>We should mourn the end of the USSR, if for no other reason than it allowed
>the US to drop any humanitarian pretenses. Now it is free to smash unions and
>dictate terms to small countries without any need to maintain a humanitarian
>facade.
Does this mean the smashing of unions in the US and the control of small countries was unheard of before the end of the USSR? Implicit in this argument is the nonsense that workers anywhere could only gain concessions as long as the USSR existed. Nor does it follow that dropping the "facade" is necessarily a bad thing, if it reveals the real thing.
-- Lew