20 Years Later – Let us not forget the lessons of the fall of the Berlin Wall
ByIt’s telling that President Obama didn’t travel to Germany to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. To do so would be quite hypocritical, seeing that the ideology he adheres to is responsible for the deaths of 100 million people.
The Washington Examiner remembers Chris Gueffroy, the last of the victims to be shot and killed while trying to cross the Berlin Wall. It’s difficult for many Americans to fathom life behind the Iron Curtain, which is why remembering communism’s victims is so important.
When we finally peeled back the Iron Curtain, we found an inhuman cultural landscape rife with brutal totalitarianism, rampant poverty and death on a scale unprecedented in human history. Stalin alone killed some 40 million people in the Soviet Union, wrapping his capricious whims in the ideological camouflage of communism. It was a belief system based on the worship of totalitarian state power, negation of the individual and the denial of economic reality. It’s hard for many people to accept the fact that mere ideas can be so poisonous.Incredibly, some still swallow this poison. More than a few among the cultural and academic elites in the West defended and enabled communist tyranny. They haven’t gone away, despite the horrors exposed after the fall of the Wall.
The Berlin Wall may be rightfully confined to the ash heap of history, but the specter of communism remains. Left-wing American politicians still regularly travel to Cuba to kiss Fidel Castro’s ring, and Hollywood regularly portrays Che Guevara as an iconic rebel with the glamour of James Dean rather than as the sadistic butcher that he was. Our own government is so indebted to the Chinese communist government that our leaders are often too timid to condemn that regime’s continuing human rights abuses.
But no matter how distant a memory the Berlin wall has become, we should always remember the Chris Gueffroys and the estimated 100 million people killed by communist regimes, as well as the millions more that still live in fear. And we should be mindful of them always, not merely pause in memoriam once every 20 years.
Freedom isn’t something that should be taken lightly, or taken for granted. Too many Americans are unaware of just how good we have it, and are unwittingly willing to trade our freedom for a false sense of economic security. If we don’t learn from history we are doomed to repeat it. Today what we’re seeing in the US is a soft tyranny – at what point will that soft tyranny turn to hard tyranny?
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In the video below, author and historian Lee Edwards talked about the victims of communism to ReasonTV, and his efforts to make sure they are never forgotten.
Related: NBC News and the Today Show seem to be willing to forget the lessons of history. They gave more credit to Gorbachev than Reagan for the fall of the Berlin Wall. Typical.
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Big Ears is a Marxist.
It cracks me up that when it’s pointed out that something or someone is communist, the poster is dismissed as being out of touch. Like the Commies are so 1950’s
The reality is the Reds have taken over the Eco movement and attain power under the guise of saving Mother Earth.
Most greeners I know are very young went to public school and have heads full of mush.
Thank you NEA
Thank you Eco Nazis