The Power of IDEAS.

Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev was unimpressed by the gleaming washing machine as he boasted to U.S. Vice President Richard Nixon of the Soviets' technical superiority. "When we catch up, in passing you by," Khrushchev said, holding up his hand, "we will wave."

Nixon and Khrushchev traded barbs about color television sets, wristwatches, and rockets during the famous "kitchen debate" at the 1959 U.S. exhibition in Moscow. But the argument was really about ideas. Which ideas were better for providing for citizens--democracy and capitalism, with free elections and private ownership, or Communism with its state-owned industry, single-party rule, and an appealing promise of equal distribution of wealth?

The competition fueled a "cold" war--a war of words instead of bullets--between the U.S. and Soviet Union. These two giants had been World War II allies in defeating the fascist dictatorships of Germany, Japan, and Italy, along with their ideas of racial purity, genocide, and world conquest. Now they fought each other in a struggle that brought the world a terrifying nuclear confrontation and a series of small hot wars around the globe.

The Cold War ended when economic chaos led to the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. Then, it was the U.S. that waved goodbye to Soviet Communism.

But the idea of democracy--with its tenets of individual freedom and equality before the law--has been a challenge to Americans at home, as well abroad. In racial and sexual equality, in individual liberties, in the accountability of the political system, and in the stewardship of the environment, the U.S. in the 20th century has struggled, in the words of Martin Luther King Jr., to "live out the full meaning of its creed." Whether the U.S. will continue to be seen as freedom's champion will depend on how we live up to our creed in the next century--and beyond.