Bobby Fischer, who died two weeks ago, may have been the greatest chess player in history. The 1972 match in which he won the world championship from the Russian Boris Spassky is certainly the best known chess match in history.

That game has often been treated as a metaphor for the cold war; not just a contest between an American and a Russian, but a contest between freedom and totalitarianism, between individualism and order. This metaphor has recently been developed, to the point of caricature, by the neo-conservative Daniel Johnson.