A Voice in the Wilderness In Defense of "Mere Conservatism"

Remembering the Horror of Communism

Here is a tremendously powerful video calling all freedom loving people to pause and remember what a big deal it was when the Berlin Wall fell 20 years ago.

People under the age of 30 have largely forgotten the threat Communism has posed, and continues to pose, to concepts like individual worth and freedom; free markets of ideas, speech, religion, and commerce; private property; and political self-determination. Two decades ago the Soviet Union was a reality that the world's Left told us would never go away, and perhaps might even be a better idea than our crude republican democracy. Today even the Chinese are implementing capitalist policies, however limited, to prosper and grow.

The Heritage Foundation posted a great blog yesterday with an excerpt from Reagan's speech in Berlin, at the wall, from 1987.  Read now the words of a leader whose words were not only eloquent and inspirational, but actually meant something because those he spoke to and against knew he would back them up with decisive action.

In these four decades, as I have said, you Berliners have built a great city. You've done so in spite of threats--the Soviet attempts to impose the East-mark, the blockade. Today the city thrives in spite of the challenges implicit in the very presence of this wall. What keeps you here? Certainly there's a great deal to be said for your fortitude, for your defiant courage. But I believe there's something deeper, something that involves Berlin's whole look and feel and way of life--not mere sentiment. No one could live long in Berlin without being completely disabused of illusions. Something instead, that has seen the difficulties of life in Berlin but chose to accept them, that continues to build this good and proud city in contrast to a surrounding totalitarian presence that refuses to release human energies or aspirations. Something that speaks with a powerful voice of affirmation, that says yes to this city, yes to the future, yes to freedom. In a word, I would submit that what keeps you in Berlin is love--love both profound and abiding.

Perhaps this gets to the root of the matter, to the most fundamental distinction of all between East and West. The totalitarian world produces backwardness because it does such violence to the spirit, thwarting the human impulse to create, to enjoy, to worship. The totalitarian world finds even symbols of love and of worship an affront. Years ago, before the East Germans began rebuilding their churches, they erected a secular structure: the television tower at Alexander Platz. Virtually ever since, the authorities have been working to correct what they view as the tower's one major flaw, treating the glass sphere at the top with paints and chemicals of every kind. Yet even today when the Sun strikes that sphere--that sphere that towers over all Berlin--the light makes the sign of the cross. There in Berlin, like the city itself, symbols of love, symbols of worship, cannot be suppressed.

As I looked out a moment ago from the Reichstag, that embodiment of German unity, I noticed words crudely spray-painted upon the wall, perhaps by a young Berliner, "This wall will fall. Beliefs become reality." Yes, across Europe, this wall will fall. For it cannot withstand faith; it cannot withstand truth. The wall cannot withstand freedom.

Watch the entire speech here.

Communist countries must keep people from getting out, and a free nation like the United States has for one of its major problems too many people trying to get in.  Think about that, and about the ideas and values and policies that have created the economy, culture, and government for both types of systems.