He may have cost us our freedom. He opened the China door. Despise him !
All through the 1970s (when I was a kid), whenever I heard people praise Kissinger, it was because "he opened the door to China."
That was his Legacy. The conclusive evidence of his geo-strategic brilliance. The snowcap summit of his genius.
China wanted to distance itself from the USSR, and the US wanted to separate them as well. Thus, normalization of relations with China was seen as a good thing, even if it meant recognizing China in place of Taiwan.
The Beijing-Washington Back-Channel and Henry Kissinger’s Secret Trip to China
https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB66/