GORBACHEV VISIT MARKS FULL CIRCLE ON COLD WAR

Something quite remarkable is happening in Missouri tomorrow. Former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, the one-time leader of the most oppressive sovereignty on the planet, will speak in Fulton Wednesday on the spot where the notion of the Cold War was engendered 46 years ago. That Gorbachev has now left office and that his speech at Westminster College will not likely be remembered with the same reverence as Winston Churchill's should not discount the symbolic value of this event. One of the world's most visible Cold Warriors says the Cold War is over. The speech tomorrow should be nothing less than a shout, one that proclaims freedom.

On March 5, 1946, Churchill came to the home state of U.S. President Harry Truman and gave a small town a lasting place in history. On that day, just months after World War II's conclusion, Churchill said of Europe's circumstance, "From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the continent." Immortalized as the "Iron Curtain" speech, Churchill's address provided a grim and telling harbinger for the geopolitical tensions to come.

It is but a quirk of history that this extraordinary event took place in Missouri ... and a dramatic international gesture that Gorbachev ventures to the central part of our state for a decades-delayed epilogue. To be sure, though, the Soviet's speech brings the matter full circle, tracing the march of Eastern bloc tyranny and expansionism from beginning to end. America devoted the lives of its citizens and countless resources to beating back this threat to world peace. Think back even a decade and the downfall of the Soviet regime would have been unimaginable. It is a joy to have Gorbachev in Missouri as an acknowledgement that the improbable can come to pass.

A big-picture perspective is necessary to take all this in. The United States economy could be in better shape. Domestic strife festers in many parts of America. Challenges remain in place globally, enough to keep our defenses up and our watch ever vigilant. But there is just cause to feel pride in what our nation has accomplished and what it stands for. The Cold War is over, and freedom has won out.