The Californian Who Went Up a Wall and Brought Down an Empire

Originally posted at The Festering Swamp on June 12, 2007

This entry was posted one year ago on the twentieth anniversary of Ronald Reagan's historic speech in Berlin. I couldn't help but compare the arrogant dismissal of Reagan's anti-communism by the chattering classes then to their identical dismissal of George W. Bush's anti-Islamofascism today. And like Reagan, Bush has ignored such critics and taken the correct path by rejecting the false comfort of appeasement. – Mike LaRoche

I didn't realize until this evening that today (June 12) was the twentieth anniversary of President Ronald Reagan's legendary speech at the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin, where he valiantly declared "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!" Here's a video clip:

Before the speech, heavy pressure was put upon Reagan by several of his advisors (as well as many State Department officials) to omit any references therein to the Berlin Wall – the fear being that such a direct challenge to the Soviets might somehow undermine Gorbachev's reforms. Regan dismissed such concerns, fully believing that a public challenge to the decades of Communist oppression represented by the Berlin Wall was morally justifiable and necessary.

Throughout his eight years in office, Reagan was a consummate risk-taker, consistently defying the chattering classes and doing what he thought right for America. And for that he was bitterly derided. Reagan's detractors consistently portrayed him as an empty suit, a man with a pedestrian intellect, and a typical American cowboy with a quick trigger finger. Sound familiar?

In the end, Reagan was proven right. The Soviets crumbled before his aggressive defense of liberty and democracy and countries from the Baltic to the Balkans tasted freedom after having endured a half-century of National Socialist and Communist oppression. Reagan's critics, long forgotten, once declared that the peoples of Eastern Europe actually preferred the chimerical "safety" of Communism to the dynamic liberty of the Free World. What nonsense.

Today we are told by sundry academics, pundits, and other quarrelsome quibblers that the Islamic world is just as dismissive of freedom as the Eastern Bloc was once said to be. They may be right, but I have a feeling that history will repeat itself.