Tearing Down and Building Up Walls

Today marks the twentieth anniversary of the destruction of the Berlin Wall, the most visible symbol of the Iron Curtain that divided the Free World from those in bondage. Only a few short years before, Ronald Reagan famously challenged Gorbachev to “tear down this wall”. Two years after the fall of the Wall, the Soviet Union had collapsed.

Can there be a sharper contrast than the hopefulness with which we watched the Berlin wall torn down, and the nightmare we find ourselves in today? Individual freedom was suddenly within reach of half a continent who were enslaved by the utopian dream fabricated by Marx and implemented by Lenin and Stalin. Incredibly, those who still believe in that utopia are running our White House and our Congress. How did we move in twenty short years from defeating the evil empire—not with bullets, but with the immense power that comes from a free people, each acting in their own self interest, outperforming those of the great Soviet collective in every way—to electing Barack Obama, whose policies more resemble those that came out of the failed Soviet state than America?

How did we not see that our freedoms were under assault on every front? How is it that the Democratic Party has been taken over by socialists without so much as a single public outcry among all 57 Senators and 256 Congressman? How is it that we are about to legislate nationalized healthcare, the mother of all progressive programs and the greatest threat to our personal freedom our nation has seen, while CNN regurgitates the “deficit neutral” lie and debates whether the price tag will be $1.1 versus $1.2 trillion? How is it that we became so enthralled with Barack-the-demagogue, whose knowledge of economics appears to be limited to what he learned from his much admired, Marxist professors, and whose primary work experience consists of organizing people to take from others in the name of social justice? How is it that those in power—the recipients of the priceless gift of individual freedom—can be so ignorant of the value of what they were bestowed, and so blind as to where they are taking us?

It’s hard to know which is more disturbing. That we elected Barack Obama, or that so many people still cannot see where this is leading. And why are we so blind? One problem with being born into freedom is that it is largely invisible until it is threatened. While we went about our business, and sent our politicians to Washington to represent us, progressives—those people who are continually trying to save us from ourselves—have been organizing. While we watched football and American Idol, contributed to our favorite causes, and struggled with our private challenges, progressives have been very busy.

Busy indoctrinating our children about the evils of capitalism and how we produce too much stuff.

Busy using feel-good notions like ‘green jobs’ to promote massive government redistribution.

Busy using pseudo science to prophesy the coming climate apocalypse, as an excuse for more redistribution, this time at a global level.

Busy community organizing—using our tax dollars to fund corrupt groups like ACORN (one of their big accomplishments was shaking down banks to give risky loans in order to increase minority home ownership, one of the primary causes of last year’s financial meltdown).

Busy funding propaganda machines with friendly names like “Media Matters” to ridicule those who oppose the progressive gospel.

Busy parading as journalists, or news anchors, with their incessant parroting of climate catastrophe and other progressive myths.

Busy calling those who speak out against the great collective, racists.

Busy promoting Marxism under new names like ‘social justice’ and ‘economic justice’.

Busy trashing our Constitution as deeply flawed because it does not allow for redistribution of wealth, as President Obama admitted in a 2001 radio interview, before he was careful not to reveal his true beliefs.

Busy infecting our religious organizations with their litany of social complaints and calls to action.

Busy contaminating our art with government sponsored propaganda.

Busy seeking cures for each perceived imperfection of society by reaching into your wallet to pay for the unquenchable appetite of big government, and never owning up to the atrocious outcomes of their policies.

Busy telling us the sky is falling over issue after issue while ignoring the truly monumental problems of corruption, out-of control spending, and oppressive taxation. This is what we are up against.

Back in the early nineteenth century, the German poet-philosopher Friedrich Hölderlin said;

“What has always made the state a hell on earth has been precisely that man has tried to make it his heaven.”

Europe’s real hell on earth was to come a century later as the utopian dream, powered by the collective, morphed into Communism and Nazism. Now is the time for more of us to question our beliefs and those of our politicians. Is the individual supreme—as has been the foundation of Western thought from Judeo Christian teachings and those of the ancient Greeks, through the Renaissance, and culminating in our own founding documents? Or, is the individual subservient to the collective, as has been argued by Marx, imposed by Stalin and Mao, and made popular here in America by progressives like Teddy Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson beginning early in the twentieth century? Should government be limited in its powers, with tight constraints on its abuses, as our founding fathers believed, or should it be liberated; unshackled from the old-fashioned constraints of our Constitution, with more and more power to fix our imperfections, as progressives believe?

Twenty years ago, the people of eastern Europe revolted against their oppressors. They tore down the walls that enslaved them. Now Obama and team are furiously building up ours. We can still stop them, but only if more of us wake up to what is going on and start questioning our beliefs and those who we elect.