Pejman Yousefzadeh: Our "Inordinate Fears" of Communism  [Pejman
Yousefzadeh is an attorney in Chicago and a Senior Editor of The
New Ledger. (Courtesy, The New Ledger).]  Nearly twenty years
after the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the end–or at least, the
beginning of the end–of the Cold War, it seems that some people
are still having trouble processing the lessons of the epic
struggle. Not surprisingly, perhaps, one of those people, Andrew
O’Hehir, writes for Salon. O’Hehir reviews Archie Brown’s The
Rise and Fall of Communism, and draws conclusions that are
belied by the actual history of the Cold War. He repeats the
trope that Ronald Reagan’s contribution to ending the Cold War
came in his second term, when he decided to engage the communist
world, rather than call it an evil empire, as he did in the
first. And consistent with the behavior of so many on the port
side of politics who are determined to ensure that Reagan’s role
in the downfall of communism is minimized, O’Hehir tells us that
Reagan’s palliat