From the latest issue of The American Conservative

From the latest issue of The American Conservative, a review by Peter Hitchens (the Good Hitchens) of

John O’Sullivan’s The President, the Pope, and the Prime Minister: Three Who Changed the World:

“I might add that Poland, though freed from the iron manacles of Moscow, is now instead wrapped up in

the sticky marshmallow bonds of the European Union, a despotic, secretive, and lawless empire with the

strong potential to get much worse than it already is.”

The death of communism was brought about by what seems to O’Sullivan to have been the very hand of

Providence, a benevolent God who deemed that Reagan, Thatcher, and Wojtyla should all have attained

their offices simultaneously. O’Sullivan’s thesis is that these three coalesced in a divine

concatenation of forces, as it were, that brought down the godless Soviets. As “one of the last

Protestants still standing in Britain,” Hitchens is inclined to believe in this miraculous

manifestation of divine will, and yet:

“I cannot quite share John O’Sullivan’s awe at these things, even though I once did, and even though

I should like to. As I read, and enjoyed, his fond recollections of Margaret Thatcher’s resolve and

Ronald Reagan’s humorous squashing of liberal idiocy, I kept thinking, ‘Yes, so it was, but why in

that case have we ended up as we are?’”