Great piece by Steyn, I liked this line:
they maintain that the Soviet empire would have collapsed anyway, their belated belief in the inevitable failure of communism being in no way inconsistent with their previous long-held belief in the inevitable triumph of communism.
They wouldn't want the USA and conservatism to get the credit for turning back totalitarianism so they pretend it didn't happen, this leaves it open to come back in an improved form, controlled by them.
"The Politburo would have gone on rotating the same old 1950s waxworks - Brezhnev, Chernenko, Andropov."---LOL
"They wouldn't want the USA and conservatism to get the credit for turning back totalitarianism."
The conservatives of that day forestalled totalitarianism. That caliber of conservative is long gone.