Monday Open Thread: Freedom Edition
by PubliusTwenty years ago today, the Berlin Wall fell. The picture below isn’t from that day, but it speaks volumes about what the Wall represented. In this photo, an East German guard takes his chance to run for freedom as the Wall was being constructed in 1961.
The guard’s flight to freedom should inspire us. In the comments, tell us where you were on this day in 1989. Commit to remind at least one person of today’s anniversary. We don’t expect Big Media to note the date.
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What a poignant message this photo projects.
You would think that this monumental event would be acknowledged on Google's home page, they chose the 40th anniversary of Sesame Street instead. I kind of thought it was important.
What more can be said…. Great pic ! Freedom loving American sentiment at its BEST !
Now it is our little brown brothers and sisters running and swimming here. People hoping and striving towards a better tomorrow…not demanding one from someone else. God Bless America!
A great moment in history!!….I guess the U.S. should apologize for its involvement. Maybe Obama could give the Germans some stimulus money to rebuild it
I created a new image for the Big GOvernment website using Grant Wood's "American Gothic" as a reference point: http://thelcabroadside.wordpress.com/2009/11/08/o...
It would be nice to see this on signs at the next tea party protests! Keep running to and with freedom before a new barrier keeps you from it.
This was history but don't let the press change history of the other day:
http://americaspeaksink.com/2009/11/the-press-cov...
I was living in Chicagoland at the time and was extremely happy that my Aunt, who was trapped behind that wall, would be free. The only sadness I felt was that my grandmother hadn’t lived to see it happen. I rememer the only time she was uncharitable about someone was when she mentioned the communists. My Aunt did have a difficult time because she was unabl to keep current in her field as a pharmacist she had a lot to catch up on to manage her business herself. My cousin is now the 4th generation to run it. She would never have moved to the East/DDR if the wall had stayed. People don’t generally choose to move to communist countries.
My friends who knew I had trapped family were very happy to celebrate with me. Many met my Aunt when she traveled to the US a couple years later with my other Aunt from the West who knows English.
It was the same feeling I had when Marcos was ousted from the Philippines only more personal. It was a very happy day.
In the modern world a candidate can use the Brandenburg Gate as a campaign prop.
The history associated with the wall is bit fuzzy to the Oval Office these days. Its occupant apparently studied little of it other than his own.
Do we so easily forget the dead and disappeared from a mere quarter century ago? Is this why it is so easy for us to abandon our allies? What kind of a beacon of freedom will we be at the end of 2012? Our veterans, who stood watch over the wall from 1945 until 1989 – and who we remember this very week here at home – would likely say the answers coming out of Washington today are not good enough.
http://www.thanksforthelaughs.wordpress.com
Good article but why is it not in the main stream media
http://www.finfacts.ie/irishfinancenews/article_1...
The photo is inspiring.
What photo's do we have recently to compare to that depicting the struggle for freedom? Barrack giving his speech at the Barrackopolus with the styrofoam Greek Pillars?
Anymore, one cannot believe anything they hear, very little of what they read, and less of what they see. It all appears to be scripted and contrived.
One small leap me….one great leap for Liberty! __ I think I hear him say in this photo.
Risking one's own life for freedom? …. Wow! You would think this freedom thing might be something worth cherishing, seeing that so many would go so far as to Die for it.
Reminds me of something I remember reading as a young schoolboy "Give me Liberty or give me Death" or something like that. Yeah that was it, and it was some guy wearing a white wig in a church in Richmond VA. I think.
Hmmmm maybe someone should tell our Glorious Leader about this freedom thing, it seems really important to a lot of people.
Something tells me Obama would return the guard in the picture.
Barry sees a picture like that, and becomes wet with anticipation, of the coming utopia. You can picture him in the Oval Office, rubbing his hands together jealous of the fine work of the East German Stasi, and those cool uniforms…
I was sure wrong about the Totalitarians in the House. I did not think that they were dumb enough to commit political suicide by voting for the takeover of our health system bill.
Press on, brothers and sisters. We will prevail.
I was completing my nuclear power training for the US Navy and I had just received my orders to a SSBN in Charleston, SC.
As Bill Bennet said today "The Berlin Wall didn't just fall; it was pushed."
I was a member of the Marine Detachment on board the USS Forrestal floating around the Mediterranean when we got word. Later that week, Pres Bush 41 came on board and presented the ship with a chunk of the wall.
The Berlin Wall fell because the Stasi didn't have:
THE NANCY PELOSI NATIONAL HEALTHCARE INVESTMENT TRAINING CENTER
http://naturalfake.wordpress.com/2009/11/08/the-n...
The marine in his I Love NY boxers – that's our modern equivalent? I love that pic, too -
The moment that sticks in my mind was when a reporter had a split screen showing a chinese demonstrator and a german. When asked about the pace of change towards liberty and freedom: the chinese man said that things were now happening very rapidly and that in merely a generation or two that they would have real freedom, while the german man complained that change was not happening fast enough.
Very telling in the mindset of east vs. west. We need to keep our focus! The damage and destruction of our way of life did not begin just one year ago with the One's election, it began 40 years ago! We are only just now seeing the fruit's (I mean that literally) labor.
The damage they have already wreaked and the damage they will still yet do, will not be un-done so easily. We need to hunker down and get ready for a generations long war. Our lives and those of our children depend on our tenacity and convictions.
they are pinkos at google.
yep we were interfering in internal affairs.
As a German citizen, I would really like to thank the American people for the support. Be it in the Berlin airlift, Mr Kennedy standing in front of the wall proclaiming “Ich bin ein Berliner!” or Ronny Reagan demaning “Tear down that wall, Mr Gorbatchev!”, the fall of the wall owes most to American leadership making the right bold steps. Interestingly, not really in the immediate interest of US interest, but rather in the interest of a free world. Keep up the good work, Americans!
Were you on the subs, Lou – or should I say "the boats"? My brother retired from the Navy, and was on the Seadragon before it was decommissioned. He took me on board once – sure made me realize what a tight team our service members form when they head out for weeks at sea. It was a far cry from the Trident in Hunt for Red October – the image of hot-bunking to sleep underneath a missile bay has never faded –
thanks for your service -
I was working in a Hotel in San Diego a few months after the wall fell. A German man gave me a credit card labeled West Berlin. I blurted out "West Berlin" and with great pride the man corrected me saying "Berlin".
"We don’t expect Big Media to note the date."
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The Berlin Wall's fall is top news story on CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, and NY Times. Once again, you take something beautiful (the anniversary of the demise of Communism) and turn it into a hateful polemic.
Why the ignorance?
Recognizing 20th Anniversary of Fall of Berlin Wall, U.S. Democrats Welcome Former Communist Central Planners http://optoons.blogspot.com/2009/11/recognizing-2...
Great picture!! Kind of says it all. So why is our President, the President of these United States of America trying so hard to reconstruct this wall in our own backyard? UNBELIEVABLE
What a great moment captured on film. It would be better if a happy ending was provided. Did he get to live his dream of freedom, or join the multitudes of others dying with a bullet in the back.
I was serving in the U.S. Army in Heidelberg, Germany. I had been to Berlin about a year earlier, then visited again in December, 1990. Thus, I saw both sides of Berlin and still have a small box with pieces of the wall that I collected near Potsdam.
I was on a trading floor at PaineWebber, watching with amazement.
Love the pic!
On the 9th, I spent the day traveling to get to a meeting of the Negotiated Acquisitions Committee in St. Louis, MO — so whatever news there was of the fall waited for me. I arrived early in the morning of the 10th, got my luggage, and took a cab to the hotel, hoping to get a couple hours of shuteye before the meeting opened. I asked the cabbie, "So what's up? Any interesting news?" He looked at me like I was a Martian, and handed me the paper, which had an article describing the wall's fall. I read, and said, "This is really wonderful! Let's hope it goes further!" He looked at me in the mirror a moment again, and said, "Do you really think it will?" I said, "Yes, I think it's the beginning of the crumbling of the walls of the world's largest prison." He said, "I was a defector. I worked as a translator for the KGB in Greece — and I still have a wife and son in the USSR. I haven't seen them in years. Do you think that they will have a chance to get out?" I said, "Watch for it. There will come a time that they will be able to get out. Tell them to take advantage of it, and move when they can." He was crying. I offered to pay him for the paper, and he declined, but I did leave a larger tip when we got to the hotel. I hope it worked out for him and his family. I still have the St. Louis paper.
I cried with great sadness and trepidation as I watched them erect the wall.
I cried with great happiness watching the people celebrate its downfall.
Great photo. Awe-inspiring. My first thought was: Obama and his administration are like the barbwire.
I was on duty at Castle AFB. As was our custom at the fire station (for big news events), we left the tv's on throughout the day tuned to CNN for the continuous coverage. We knew then that we had won.
Interesting blog. Wasn’t sure the govt had some money left to dole out.