boris spassky – How Bobby Fischer Won the Cold War

January 18th, 2008 · No Comments

boris spassky – I know I will get a lot of flack from my fellow conservatives for saying this, but it wasn’t Ronald Reagan who won the Cold War; it was Bobby Fischer, who died today in Iceland at 64. Sure, Fischer, who was probably the greatest chess player who ever lived, was anti-Semitic (although his mother was Jewish), renounced his American citizenship after he was arrested in Japan for violating sanctions against the former Yugoslavia, and rejoiced on September 11 saying he wanted to “see the U.S. wiped out,” but nobody is perfect. For me he will always be an American hero.

Young, handsome, brash, spoiled, somewhat insane, Bobby Fischer became a role model for American youth when he beat Soviet grandmaster Boris Spassky in the 1972 World Chess Championship. That this uncouth punk, playing a game most Americans didn’t understand or care about, beat the cultured, pampered product of Soviet government largesse stunned the world. For one brief shining moment from July to September 1972 Americans huddled in their living rooms around their televisions debating the relative merits of the Sicilian Defense, the Queen’s Gambit and Tartakover Variation. Fischer showed that you didn’t need government handouts to succeed. All you needed was confidence in your own genius, a big sense of entitlement and a lot of style. You can see the influence of Fischer not only in America’s steroid-pumped baseball stars and