With some exceptions, such as Vietnam, the conservative Cold War impulse towards counter-Communist intervention was positive. It recognized that the Soviet Union’s power rested on turning democracies into resource centers and military outposts and free peoples into prisoners.

But on Friday, Vox co-founder Matthew Yglesias responded to a tweet by conservative writer Mark Hemingway and suggested that conservatives were too keen to intervene against Soviet-supported communist movements. Yglesias believes we should have been more relaxed about communists taking power in marginally powerful states.