 let's talk about Mikhail Gorbachev. Mikhail Gorbachev was the last leader of communist Russia, the last leader of the Soviet Union. He he will go down in history as such. He led the Soviet Union between 1985 and 1991. He was the most senior member of the Russian Communist Party. And he died I think it was today or yesterday. I can't I can't you know figure it out. Now this is a man who is now celebrated by the media as he brought freedom to Eastern Europe. He liberated East Germany. He liberated the Russian republics. I think this is a massive injustice. He's portrayed by much of Western media today as a hero. A hero for not sending the tanks in when demonstrators flooded the streets in Eastern Germany. A hero for not killing thousands of innocent people in his attempt to preserve the Soviet Union. A hero in recognizing that the Soviet Union was dead and was going to break up. None of that is heroic. It's not heroic not to kill people. It's not heroic not to slaughter them. It's not heroic to let history take its course or to let the people, not history, history sounds deterministic, people take action to liberate themselves. I mean yes it's it was the right thing to do good for him. But this is a man who spent in his entire life as part of a communist apparatus that killed millions. Now granted he became a pratchnik within the Communist Party in Russia in the Soviet Union after Stalin. So maybe he wasn't responsible for the killing of millions and millions but he was responsible for the killings. A lot of people that system was that he was a part of, that he was a member of, that he never really rejected. When asked to release Natan Churansky, one of the dissidents who were imprisoned in Russia during the 1980s, he went on a rant about how evil this guy was and you know and deserved his fate. People forget. Well maybe they just don't want to remember. Then when Kazakhstan in 1986 when protesters went to the streets in Kazakhstan as part of the part of the Soviet Union back then Gorbachev ordered the troops out leaving 200 people dead. Or that when the Georgians in Tbilisi went out into the streets it was Gorbachev who ordered the troops out to quash the pro-independence protests in April of 1989 leaving 21 people dead. Or that in Azerbaijan the pro-independence movement in 1990 left 147 dead when they cracked down on it. Or the fact that he cracked down on movements in Latvia and Lithuania. Yes Gorbachev did not order the troops out in 1990, in 1989 in East Bolin when clearly, clearly thousands would have been killed and where the fate of the Soviet Union was already kind of in the cards. But he held on to the dream of keeping it together. He held on and tried to keep it as one. Yes, Gorbachev in an attempt to save a crumbling decadent system. A system that was impoverishing his own people in an effort to somehow keep up with the United States. To somehow keep up with Ronald Reagan's military spending. Yes, he freed up a little bit politically and he freed up a little bit economically and he had Glasnost and Petroiska a little bit. But only because his hands were tied, only because he had no choice, only because the Soviet Union around him was crumbling decadent, dying, corrupt, poor, inefficient, incompetent. Sound like Russia today maybe a little bit. This is no hero. This is a man with blood in his hands. A political leader thrust into the moment that yes, good for him. He recognized it would be futile at that point to send the troops into the streets. Did he release political prisoners in the 1980s? No. Did he stop arresting people who were dissidents? No. He was many ways unmaneuvered by President Reagan. He was losing the economic battle or the economic battle as he saw it with the United States. He was losing the military race with the United States, but he wasn't even him who was losing it. It had been lost decades earlier. Communism had lost it. Was he committed communist? Yes. He later, after he lost power, became a wife to resign, became a social democrat. Oh, Troy, thank you. Really appreciate the support. Troy's come in on the last day of the year. Maybe it's because Catherine is here to help us get to our goal today. So thank you. Thank you, Troy. So let's not fall into this ridiculous idea that a communist who loosens communism up a little bit because he has no option, Lenin did the same thing, by the way, and Gorbachev was a big fan of Lenins. He did the same thing. Lenin in 1920s allowed for some private property, allowed for a little bit of economic privatization. You see that in We The Living. You see that in Iran's life even allowed some Russians to leave Russia as Iran did. So he was just following the Leninist map. Yeah, you liberate a little bit, but you're not going to give up the reins of power. You're not going to give up control. Nope. I don't think Putin had Gorbachev. I mean, Gorbachev was 91 years old. I think he's been sick for a long time. He died, you know, he died of, of natural causes. And so, no, I don't think, I don't think Putin had anything to do with Gorbachev's dying. Again, he's been sick for a long time. So, you know, it just shows the, the tolerance, the tolerance our media, our intellectuals have for communism. I mean, any small scale fascist is denied forever. Doesn't matter what they do, doesn't matter what virtues they might have had, maybe somewhere that's something good, they're denounced forever. But communists, no matter how much blood they have in their hands, no matter how authoritarian, no matter how evil, how awful, it may be with the exception of Stalin, are forgiven, are forgiven. And indeed, when they don't send the troops out to kill thousands of people, they're the good guys. They're heroes. Our world is perverse. Communism is still viewed as a moral ideal, impractical, impossible, counter to human nature, they would say. But isn't it a beautiful dream? No, it's an ugly dream. It's a horrible dream. I don't wish to dream on anybody. And just dreaming that dream, moving towards that dream leads to disaster, leads to poverty, leads to the collapse of freedom. So don't buy into it. If they are heroes of the fall of the Soviet Union, if they are heroes that have to do with the disintegration of the Soviet Union, it is Soviet dissidents who are the heroes. Solzhenitsyn, as much as I disagree with much of his philosophy, is a hero of the fall of the Soviet Union. As all the other dissidents who wrote against communism, wrote against the Soviet Union, were punished for it. It is people like Lech Walesa, who in the early 1980s rose up against the communist regime in Poland, organized labor unions, organized protests, started challenging the absolute power of the communist regimes in Eastern Europe. It is the young people of East Germany who in 1989 marched to the wall and knocked it down. It is the people in the Czech Republic who months earlier were already going out into the streets demanding change. It is the people all over, all over Eastern Europe, who stood up and challenged the authorities, who challenged communism, who challenged authoritarianism. They are the heroes. The people who didn't send the tanks into the streets, good that they didn't, nothing heroic about that. That's just common decency, don't kill your neighbors. It's the people who died in Azerbaijan and in Georgia and in Azerbaijan, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Latvia, Lithuania, before they decided not to send the troops into the streets. They are the heroes. And political leaders, it's the political leaders who challenged the Russians. I don't think they had a huge role, but Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan suddenly had a role. Ronald Reagan primarily as just a moral leader, as using the bully puppet, as providing energy and moral confidence and moral sanction to the lever lances of the world, to the people in these countries who are challenging this society by telling them, yes, it is an evil empire. Yes, the war should be torn down. Yes, you adjust, they are not. That moral certainty, that moral courage, motivated people, it had a massive impact. Imagine, imagine if, I don't know, Donald Trump had done that in 2020 as the Russians were taking over China. Imagine if he'd taken a moral stand on the side of Hong Kong, if he'd encouraged them, if he'd promoted them, if he'd given them in kind of backbite. Our moral leaders today, you know, Ronald Reagan is very flawed and as you know, I think, I ran despised Reagan, was very anti-Ragan. I'll vote for Reagan, even when he faced a challenge from, when he challenged a complete horrible president, Jimmy Carter, ran, could not vote for him. But man, as he had shoulders, body, whatever, above anybody who has been president since, again, in spite of his major flaws, which we are suffering from today, the bringing in a religion into the Republican Party. So, Gorbachev was probably better than the people who came before him. Gorbachev was no Stalin, he's no Lenin. I don't know what, you know, Soviet leaders just before Gorbachev would have done, it's hard to tell, it'd be impossible to tell. You should get some credit for the fact that he didn't do the worst thing possible. But we, who understand what heroism, or should understand what heroism is, we who understand the extent to which communism was evil, and the participants in communism was evil. Remember, Gorbachev was part of the Central Committee, I think from the mid-1970s until, or maybe late 1970s to 1985. He was part of the Communist Party, every aspect of it. He does not get a free ride, he does not get redeemed. You know, if there was a hell, he should still go to hell, in spite of the fact that he did the right thing by not sending the tanks out in 1989, and not, because of his incompetence mainly, not keeping the Soviet Union together. Vladimir Putin, by the way, was a massive critic of Gorbachev, exactly for that reason. Putin believed that one of the greatest geopolitical disasters of the 20th century was the breakup of the Soviet Union, and to a large extent he blamed Gorbachev for it. So Putin, obviously Putin was not a fan. All right, so just wanted to bring that out. You know, again, I don't know how many of you, how many of you know the history. Let's see, we have a few questions related to this. Colt Savage says, if you and Shapiro have been critical of Gorbachev today and part of me just thinks, oh, both you and Shapiro have been critical of Gorbachev today, and part of me just thinks, yeah, he wasn't good, but he was better than the turds who came before him, and the turds who came after him. I know it's not a good way to think. I don't think he's better than the people who came after him. Maybe he's better than Putin. I don't know if he's better than the Yeltsin. I just, I mean, it's a whole different world. I don't know what Yeltsin would have done in his place, but he was bad. He was not as bad. Okay, so he's not as bad. I don't think that's a qualification for the kind of, I don't know, ingrandizments that is going on in the media around him and calling him heroic and so on. PVM Corp, Hurricane Catherine. So I think his $20 is because Catherine is around. So thank you, PM Corp. Okay, Frank says, please talk about the summit that Gorbachev had with Reagan in Iceland to discuss nuclear weapons. What was the deal that was on the table? You know, I can't remember. There is a good story around that summit. I mean, fundamentally, I think the story is that Reagan basically humiliated Gorbachev in the summit. He was strong. He was tough. He was, and he basically caused Gorbachev to go back home, you know, with real doubts and second thoughts about what he could do and how he could survive. It was about, the summit was around, you know, another weapons deal, a deal to dismantle nuclear weapons. But I think it had to do with Star Wars, with Reagan's effort around launching a satellite-based anti-ballistic missile program. The Russians could not match American technology. We're nowhere near. It's not clear that Americans had a technology, but certainly the Russians didn't. And I think that really put Gorbachev in the defensive. And generally, you know, again, with all of Reagan's faults, he knew how to project strength. He knew how to argue from position of strength. And, you know, he did exactly the opposite of what our leaders today, certainly Obama, Trump, Biden have been able to do. I include Bush in that as well. I've been able to do in terms of dealing with bad guys in the world. Please consider sharing our content. And of course, subscribe. Press that little bell button right down there on YouTube so that you get an announcement when we go live. And for those of you who are ready subscribers and those of you who are ready supporters of the show, thank you. I very much appreciate it.