Isn’t it annoying when advocates of whatever stripe tell you to “Wake up!”? As if you have to be in a torpor to disagree with the guy!

However, at the extreme, I’ve taken the same tack. Take communism. A brutalizing of society. How can a political system be so thoroughly destructive without people realizing it’s destructive?

Well, they do realize. Ideology carries some along sometimes at first. But after decades of long lines and mutual spying and nightly “disappearances,” the people figure it out. Maybe markets, freedom of choice, and profit-seeking aren’t so bad after all.

But inertia remains. And people in power don’t want to give it up.Yet at long last a wonderful thing happens. The border walls fall. The power chains break. Communism collapses.

Perfect freedom doesn’t emerge like a phoenix. But the shelves are better stocked now. Civil society awakes.

Sixty-five-year-old Jan Grzebski, a Polish railway man, has woken up, too. In 1988, he had an accident and went into a coma. His wife Gertrude took care of him all these years. And now, suddenly, Jan is awake. And stunned by the new Poland.

Jan says, “When I went into a coma there was only tea and vinegar in the shops, meat was rationed and huge petrol lines were everywhere. Now I see people on the streets with cell phones and there are so many goods in the shops it makes my head spin.”

Welcome back, sir. Welcome to a better world.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.