Twenty-five years ago this week, the most visible symbol of Communism and the Cold War, the Berlin Wall, saw its last days.
If America’s media weren’t so biased against capitalism and individual freedom, the fall of the Berlin Wall would be celebrated every year with an official federal holiday, fireworks, and parades in major cities. Really, millennials, it was that big a deal. It triggered and then symbolized the freeing of millions of people from government tyranny.
I cannot recommend more highly a visit to the website of the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation. As they note on the homepage this week, “The Berlin Wall fell, but Communism didn’t.” Millions live under the thumb of communist despotism in the miserable prison states of North Korea and Cuba — as if they are frozen in amber, living relics of a decades-over Cold War. China may be modern and business-friendly, but its people do not enjoy liberty. While the Berlin Wall came down and the communist East Germany crumbled, the tanks rolled into Tiananmen Square to preserve Communism.
Watch the video below from the BBC. It’s a couple of minutes, but you can feel the joy in the hearts of these Germans who waited a generation for the abominable wall to come down — to end the prison states of East Germany and East Berlin. No one has ever needed a wall to keep those who enjoy liberty from fleeing a country.
(An aside: It’s a shame that while the victims of communism have a memorial in Washington, DC, few know about it. Indeed, I’d guess most walk by it without even knowing what it is. I lived in the DC area for eight years and I never heard of it. I’ve never seen it mentioned in a tourism brochure. I’ve never heard someone say: “Be sure to take your cousins over to the Victims of Communism Memorial.” I wonder why.)
