THE WEEK

we interrupt the demands for Ed Meese’s resignation to request a moment of silence in memory of the late Attorney General Robert Kennedy—who wiretapped Martin Luther King, concealed what he knew of the death of Marilyn Monroe, made a paper air plane out of the Constitution in pursuit of political enemies, and generally dedicated the Justice Department to the greater good of his brother and his party.

Repeat, the mistake is to refashion our defense policy and our foreign policy on the presumption of an organic change in the nature of the Soviet enterprise. There is no doubt that much is going on, but the Soviet Union still has a long way to go before it joins the community of reasonably free nations. Here is a checklist (partial, to be sure) of reforms you don’t hear Gorbachev mentioning: 1) non-governmental newspapers to compete with Pravda and Izvestia. 2) Abolition of the writers’ and artists’ trade unions: i.e., no more licensed literature, paintings, and sculpture. 3) Non-Communist opposition parties made legal and permitted to function, participating first in local and municipal elections. 4) Habeas corpus made effective. 5) Freedom of religion. 6) Freedom of individual physical movement. 7) The cessation of extraordinary espionage. 8) The phasing out of imperial ventures in Cuba, Angola, and Nicaragua. … If these changes were actually implemented, the totalitarian Soviet regime would go far toward becoming a (still authoritarian) Great Russian regime. A distinction as important as that between Mr. Hyde and Dr. Jekyll.

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we interrupt the demands for Ed Meese’s resignation to request a moment of silence in memory of the late Attorney General Robert Kennedy—who wiretapped Martin Luther King, concealed what he knew of the death of Marilyn Monroe, made a paper air plane out of the Constitution in pursuit of political enemies, and generally dedicated the Justice Department to the greater good of his brother and his party.

Repeat, the mistake is to refashion our defense policy and our foreign policy on the presumption of an organic change in the nature of the Soviet enterprise. There is no doubt that much is going on, but the Soviet Union still has a long way to go before it joins the community of reasonably free nations. Here is a checklist (partial, to be sure) of reforms you don’t hear Gorbachev mentioning: 1) non-governmental newspapers to compete with Pravda and Izvestia. 2) Abolition of the writers’ and artists’ trade unions: i.e., no more licensed literature, paintings, and sculpture. 3) Non-Communist opposition parties made legal and permitted to function, participating first in local and municipal elections. 4) Habeas corpus made effective. 5) Freedom of religion. 6) Freedom of individual physical movement. 7) The cessation of extraordinary espionage. 8) The phasing out of imperial ventures in Cuba, Angola, and Nicaragua. … If these changes were actually implemented, the totalitarian Soviet regime would go far toward becoming a (still authoritarian) Great Russian regime. A distinction as important as that between Mr. Hyde and Dr. Jekyll.