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...Wading into a Bog

That Bog Would be Health Insurance Reform

I've avoided this topic for a while and I really don't want to get too far into it because I'm not a medical/insurance expert in any way shape or form and too many people with too little information are wading into this mess. Unfortunately I don't think those opposed to Obamacare or whatever you call it can't stop it. This debate should have been happening back in September and October of 08 not now. These Americans (and they are Americans, we all are Americans no matter how obnoxious) should have thought this over and actually listened to the debates and voted for McCain, but I digress. The votes are in. The Dems run the show with big numbers. They just need to tame the herd.

However, I do think we can force a watering down of the great leap to socialized medicine but that's about it--another step, maybe two, but not a sprint. Team Obama botched that reality all on their own. He does seem a little out of step with Congress--meaning he lets Pelosi and Reid run the show, which is a disaster always in the making. Thankfully. He should have been more direct and said "I want this and this and this, you can debate this and this only. Give me the bill the way I want it." But alas...

Supporters of Health Insurance Reform (which is almost everyone, but how the reform should go is the great difference) should read these two articles below just so they understand a little more about aspects of the debate they may have ignored: Preventive Care and Life Expectancy

Jonah Goldberg has a very solid point about cost and life expectancy in his New York Post article

Charles Krauthammer illuminates how preventive care actually increases costs in the long run.