On...200th Post...The Day the Wall Came Down

20 years of Freedom

This is a glorious anniversary, and one that become more and more distant. And with it the pure impact fades. This is a saddening truth of history. I was thirteen when the Iron Curtain began to shudder and creak. I imagine people younger than me don't have the same sense of what communism was (is) and the havoc it unleashed upon the world. Americans born right around 1976 may be that last group of citizens who can begin to understand the significance. Younger than that might not grasp the conflict. I know I have trouble relaying the magnitude of the Cold War to my students. Though certainly not as strong as those kids growing up in the 60s, anyone say born after 1981 never realized how it felt living on a planet where World War III was not merely fiction, but something very real. You lived under that realization that the whole world might be gone any minute. Movies like War Games, Red Dawn, The Hunt for Red October, Red Heat, The Day After, etc were locked into that era. But they will slowly seem like time capsules from a weird age.

This week is an appropriate time to reflect and relearn what really went down in Berlin twenty years ago and feel the powerful echo of liberty casting aside tyranny one more time--learn how free expression and free markets are longer lasting than state planning and single vision. Lessons many Americans need to think more deeply on.

I do regret that President Obama is not in Berlin just as Presidents Kennedy and Reagan were. What a missed opportunity for inspired leadership. I guess the Olympics and Greenhouse Gases are more important to him than universal examples of freedom.

The current issue of the Economist covers the anniversary and the History Channel is playing a couple of good specials on the event.

Here are other similar themed posts:

After the wall fell: Central Europe's success deserves more attention by Anne Applebaum, Washington Post

The Berlin Wall fell and a new Europe rose: Daily Telegraph UK Edition

The Lessons of 1989 by Christopher Hitchens, Slate.com

Why Berlin Mattered by Fred Kaplan, Slate.com

Reagan and Leadership

Tear Down This Wall Speech

Four Little Words by Anthony R. Dolan, Wall Street Journal

Ronald Reagan's unyielding style won the Cold War by Rudy Guiliani, NY Daily News

Video Highlight
ABC NEWS Breaking News November 9th, 1989 with Peter Jennings

NY POST Agrees that President Obama not going to Berlin is a missed opportunity.
Berlin Wall Blunder

On...Nukes, Exageration, and TARP

For your daily consumption

Anne Applebaum from Slate.com on "Obama's Odd Obsession with Universal Nuclear Disarmament."

John Dickerson also from Slate.com on "The Careful Exaggerator."

And

Investor's Business Daily on more of why Obama and Geithner won't accept TARP money back.

And is it me or does every other day Obama have a new challenge or topic on how to save the world? Who is this guy? Does hubris mean anything to him? He has to know he can't accomplish half this stuff. He was elected President of the USA not President/Celebrity of the Planet Earth with magical powers.

On...Potpourri of Russia, Depopulation, and Dreaming

Just a few articles I read this afternoon that I found interesting. You may as well.

1) Anne Applebaum at Slate.com on the "Reset" strategy apparently being pushed by Team Obama in our Russian Relations. Are they really this naive? I hope it is a brilliant ploy on our part or we're going to have a "Cuba" moment in the near future if the Russian bear smells weakness.

2) Phillip Longman at USA Today goes over a bit of the danger in world of babies and why not enough people are having them and what this will mean. It is also in conjunction with the growing Green Movement encouraging our population to shrink. Start having babies you responsible middle-class Americans!

3) And the last is Andrew Breitbart ruminating on a number of glaring goofs of Team Obama in public relations. The Leno/Special Olympics, British DVD SNAFU, and Iran/YouTube vid are especially glaring. Minor stuff to be sure, but it may hint at bigger things ahead. Gulp. He ends with dreaming about a General Petraeus surge in 2012. The first half is more interesting. I'm not ready to dream about that yet.

On...Words of Freedom

From the Washington Post

Just a little article by Anne Applebaum on "WORDS THAT MATTER," as we near 2009. I wish these articles could be longer and more detailed but it's a nice appetizer to think about. The end has a nice comparison of the historical flow of the USA and that of Russia.