“Kirkpatski! Kirkpatski! I have so wanted to meet you and thank you in person. Your name is known in all the Gulag.”
--Andrei Sakharov, Soviet Dissident
I filched that quote from Jay Nordlinger's latest NRO column, but it matters not. "Kirkpatski" was actually Jeanne Kirkpatrick, the former Ambassador to the United Nations who served under Reagan. Kirkpatrick passed away on December 7th of this year, aged 80. She was a tireless advocate for international human rights, having read out loud, on the floor of the United Nations, the names of actual Soviet dissidents then under arrest or imprisoned. She well understood the Soviet communist mind, as well as the sick left-wingers who sympathized with it and its nefarious machinations. Quoth Kirkpatrick, "When Marxist dictators shoot their way into power in Central America, the San Francisco Democrats don't blame the guerrillas and their Soviet allies. They blame United States policies of 100 years ago. But then they always blame America first." True in the 80's...and true now. (Witness the present-day leftist love affair with Hugo Chavez.) She also understood the United Nations as it really was (and continues to be today): "As I watched the behavior of the nations of the U.N. (including our own), I found no reasonable ground to expect any one of those governments to transcend permanently their own national interests for those of another country."
Rest in peace, Jeane Kirkpatrick.
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