THE FALL OF THE WALL November 9 2009
Twenty years ago today the United States of America won a colossal victory for all of mankind without firing a shot. It was a political victory, the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet-Communist empire. It was barely two months after I left the Army after serving four years. I spent two years in Germany and made one trip to Communist East Germany while I was there. It was a trip that forever changed me and my political beliefs. The day I left Germany to come home the wall was standing there as strong as ever. Two months later it fell and I was as astonished as the rest of the world. It was an event unimaginable at the time.
For those who are too young to remember the Cold War, the fall of the Berlin Wall signaled an end to fifty years of overt tension even outright hostility, between East and West. The totalitarianism and dictatorship of the EAST went head to head with the freedom and democracy of the WEST. In the end the West won. Yet the principles of the West would never have had the impact they did without a champion. In fact freedom, peace and democracy never had a greater champion than Ronald Reagan. Together with Britain’s Margaret Thatcher the world saw just how powerful people could be just by standing up too bullies and refusing to ignore the injustices of the communist system. By presenting a determined, united front and letting the Soviets know that we would not be intimidated or shrink from a fight they were able to free Eastern Europe from the oppression they had endured since the end of World War II. It’s a lesson lost on the amateurs currently in power in the White House.
Sadly our country has lost its way. We are now “led” by people with no moral compass or integrity. Worse they have no understanding of what freedom means. They have no understanding of what it takes to keep our freedom and help bring freedom to other oppressed people. In fact they sympathize with our enemies. Some even embrace their philosophy, the philosophy of government control, loss of individual freedom and rights and dictatorship.
After fifty years of sacrifice and hardship that millions of American servicemen endured to secure the peace and freedom that Europe now enjoys our President is not there to commemorate the date. Untold billions of American dollars were invested, far more than we will ever recoup. Lives were lost in accidents and skirmishes over the years. People escaping from the East were killed by border guards and others left everything behind in their bid for one thing-FREEDOM in the West. In many ways the struggle between East and West is a metaphor for mankind and our struggle with good and evil. Yet as the left embraces more and more of the grotesque ideology of the failed Soviet state you have to ask yourself one question: if we embrace the ideology of communism, who will be left to fight for freedom? Where will the oppressed people of the world turn for leadership? If America is no longer a beacon of freedom and prosperity, of individual excellence, of economic liberty and justice then we might as well have never torn down the wall in the first place.
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