Forget Guy Fawkes – Remember, Remember the Ninth of November for The Fall of the Berlin Wall

Telegraph(UK) ^ | November 01st, 2009

[Steelfish]

Forget Guy Fawkes – Remember, Remember the Ninth of November for The Fall of the Berlin Wall

The fall of the Berlin Wall 20 years ago freed millions from tyranny and poverty, argues Boris Johnson.

Boris Johnson. 02 Nov 2009

Berliners from the east and west of the city celebrate the opening of the Berlin Wall Photo: EPA I am thinking champagne. And cake. And fireworks, of course, not just any old fireworks but some of those truly shell-shocking bits of Chinese ordnance called Harmonious Geese or Whispering Swans.

Far more important than the foiling of the Gunpowder Plot, far more benign in its consequences for world peace and prosperity, we celebrate next week the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall – the ultimate triumph of simple human instincts over an evil and degenerate system.

Without the Fall of the Wall, millions of people in eastern Europe would still be living in terror of the Stasi or the Securitate.

Without the end of Soviet communism, China would never have launched the turbo-charged entrepreneurial drive that has helped fuel two decades of global consumption and growth, and spread undreamt-of material benefits around the world. Without the end of one oppressive regime in Moscow, another one – in South Africa – might have limped on for a few more years.

Without the Fall of the Wall, Nelson Mandela would never have walked to freedom. How much the greatest political event it was in my lifetime, and how much the best.

That is why I believe we should remember the Ninth of November, not just because the revolution introduced British tourists to the delights of the Easyjet weekend break in Vilnius and the stag party in Prague.

[Ready4Freddy]

It is precisely now, when the public mood is so bitter towards bankers, so hostile to profit, so seemingly brassed off with the very idea of wealth creation that we should remember how ghastly, grim and unworkable was the alternative – state-controlled socialism. It was a moral disaster, a system that extolled equality but entrenched the privileges of an unelected elite who luxuriated in their dachas and their Zil limos, roaring down their reserved lanes and splashing the people with contemptuous sludge. It was a cultural and artistic wasteland, a regime that promoted the kitsch and camp of socialist realism and whose only literary legacy is the handful of books by authors brave enough to denounce the regime. It was a complete and utter environmental catastrophe, as anyone who travelled behind the Iron Curtain will remember. I don't just mean Chernobyl; I mean the cynical way in which socialist planning obliged human beings to endure the proximity of some of the filthiest factories in the world, the roiling clouds of smoke that seeded the warts and the cancers on the skin and in the lungs and the eyes of an innocent public.

[bethybabes69]

.........."Without the Fall of the Wall, millions of people in eastern Europe would still be living in terror of the Stasi or the Securitate. "................

They gotta be freakin joking! England IS the new Stasi HQ!
The falling Berlin Wall signified the growth of a Stasi State, not the end of it.

[Steelfish]

Yes- that part of the article nailed it and thanks for the post.