Those who built and maintain the Berlin Wall pretend it is permanent. It cannot be. One day it – and all those like it – will come down. As long as the wall stands, it can never be porous enough for free men and women in the West, and freedom-loving men and women in the East, to tolerate it. Freedom, not repression, is the way of the future.
DBx: The Berlin Wall, of course, did indeed come down – was razed – 37 years ago today, on November 9th, 1989, three years after Reagan predicted its fall.
Reagan’s optimism is worthy of applause. But I fear that it’s excessive. History – including much of it since that glorious day 37 years ago – reveals that humanity is heavily populated with individuals who itch to order their fellow human beings about, as well as with people who are eager, or at least willing, to be ordered about. Still, let us celebrate the collapse of 20th-century communism.
