Former U.S. Attorney General Edwin Meese III and Andre Gratchev, Soviet deputy minister for international affairs, debated at Oxford Monday night on the relative values of the U.S. Constitution and socialism. The motion proposed by Meese at Oxford University's venerable debating society that ``this house believes that the values of the American Constitution, not of socialism, will shape the world in the coming century'' was carried by 351 votes to 235. About 1,000 students packed Oxford Union to hear the speeches. The debating society is a training ground for politicians and a hotbed of talk, wit and showing-off. Opposing the motion, Gratchev urged: ``Do not bury socialism. Perestroika is being tried by us to allow socialism to win. Socialism is capable of providing answers to human problems.'' He said many Western writers had predicted perestroika would fail because, they said, it was impossible to reform socialism. But Gratchev said perestroika involved irreversible change. ``It will continue to alter the world and profoundly change the nature of socialism,'' he said. ``The purpose of perestroika is to subject socialism to historical change. The 21st century will be the century of change. Right now the change is coming from the East, from the Soviet countries, from Moscow. But it is not anti-capitalist.'' Meese said socialism had not worked, could not be defended and was being cast aside. He said the value of the U.S. Constitution lay in giving to people the ability to bring about change through democratic processes. ``We recognize the Constitution will not solve all the problems of mankind, but it allows the process whereby people can attempt to solve problems through their elected representatives,'' Meese said. He said this was a potential recognized by more and more oppressed people. ``That is why a copy of the Statue of Liberty was raised in Tiananmen Square,'' he said, referring to the pro-democracy demonstrations crushed by Chinese troops in Beijing last year.
