happier place since WWII if its politics had been more like those of
Bulgaria?
>From the looks of your comment above, sounds like you don't accept
democracy (in this case, the will of the people), when you don't agree
with the results. Greece probably would have gone Red, and by the will
of the people, not through any Soviet intervention. Indeed, G. Kolko in
the Politics of War makes a convincing case that the Soviets and Stalin
had no hand in the Greek situation, other than discouraging it for fear
of agitating the West. I sincerely respect your convictions about
democracy, and on some level, share them. But why traffic in the canard
that all Red movements would have ultimately been Stalin controlled, or
authoritarian? The complex history of these underdeveloped areas under
siege from day one, produced some unenviable results. Yet, it was the
interplay of historical forces, and not any Heritage Foundation like
simple faith in the "Power of Ideas" as Lee Eduards or William Simon
would have us understand history. I don't mean to get too personal,
but it almost appears as if you think the repeat of this history can be
willed away through the adoption or rejection of certain ideas, yet
without any understanding of the forces that generated them. I think
your motives are good, and I would only counsel that this approach, no
matter how sincere, is doomed to failure.
Jeff Sommers -- "Adam Smith started with a view of the forest but his followers lost themselves in the woods."
--John R. Commons, 1934--