  Just an interesting fact:  in order to have your painting be exhibited at the Louvre you have to be dead for at least sixty years.
 I just don't understand why do you have to be dead before you can become famous or a hero.  Look at Socrates who had been tried and killed for his work of science,  or Copernicus who had been called a heretic for his proposal of the sun being the center of the universe,  or Mozart who was buried in a common group grave;  or Beethoven who was poor,  deaf,  and unacclaimed during his life;  or Bach who was also poor with ten kids,  and in a constant struggle with his employers -  all famous composers after their death;  or look at Van Goh who died poor,  drunk and unknown for his great paintings;  or the writers such as Solzhenicin and Pasternak who have been banished and sent into exile and now are known worldwide for their great works of literature.
 They all have been famous after death and will continue to be celebrated for centuries to come and yet during their life times they were either banished and criticized for their work or drunk,  poor and struggling for survival.  Now I got a bit off topic here.  I was going to talk about Reagan and got carried away with my appraisal of true heroes.  I hear everyone talk about Reagan and how great he is but really what was so great about him?  It seems as if everyone forgot about him and his great deeds for a decade and bothered to discover a hero in him only as soon as he died.
 So what do you think he did that was so great,  I didn't really remember him being a major personae in the APUSH book.  P. S.  I just want to mention that no one won the Cold War,  and no one destroyed the USSR.  It destroyed itself,  it simply had a malignant cancer which killed it from inside out.  It's actually very interesting to hear and observe different perspectives on the issue of Cold War.
