A critical point has been reached in the swirl of events now changing the once-implacable face of communism. We can seize the initiative and adopt a program of positive support for Gorbachev, the remarkable, new-style commissar of commissars who has opened the Iron Curtain to fast-moving democratization.  

Or we can simply stand by - simply making encouraging sounds - and by such lack of action perhaps contribute to collapse of all the bright hopes raised by his efforts.  

With policies of glasnost and political restructuring, Gorbachev has set in motion a series of revolutionary and positive events. We have seen the crowds in Prague, in East Berlin, in Bucharest, in Budapest - and our spirits have soared with the triumph of freedom in these cities, once so gray and lifeless in the grip of old-style Communist oppression.  

San Francisco Chronicle Feb 11 1990, Sunday Punch, p.1