In 1989, as the Cold War entered the bottom of the ninth inning, political scientist Francis Fukuyama wrote a memorable essay titled “The End of History?” And the argument resolved itself in a straightforward answer: “Yes.”

I’ve been writing op-ed columns for the Catholic press since 1979. I began this column in 1993 at the invitation of the late Kay Lagreid, then-editor of the now-deceased Catholic Northwest Progress in Seattle.

In recent years, as scholars have explored Ronald Reagan’s foreign policy with greater access to primary-source documents, something utterly baffling to the conventional wisdom of his time – and ours – has come into focus: Reagan, while determined to win the Cold War, was also eager to rid the world of nuclear weapons.