Paul Kengor
Last week Paul Kengor came to visit Wabash. He is a professor at Grove City College, and a prolific writer. Last year I read his book "The Crusader," which tells the story of Ronald Reagan's deliberate and sustained efforts over the years to undermine the Soviet communism and bring an end to the Cold War. It is a very good and readable book, and you can read my Amazon review here. The other books that Paul has written include "God and George W. Bush," and "God and Hillary Clinton." The latter one, despite what some may think, is not all that thin of a volume.
Paul's talk mainly focused on the material that he covered in "The Crusader." After the talk there was a Q&A session and I asked a couple of questions of my own. I was interested in finding out what he thought about China, and here I was a bit disappointed with the answer. Paul claimed that China is not so much of a problem, and that Reagan would probably not deal with China in the same way as he had dealt with the Soviet Union. He based this argument on a claim that China is not an expansionistic power that is trying to impose communism on the whole world. This is highly debatable, and probably more a function of China's current relative weakness. There is no question in my mind that given an opportunity, China would be as aggressive, if not more so, as the good ol' Soviet Union. Furthermore, this assessment of the difference between China and USSR also undermines one of the central claims of "The Crusader:" communism is an intrinsically evil system and it's our moral obligation to try the best we can to help those who are suffering under its repression to get out of it.
At the end of his talk Paul gave an interesting assessment. He reflected on the fact that George W. Bush is the most unpopular president ever since the popularity polls have been conducted. However, he asserted that if Bush's plan to bring democracy and freedom to the Middle East brings fruit in a long run, then his achievements will be comparable to those of Reagan vis-à-vis the collapse of European communism. But unlike Reagan, who had Gorbachov as an equally important collaborator in this monumental endeavor, Bush will rightfully deserve sole credit for the role he plaid in his historic transformation. Needless to say, the final chapters in that undertaking are still in the process of being written. Let us just hope that it will not be too long before we can read them in full.