Free Republic

It has been 20 long years since the fall of the Berlin wall. Millions of people who were trapped in their oppressive, government-planned states suffered as a result of collectivism. Over 100 million people died at the hands of sycophantic, megalomaniac leaders that claimed they could bring us a better world than so-called capitalism and individual liberty has brought us. I say "so-called" because nowhere in the world does capitalism truly exist. In the countries where it is allowed to exist in even small proportions, wealth and prosperity reign. However, the collectivists hate even this small proportion of capitalism that...

Western leaders searching for a long-term strategy to defend our civilization from fundamentalist Islam ought to reread the speech President Reagan delivered at the Berlin Wall 20 years ago this month. It was neither democracy nor capitalism Reagan foresaw bringing down the wall. It was Christianity. Reagan's demand that Soviet dictator Mikhail Gorbachev tear down the wall was the defining sound-bite of that speech, but it was another passage that defined the core meaning of the Cold War. Pondering what sustained Berliners, surrounded as they were by the Soviet menace, Reagan concluded: "Perhaps this gets to the root of the...

Addressing the ceremony on Bernauer Street, famously divided by the Wall and now site of a memorial, Mayor Wowereit said the capital was remembering the "saddest day in its recent history". "It is our common responsibility to keep alive the memories and pass them on to the next generation, to maintain freedom and democracy and to do everything so that such injustices may never happen again," he said. At a ceremony at a former crossing-point, President Wulff said the wall had been "an expression of fear" of those who created it.

President Reagan Centennial: Mr. Gorbachev Tear Down This Wall! In honor of the 100th Birthday of President Ronald Reagan below is one of the great hallmarks of his political legacy and Presidency.

Contrast this speech that actually changed the world for the better with Obama's Muslim apology speech![video at site]The entire address is worth listening to. But if your time is limited cue to 11:15 on the clip for the segment which contains the famous phrase "Mr. Gorbachev TEAR DOWN THIS WALL!" Last year, I posted on the background that lead to Reagan's demand. Ending the Cold War and removing the last scar left on post World War II Europe was a goal of Ronald Reagan's for decades. Many of Reagan's advisors, including then National Security Advisor Colin Powell, thought the line...

It is pretty clear why the president is refusing to accept the personal invitation of the German chancellor and attend festivities marking the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. It would smack of American triumphalism - our success in defeating perhaps the most odious of all the odious ideologies of the 20th century. Obama doesn't do "triumphalism." That would place America above other nations - something that he has explicitly condemned. So he will be conspicuous by his absence. And another European ally has been embarrassed by this president.

And why should he? After all, 1989 was a very bad year for Obama and his comrades. A bankrupt, enslaving and murderous ideology was shattered to pieces by the freedom loving people of Eastern Europe. Millions and millions of people who lived in fear, poverty and repression regained their freedom and dignity. That's not something a communist like Obama would like to celebrate.

Apparently, he only has time to go to Berlin when it's all about him!Rich Lowry points out that: In his first year in office, Barack Obama has visited more foreign countries than any other president. He’s touched ground in 16 countries, easily outpacing Bill Clinton (3) and George W. Bush(11). But there’s one stop Obama won’t make. He has begged off going to Berlin next week to attend ceremonies commemorating the fall of the Berlin Wall. His schedule is reportedly too crowded. Obama had time to fly all the way over to Copenhagen to plead for Chicago to get the...

"The president does not plan to travel to Germany to attend the 20th anniversary celebration Monday of the fall of the Berlin Wall, drawing heated criticism from those who say he's ignoring a shining triumph of American-inspired democracy."

Barack Obama was quick off the mark last year in heading for Berlin during his election campaign, when he was cheered by a crowd of 200,000 adoring Germans. Yet as president of the United States he has decided to stay away from Berlin as the city commemorates the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. In contrast, French President Nicolas Sarkozy and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown have both made the trip to Germany, while Obama has decided to send his Secretary of State. It is shameful when the US president can’t even be bothered to show up...

There was one world leader absent for today’s commemorations marking the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Surprisingly enough, it’s President Barack Obama, who found time last year to give a campaign speech there last year, which Der Spiegel summed up as “People of the World, Look at Me”. The White House has cited a packed schedule, though looking at it he had nothing much on yesterday (brief chat to reporters about healthcare – by far his biggest priority) and just blah briefings and a bill signing today until a metting this evening with Benjamin Netanyahu. This...

On August 13, 1961 the Berlin Wall was erected and devided the city of Berlin for more than 28 years. The photographs shown on this page were taken by unknown photographers in the sixties after building up the wall.

In most parts of Berlin today, one has to look hard to find the double strand of bricks embedded in sidewalks, >snip< the Berlin Wall was one of the most visible, despised, politically and ideologically charged boundaries on earth. It was also the quintessence of an unnatural border, one drawn not by nature, language, ethnicity or colonial hubris, but an artificial, man-made and deliberate cleaving of a culturally and linguistically homogenous society.  >snip<  very simply, no major world city had been cleaved in half so abruptly and violently. >snip< What happened in East Germany, many Germans are  realizing, was not...

(...) The delegates, many of them former East German Communists but also younger people, will debate an extraordinary motion put forward by some members: They want their party to declare that the building of the wall was an inescapable necessity. If that leaves any doubts about the Left party’s nostalgia for a wall that imprisoned 17 million people for nearly 30 years, a newspaper survey published this month by The Berliner Zeitung showed that 75 percent of that party’s supporters in Berlin thought the wall was justified or partly justified. (...) Respondents said the wall was necessary to stop the...

More than 150 kilometres of concrete, wire and guard towers ringed West Berlin from 1961 to 1989. But it’s not easy to carve up a city - and construction of the Wall threw up many freak instances. [....] "The owners had to pass through the death strip to reach their plots -- and for that there was an iron door in the Wall with a doorbell,...."

I was listening to a NHSTA radio commercial today and I heard them basically credit Gorbachev with bring down the Berlin Wall, I took exception and fired off an e-mail, but only got a generic response. Freepers feel free to express your displeasure with the NHSTA. I have pasted the text of my e-mail below.

By degrees, we are losing the shining city upon a hill. All that glittered golden in the warm light of Liberty is tarnished in the dank and humid fog expelled by a ubiquitous bureaucracy and an army of apparatchiks. What once shone with the brilliance of limitless opportunity, enterprise, and self determination is now dull with corrosion wrought by a bolshevik class envy, a manufactured racial discord, and a dehumanizing dependance on the dole. The beacon of freedom seems to cast a paltry glow where thickly gathers smoky clouds of doom, summoned by prophets preaching withdrawal, capitulation, and resignation. In...

President Reagan's Address at a United States-France Ceremony Commemorating the 40th Anniversary of the Normandy Invasion/D-Day - 6/6/84

Tomorrow is the 71st anniversary of D-Day, but today is the 11th anniversary of the death of Ronald Reagan.

Editor's note: The following is the speech, delivered on June 6, 1984, that President Ronald Reagan gave 31 years ago today in Normandy, France -- the 40th anniversary of D-Day. The text was provided by the Ronald Reagan Library and Museum. "We're here to mark that day in history when the Allied armies joined in battle to reclaim this continent to liberty. For 4 long years, much of Europe had been under a terrible shadow. Free nations had fallen, Jews cried out in the camps, millions cried out for liberation. Europe was enslaved, and the world prayed for its rescue....