds in your endless quest for self-respect
felixrayman 06.08.04 at 7:51 am
It’s often argued that Reagan accelerated the end of the Cold War by raising US military expenditure, thereby forcing the Soviet Union to increase its own military expenditure and crippling its economy.
It’s often argued that the Earth is flat as well. The Russians didn’t substantially raise defense spending in the early 80s, their spending on defense was fairly flat. The US increased defense spending starting under Carter, not Reagan, and this was quickly reversed starting near the end of Reagan’s first term – US defense spending actually fell at that time.
Come up with an argument that starts with true premises and I’ll consider it. Your argument starts with false premises, and thus should be ignored.
playrink 06.08.04 at 9:19 am
next stop: The Ash-Heap of History
“To all puny, disgraceful quislings debarking, we at Cerberus Transport would like to extend our fondest wishes…”
Fergal 06.08.04 at 10:32 am
Would not a better characterisation of the military build up be that it made the probable consequences of a war worse, rather than making it more likely?
If, so, and if you think that Reagan/the US/world have a decreasing aversion to loss, (i.e. that they’re less bothered about the 10th million person to die than they were about the 9th), it’s not obvious that his calculus was off ex ante…
Thomas Dent 06.08.04 at 1:22 pm
Walesa, Havel and Holsclaw can think what they like: we’re concerned with Reagan’s actual actions (as opposed to rhetoric and beliefs) and their material consequences. Simply having lived in Eastern Europe doesn’t give you a hotline to the Truth About Reagan. Reagan gave some nice speeches, but it was the Berliners who did for the wall and Gorbachev who decided not to stand in their way.
(I believe the U.S. did manage to send some funds to the Solidarity movement in Poland, but this hardly explains the collapse of the USSR.)
Reagan was very lucky that Gorbachev got the job in ’85, and not some new Breznev who would cling to Soviet domination regardless of the consequences. Raising the temperature of the Cold War – as Reagan seemed to be doing early in the 80’s – could have had very different results. Gorbachev’s ascendancy and decision to apply “glasnost” certainly wasn’t due to any action of Reagan’s.
In ’86 the right-wingers thought that Reagan had gone soft in the head: cosying up to the Commmies and almost offering to scrap the nuclear deterrent?
But Reagan’s main achievement was exactly to react to Gorbachev in a constructive and even supportive way, without the paranoid suspicion that the likes of Richard Perle and Dick Cheney urged on him. Perle’s novel (a thinly-disguised portrait of his time at Defense) shows a President willing to go for the “zero option” and only restrained by his less trusting advisors, who believed that the Soviet Union was stronger and more threatening than ever.
roger 06.08.04 at 3:40 pm
It is a mistake to look at the Reagan effect on the Soviet Union from the very short time perspective of the Carter presidency. Essentially, Carter simply continued the policies of Nixon.
Here is the argument that Nixon’s détente contributed as much to the end of the Soviet Empire as Reagan’s militarism – or, perhaps more exactly, that the two were connected.
In 1970, the Soviets confronted the same problem as the West. The post world war ii boom was grinding to a halt. What this meant, in both cases, was that designing the economy according to the model of large, central planning was returning less and less. Remember, Nixon was not only not averse to wage and price control, but found very little opposition when he implemented it.
The Soviet dilemma was harder, since the centralization was much more pervasive, and the bet on the kind of industrial system that was being rendered obsolete was much larger. What were they to do?
Nixon offered them the chance to semi-incorporate themselves in the World economy. Through loans, and through opening up the West to Soviet goods – oil and agriculture – the Soviet leadership put off its main problem. The leadership was blind enough to think that it could still continue diverting its surplus capital to the military. It didn’t see what détente really did: made the system peculiarly dependent on Western money. Every country that decides to postpone its economic problems through massive borrowing on the global markets seems to go through the same cycle – first, the borrowing insulates the leadership from the kind of economic changes that will have to be at least considered, second, the borrowing injects a certain false economic buoyancy in the class the ruling elite is most dependent on, and thirdly some jolt in the world economy crashes the system. This happened in Mexico in 94, and in Argentina in 2001. These crashes were prefigured by the downward spiral of the Soviet system. Trying to maintain a foreign policy that they couldn’t afford, the Soviet rulers didn’t realize how vulnerable they were to the West’s political changes.
The contrast to the fall of the Soviet system is the endurance, indeed the flourishing, of the Chinese system, which so far has successfully integrated a central function for the party into a seemingly capitalist market system. Could the Soviets have done this? I think this was the way that was blocked, ironically, when the Soviets chose to exploit the advantages of détente.
So put one mark on the board for Nixon.
Sebastian Holsclaw 06.08.04 at 4:23 pm
“Walesa, Havel and Holsclaw”, there is the beginning of a sentence I would never have expected. And I wish I deserved it, but I don’t. I’m an American who writes, they were the men on the ground fighting Communism. There isn’t any comparison. Dismiss me all you like, but your curt dismissal of them is just silly. Why do nearly all of the anti-communists in actual communist countries believe that Reagan was absolutely crucial to their fight? If the general thrust of your answer is that they didn’t know shit, I suspect that you are merely revealing a romantic attachment to your theories rather than any useful explanation of reality.
JRoth 06.08.04 at 7:16 pm
If I may, wrt messrs. Walesa, Havel, & Holsclaw:
The critical thing for us to be able to learn anything from Reagan is to properly understand what he did and didn’t do, and what effects (intended and otherwise) these actions had. Quiggen is arguing against received wisdom on Reagan’s effects on the USSR, and secondarily Eastern Europe. The objection from felixrayman is odd, since he seems to think that, by agreeing with JQ that the received wisdom is wrong, he has somehow refuted JQ. Odd.
Anyway, the relevant question is in 2 parts: did Reagan’s policies meaningfully hasten the demise of the USSR, and which policies did so? I think that Sebastian has incorrectly used an answer to part 1 as a response to part 2. Now I could be wrong, but I don’t believe that Walesa and Havel credited the MX with their salvation. My understanding of their stance has been that they credited Reagan’s tough language, and unwillingness to back down from confrontation with the Kremlin. If so, then their opinions have little bearing on JQ’s thesis, which is that Reagan’s defense buildup was a poor deal.
That said, was it not the much-hated-by-Reagan’s-current-hagiographers Helsinki accords that put dissidents and workers’ rights on the international table? I don’t deny that Reagan did talk tough, and it’s certainly imaginable that another president in the same position wouldn’t have been as openly supportive (rhetorically, at least) of Solidarity.
The bottom line, imho, is that unless Gorbachev’s installation can be irrefutably linked to Reagan’s policies, then he was at best an abettor to the collapse of the Warsaw Pact and the USSR (giving him full credit, of course, for reacting appropriately to Gorb, as noted upthread).
If the Right is so proud of its retroactive moral (and economic) clarity in seeing marxism-leninism as an system doomed to failure, then how can Reagan deserve credit for its collapse? It’s like stabbing a tyant on his deathbed, isn’t it?
Sebastian Holsclaw 06.08.04 at 7:35 pm
“If the Right is so proud of its retroactive moral (and economic) clarity in seeing marxism-leninism as an system doomed to failure, then how can Reagan deserve credit for its collapse? It’s like stabbing a tyant on his deathbed, isn’t it?”
No it isn’t, and it wasn’t retroactive either. If you read pre-presidency letters you can see his vision years before he was actually able to undermine the Soviet empire. There is a big difference between stating that the USSR would eventually collapse and suggesting that it was on its deathbed in 1981. The USSR conducted itself as an empire in the real sense of the word as opposed to the watered-down version that people try to apply to the US. It was full of contradictions, but that doesn’t mean that the contradictions would have come to light on their own. At nearly every step Reagan challenged the USSR and exposed its lies. This weakened the Communist system because Reagan continually and confrontationally exposed the difference between communism and freedom.
“Now I could be wrong, but I don’t believe that Walesa and Havel credited the MX with their salvation.”
This kind of thinking reflects a confusion between words and actions which is all to common on this board. Reagan challenged the USSR with hiw rhetoric AND backed it up with actions (in this case military spending). The actions worried the Soviets and heartened their enemies because it suggested that his words were more than rhetoric. It wasn’t JUST that Reagan called the USSR an evil empire, he ACTED as if it were.
Donald Johnson 06.08.04 at 8:16 pm
I’ll let you guys hash out the precise contribution Reagan made to ending the other evil empire. I’d give him credit for recognizing that Gorbachev was sincere–some other rightwing nitwit might not have had the sense to realize this.
But, my fellow twerps, anyone want to discuss his contribution to making our empire more evil? You know, supporting torturers, death squads, terrorists, mass murderers, that sort of thing? Not all the dissidents under tyranny would sing Reagan’s praises. Some of them were under tyrannies enthusiastically supported by Reagan and ended up in mass graves missing some of their body parts.
Note, by the way, that I am tacitly admitting that Reagan was a hero to dissidents in Communist countries and they probably had good reason for feeling some gratitude towards him. He was right in describing the Soviets as an evil empire and I was a little embarrassed at the time by some of my fellow left-of-centerites who thought that phrase was embarrassing. The big thing wrong with it was the lack of recognition that we had a beam in our own eye. Can I expect to see a minimum level of intellectual honesty from the people who praise Reagan’s policies in the communist world? Will they admit their hero whitewashed genocide, embraced torturers, lied about death squads, and did other things that one normally doesn’t mention at state funerals?
Nah. Probably not.
giled 06.08.04 at 9:52 pm
Doesn’t this post look strangely like the arguments for Kyoto – and here we have costs that are judged so unquantifiable high, set against benefits that are quantifiable that no matter how we set the discount or probabilities the costs always trumps the benefit. With Kyoto it is the same reasoning – just the other way round – unquantifiable large benefits against quantifiably small costs.
This is just apples and oranges economics – you take something you cant measure – your personal feelings and measure it against something you can. Guess which one always wins?
roger 06.08.04 at 10:44 pm
Mr. Johnson, how shall we begin the list of Reagan’s “contribution to making our empire more evil?”
Myself, I’d go for the death squads in El Salvador. And How about the support for the Generals in Argentina? The support for South Africa? The support for Marcos?
These are the foreign policy contributions. The famous I support states rights speech in Philadelphia, Mississippi is the beginning of the domestic list. High on that list would be Reagan’s unstinting support for the war on drugs, contributing to making this the incarceration capital of the free world. Then, of course, the tearing of the regulatory controls over the S&Ls, which, in the end, cost the tax payers about half what they spent defeating the evil empire.
Those are the hors d’oeuvres, I think. What else is on the menu?
Giles 06.08.04 at 11:04 pm
“Myself, I’d go for the death squads in El Salvador. And How about the support for the Generals in Argentina? The support for South Africa? The support for Marcos? ”
When Regan left office Argentina, El Salvador and the Phillipines were democracies – South Africa was on the way. So that a pretty good list of Reagan’s starters. The main course the cold war and the dessert – well watching apparently smart people tying themselves in knots trying to claim his entire foreign policy was a failure.
roger 06.08.04 at 11:25 pm
Giles, wow, conservatives, who claim government can do little, on the one hand, invest it with magic powers to do everything once the right (rightwing) pharaoh is invested, on the other. Consider the possibility that:
Marcos was overthrown because of internal Philippine politics, as per the assassination of Aquino, with Reagan acquiescing in the downfall of his old buddy after propping him up for years;
South Africa was led to democracy by Mandela, routinely denounced by the Reaganites as a communist.
El Salvador was rescued from its civil war by UN mediation in 1991. It was during Reagan’s years that the great massacre went forward, abetted by his open support for the death squads around ARENA.
But I don’t want to say Reagan counted for naught. He did rearrange the planets, changed the law of gravitation, and, for a while, helped all mankind understand the language of the birds. Just a magic guy…
Giles 06.09.04 at 12:05 am
Roger -you cant ahve it both ways, either governments have power or they don’t.
Any way I think you’ve brought up some pretty poor counterpoints. things change for the better in all 4 countries during his tenure – if this was due to his hand – point to him. If he was irrelevant no points to you.
I’d prefer to discuss whether Reagan’s Middle Eastern foreign policy was successful / wise / well thought out. Now that is debatable.
David Woodruff 06.09.04 at 5:16 am
I can’t think of any Sovietologists who would concede even the least plausibility to the “Reagan forced the Soviets to spend themselves into the ground” line. Felixrayman above does a good job of demolishing it. It’s also the case that the ultimate Soviet economic collapse stemmed not from overspending, but from poorly thought out reforms that made the planned economy unworkable without creating a market economy to replace it. Nothing Reagan did forced these poor policy choices on Gorbachev.
roger 06.09.04 at 5:20 am
Giles,
I’ll take what you say seriously. That is, you have a standard of ‘improvement’ that is separate from any personal affection you might feel towards Reagan. Improvement here has to be a positive act. Saddam Hussein can’t be said to have improved Iraq because he was captured. So that if you thought, say, Reagan encouraged, rather than discouraged, mass murders in El Salvador, you would decide that this wasn’t an improvement, especially for the murdered. More generally, you would think that it was bad to abet anything leading to the social trauma of being a part of a race or class that was targeted by a government for unrestrained violence.
Similarly, I have a standard of improvement. If Reagan actually operated to improve the lot of the average Filipino between 1981 and 1989, for example, I put away any personal animosity and give him credit.
So: the case contra Reagan in the three (not four) instances you and I have mentioned.
1. if you want to know what happened during the Reagan years in El Salvador, go to this link: http://www.usip.org/library/tc/doc/reports/el_salvador/tc_es_03151993_chron1.html. This is a very cursory summary of a much thicker library of testimonies. Mark Danner, in 1994, I believe, published a pretty sterling account of a series of massacres in El Salvador that link directly to the U.S. directed counter-insurgency campaign there. If life “improved†after Reagan was out of office, this is only because things became so radically dystopian while he was in office.
2. How about South Africa? We have the public record of Reagan’s refusal to punish South African for its internal repression, starting with the jailing of Mandela. Unlike the sympathy that Reagan expressed for jailed Soviet dissidents, there isn’t any record of a speech extolling, say, Steve Biko. If you can find one, I’d love to see it. Secondly, there was the Reagan doctrine that supported incursions into Mozambique and Angola by South Africa, and also supplied arms to UNITA – a “freedom fighting†group which abruptly became a terrorist group, in U.S. eyes, at the end of the cold war, when we decided that the communist head of Angola was indeed going to be amenable to selling as much oil to US companies as they wanted. Recently, the communist head of Angola was greated with subdued rapture on a visit to the Bush white house, which had no comment on the gunning down of the UNITA leader.
That’s two. More on the third case later.
Frank Wilhoit 06.10.04 at 3:06 am
“g”, instead of patronizing me after twenty-three solid years of tomorrows, it would be more useful if you would enumerate those things about the status quo that you consider worthy of celebration. You need only hit the high points, if you like, but please be exceedingly specific.
Comments on this entry are closed.