Wish I'd said that - June 27, 2018

"As a schoolboy, I would supplement my English lessons by buying and reading The Morning Star, a foreign English-language newspaper that was available in the USSR. The Soviets permitted us to read this Communist daily published in London because, in being very critical of the democratic and capitalist world, the paper parroted the ideological line of the party. For me, however, its effect would prove highly subversive. What left a lasting impression was not the content of the criticism but the very fact that people outside the Soviet Union were free to criticize their own government without going to prison. The stronger the criticism, the more impressed I was by the degree of freedom enjoyed elsewhere."

"Preface" in Natan Sharansky with Ron Dermer The Case for Democracy