ST. GEORGE, PLEASE DON’T DISTURB THE DRAGON.

The prisoners' conscience (Natan Sharansky, Jerusalem Post, June 6th, 2004)

In 1983, I was confined to an eight-by-ten-foot prison cell on the border of Siberia. My Soviet jailers gave me the privilege of reading the latest copy of Pravda. Splashed across the front page was a condemnation of President Ronald Reagan for having the temerity to call the Soviet Union an "evil empire." Tapping on walls and talking through toilets, word of Reagan's "provocation" quickly spread throughout the prison. We dissidents were ecstatic. Finally, the leader of the free world had spoken the truth – a truth that burned inside the heart of each and every one of us.

At the time, I never imagined that three years later, I would be in the White House telling this story to the president. When he summoned some of his staff to hear what I had said, I understood that there had been much criticism of Reagan's decision to cast the struggle between the superpowers as a battle between good and evil.

Well, Reagan was right and his critics were wrong.

Looking back at the alarmed and bitter controversy over Reagan’s talk of the “evil empire” and the 1986 bombing of Tripoli, one is struck by the intellectual hoops progressive thinking goes through to justify simple cowardice and a lack of responsibility for the plight of others. Although leftists love to march for this or that cause and proclaim universal brotherhood, they always conclude that tyrants must be suffered and that their many victims must die pending the distant advent of a misty utopia, so that they themselves may continue to live in comfort and safety. The same spirit informs their attitude to the war on terror. All their talk about international law, root causes, multilateralism, etc. hides their deep conviction that, whomever the bell tolls for, it isn’t for them.