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

RIP: Irving Kristol

Writer Irving Kristol died last week at 89. Though I didn't directly read a lot of his work (and there is a whole lot of it) I have been steadily influenced by those who he influenced and mentored, his son Bill and wife Gertrude along with James Q Wilson and others. I wish I would have known his magazine The Public Interest in its heyday.

Christopher Hitchens and James Q Wilson have articles about him below. They are especially useful in trying to understand the true origins of the term neoconservative without all the post-Iraq war baggage.

Hitchens on Irving Kristol

Wilson on Irving Kristol

From...Christopher Hitchens on Turkey and the EU

Just an article from Hitchens on Turkey's games at the NATO conference and their desire to be in the EU. HERE

From...Hitchens and Will and Bo the Non-rescued Dog

Realism on the Run from the Obamanation.

Christopher Hitchens and George Will have thematically similar articles regarding our foreign policy. Hitchens pleads to Obama to stop being so sensitive and show some more backbone.
Will questions the "community of nations" the Obama Administration is always using in their rhetoric.

Plus in the Obama disillusioned bin comes this piece on Bo, the Obama girls' new pooch. [From Slate.com]

On...News Weekly's 2 Big Stories

Mainstream Essays

Time and Newsweek in the past few weeks have had large essays regarding two relevant issues. From Time we get author/journalist Kurt Anderson on The End of Excess and from Newsweek we get historian Jon Meacham on The End of Christian America. I believe both titles are a little misleading, but each have plenty to chew over--some good, some off-the-mark a bit, and some great for debate.

Many of you may find them interesting. If I get time I would like to revisit them in length.

On...Bombay

The Hot Spot

I don't pretend to really know all that much about India and its diverse culture and long history/rivalry with Pakistan but I do know that it will play no-small role in the future. As for the terrorist attacks in Bombay the war against Islamic-fascism knows no rest. I've included a number of article for your enjoyment regarding the latest battle.

First Christopher Hitchens on why India is a very important ally and what we need to do to assist them.

Second a brief article from SLATE on why Bombay's name was changed to Mumbai and why I will continue to call it Bombay just as I will call Burma Burma and not that other name.

Third is from Robert Kagan on what the USA should do regarding Pakistan. From the Washington Post

President-Elect Obama rattled the sabers pretty hard regarding Pakistan, it's soon going to be game time. Now that he firmly has a centrist (almost center-right) foreign policy team (Hillary, Gen. Jones, Gates, Biden) I wonder if the moonbats are having indigestion yet.

Rich Lowry of the NY Post mirrors much of my take on Obama's Alpha Team HERE