Peggy, Charles Krauthammer and I all remembered that line of Stalin's. It is either a case of great minds thinking alike or a case of the observation being so obvious that anyone can make it. If it were just Peggy and Charles I'd assume the former, but when the same thought it occurs to me that it is probably a pretty pedestrian observation.

Which doesn't make it any less true, or applicable, of course.

The Pope was like Gandalf. Wasn't so much his presence on the battlefield, but it was his moral example and love. When you look at the Pope, you know what you're fighting for. Kinda sorta.

What made my mind boggle was how much like ancient history the Cold War must seem to the younger generation. When I was a kid, the Iron Curtain seemed like a permanent fixture across which we and Ivan stared at each other through the crosshairs - I couldn't imagine what the world would be like without East Germany, the Berlin Wall and the Soviet Juggernaut. And then wham!

How do you explain something like that, something that huge and all-pervading, to some 15 year old kid who had barely been born by the time it was all finally over?

The Wall coming down was the most surreal event in my life.

I was in Germany as an enlisted soldier from 1987-1989 (I had dropped out of college), and after 2 years I decided to go back to school and go through ROTC. The adjustment from regular Army life back to College life was difficult for me. I had a hard time adapting to the nonchalance and casual pace of it. At the same time, the news reports in the fall of '89 show the wall coming down. I could simply not process it. I thought it was a ruse, or I thought that certainly Gorby and Honecker would roll in the tanks. I was expecting it to go very bad. It never did.

A very weird time in my life. I'm still not sure I believe it all happened.

Today I now put it in the mental file known as "This is what it looks like when your enemy surrenders."

The Divine Ms. "N" deserves a Presidential Medal of Freedom for her contributions to the advance of liberty. Not that she would take it, being the modest sort that she is.