The Wall Fell, and Freedom Sang »
Posted By RTHTGakaRoland 2 weeks, 3 days ago in Political Opinion
On November 9, 1989, as I watched the Berlin Wall being torn down, I was deliriously happy. Almost half a billion people who had been locked behind that wall and spent their whole lives with their mouths wired shut would now be able to speak freely and to discover a whole new universe kept hidden from them.
The heavy plaster cast that had straight-jacketed my freedom for most of my adult life also seemed to be crumbling at my feet. Communist Romania had just upped the bounty on my head to $2 million for my having helped to bring down the Communist curtain.
I was with Khrushchev when the idea of erecting the Berlin Wall germinated in his head. He had landed in Bucharest on October 26, 1959 to solicit Romania’s support for grabbing West Berlin, which had become the escape-hatch through which millions of East Germans were fleeing westward, draining East Germany's already shabby economy. At the time I was running Romania’s intelligence station in West Germany, so as the country’s “German expert” I attended most of the discussions. “No power on earth can stop us,” Khrushchev spat out. But President Eisenhower did stop him. On August 13, 1961, Khrushchev made the humiliating decision to close off East Berlin with barbed wire (which later became the Berlin Wall) and proclaimed that a major victory.
Freedom can be shackled, but never killed.
Twenty years after the Berlin Wall was torn down by people hungering for freedom, the world looks entirely different. Life on the opposite sides of the Wall, which had meant the difference between day and night, is almost equal. The freedoms of religion, expression and assembly have been restored. The barriers the Communists spent over 70 years erecting between themselves and the rest of the world, as well as between individual people, have been removed. The culture is reviving, and a new generation of intellectuals is developing new national identities for their countries.
All former Soviet satellites—including my native Romania, once the epitome of tyranny—abandoned their ruinous experiment with Marxism. So did Germany, France, Italy, Great Britain, Greece. All are today strengthening their free market economies, and all are now pursuing various national versions of social and cultural conservatism. Even Russia has begun sailing through the uncharted waters of capitalism.
Alas, the specter of Marx’s populist socialism has now started haunting the United States. According to an April 2009 Rasmussen poll, only 53% of Americans said they preferred capitalism to socialism; 27% were unsure, and 20% preferred socialism.
Why are so many Americans now toying with socialism, in a country that created the most successful free market economic system in history and spent half of the last century fighting the heresy of Marx’s socialism? One reason, I believe, is that contemporary political memory seems to be increasingly afflicted by a convenient kind of Alzheimer disease. Few Americans remember that the Free World spent 40 years and trillions of dollars fighting the plague of Marx’s socialism, which dispossessed well over one billion people and transformed a third of the world into an immense gulag. Another reason is simple ignorance. The archives of the Soviet Union’s KGB and Red China’s equivalent—two political police organizations that between them killed over 100 million people—are still sealed, and people cannot visualize the enormity of the devastation Marx’s socialism could cause. The fact that leftists currently dominate the American media and academia does not help either.
In 2008, while Washington was busy fighting wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, Marx’s specter began haunting the United States itself. If history is any guide, the new generation of Americans calling for a government takeover of the private economy may be in for unpleasant surprises—and the rest of United States along with them.
Let’s hope that the 20th celebration of the Berlin Wall’s fall will rouse America.
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RTHTGakaRoland
“…man is not free unless government is limited. There's a clear cause and effect here that is as neat and predictable as a law ...
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alanocu2 weeks, 3 days ago
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You know, I've been hearing a lot of people comparing Obama to Hitler. How are Democrats like Nazis? I don’t quite care for either of them. Anyway, Hitler was able to bring the Olympics to Berlin in 1936. Maybe Obama wanted to be like Hitler though. The libs need to have their heroes I guess. Gross.
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avoth2 weeks, 3 days ago
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My friend, I owe you an apology. I believe one of the hallmarks of a true Conservative is the when they make a mistake, they acknowledge it, apologize for it, and try not to do it again.
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In the past, I challenged your comparison of Democrats to Nazis. Observations and interactions with hyperbola, progressive, tchef, gamahuche, crispi, bluetexasvalley, natureboy, djn3nunez3, fsev41, most especially dionys, and other liberal posters have convinced me that I was wrong to do so.
I completely apologize and ask your forgiveness. -
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Justice4All2 weeks, 2 days ago
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Nobody is comparing Obama to Hitler except possibly a few neocon supremicists. No true conservative or liberal would do this.
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However that could change if Obama bows to the special interests and starts an illegal war like his predecessor. But I don't think thats going to happen. -
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icono12 weeks, 2 days ago
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IMHO If The 0 Man is anything, he is a Marxist.
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For this;
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=owA2geM8OGg
comes from the 'Critique of the Gotha Program' by K Marx;
'In a higher phase of communist society, after the enslaving subordination of the individual to the division of labor, and therewith also the antithesis between mental and physical labor, has vanished; after labor has become not only a means of life but life's prime want; after the productive forces have also increased with the all-around development of the individual, and all the springs of co-operative wealth flow more abundantly—only then can the narrow horizon of bourgeois right be crossed in its entirety and society inscribe on its banners: From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs!'
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motoblack88Comment removed: Spam
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philbrick2 weeks, 2 days ago
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Harry S. Truman was the first to start the fall of the wall and he was a Democrat.
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"Truman entered the Oval Office after Franklin Roosevelt died in April 1945, and it was left to him to stand up to the Soviets in the postwar battle for Europe. Fearing that social turmoil in the shattered remains of Western Europe would see its people turn to communism, Truman went to bat for the Marshall Plan on the principle that to contain the march of communism it was essential to rebuild Western Europe. Truman was reelected in 1948, and saw the creation of NATO as well as policies that brought West Germany squarely into the Western camp. He retired in 1952 and returned to private life in Missouri, where died in 1972".
http://www.time.com/time/daily/special/berlin/play...-
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icono12 weeks, 2 days ago
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http://www.berlin-life.com/berlin/wall
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fta;
"Construction began on The Berlin Wall early in the morning of Sunday, August 13, 1961. It was a desperate – and effective - move by the GDR (German Democratic Republic) to stop East Berliners escaping from the Soviet-controlled East German state into the West of the city, which was then occupied by the Americans, British and French. "
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pc252 weeks, 2 days ago
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it probably would have been ssen as a popular referendum on Ronald Reagan. Amazing that he could find time to go to Copenhagen to beg for the Olympics on bended knee. When he needed the Germany for his great America apology tour he found the time though.
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pc252 weeks, 2 days ago
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off course, what else is new. It played out really well in Germany.
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http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,6...
Barack is Too Busy
Obama Cancels Plans to Attend Berlin Wall Anniversary
FTA
Obama has not visited Berlin since taking power. He was in Germany briefly in June, when he made stops in Dresden and at the Buchenwald concentration camp memorial. It was during that trip that Merkel extended the invitation for Obama to help Germany celebrate the fall of the Wall.
That was a personal invitation from Merkle. Maybe he could have given up one of his golf days..........
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