John Agresto in American Greatness illuminates the academic left’s attack not only on the great works of Western civilization – the “high” – but on the “ordinary” habits, ideas and institutions that enable countries to prosper, society to function, regular people to live their lives, and civilization itself to go on.

Toppling a Communist Empire for $2.7 Million
Though widely thought of as focused on waterboarding terrorists or poisoning foreign potentates, it was by smuggling paper that the CIA achieved its most monumental triumph. R.M. Gerecht in a book review for The Washington Free Beacon charts how the late Cold War-era operation to flood Poland with Western books, magazines, printing supplies and audio recordings fatally weakened the country’s Communist dictatorship, setting the stage for the downfall of the entire Soviet empire. Total cost: US$2.7 million.


