From the latest issue of The American Conservative, a review by Peter Hitchens (the Good Hitchens) of John O’Sullivan’s The President, the Pope, and the Prime Minister: Three Who Changed the World:
“I might add that Poland, though freed from the iron manacles of Moscow, is now instead wrapped up in the sticky marshmallow bonds of the European Union, a despotic, secretive, and lawless empire with the strong potential to get much worse than it already is.”
The death of communism was brought about by what seems to O’Sullivan to have been the very hand of Providence, a benevolent God who deemed that Reagan, Thatcher, and Wojtyla should all have attained their offices simultaneously. O’Sullivan’s thesis is that these three coalesced in a divine concatenation of forces, as it were, that brought down the godless Soviets. As “one of the last Protestants still standing in Britain,” Hitchens is inclined to believe in this miraculous manifestation of divine will, and yet:
“I cannot quite share John O’Sullivan’s awe at these things, even though I once did, and even though I should like to. As I read, and enjoyed, his fond recollections of Margaret Thatcher’s resolve and Ronald Reagan’s humorous squashing of liberal idiocy, I kept thinking, ‘Yes, so it was, but why in that case have we ended up as we are?'”
As more conservatives on both sides of the Atlantic begin to ask that question, the base of the War Party will start to crack.
I see this isn’t online, which is often the case with TAC‘s best stuff: which means that you’ve really got to subscribe to what is, to my mind, the most interesting magazine of political opinion in America.