The Ending of an Age

With the passing of Pope John Paul II this weekend, another key figure of the ending of the Cold War leaves the stage.

The Pope spelled out the Cold War's spritual dimensions, holding the enforced atheism of Soviet dominion immoral and unholy. He added a moral dimension, and lent further weight to Ronald Reagan's and Margret Thatcher's points that Communism was not merely different, not merely a different path to the same goal, but wrong and a contravention of everything good and noble in men.

Of the triumvirate, now only Lady Thatcher remains, still a class act and a steely resolve. Hopefully, she'll be with us a while yet, for I believe the time is soon coming when her voice and resolve will be needed again.

But the stage is being cleared, and the next great struggle of ideas has begun. Can a pluralistic democracy survive the threat of Islamic-based facism? Can this threat be blunted by the encouragement of democratic reforms in the Middle East?

Only time shall tell. While I suspect Reagan and the Pope already know the answer, Lady Thatcher and the rest of us will have to wait for time to flow in its own, patient way.