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By the end of the Space Race, by the beginning of Star Wars, and not long before the end of the Cold War, the West had completely succeeded in presenting itself as the state of freedom - the freedom to move through space. And there was room for dissidents, those worthiest of all artists and intellectuals, to continue in their role of society's conscience for the repressed, to speak for and on behalf of everyone, to mark out difference, utter critiques, and to point - self-reflexively when necessary - at the excesses and shortcomings of the West. Unlike the Soviet Union, it was the Western Alliance that truly championed freedom and enlightenment.