On the Death and Rebirth of Communism

Today, December 23, 2009, is the 20th anniversary of the official opening of the Brandenburg Gate. For you Millennial kids, that was the perennially locked passageway through the Berlin Wall--the infamous symbol of the Iron Curtain separating East and West Germany. Back in November we saw how much this event bothered President Obama, and how many backflips he had to do to try and avoid giving President Reagan his due, but that’s not what really concerns me now.

What I haven’t heard anyone in the news media pick up on yet is the elucidation the Berlin Wall gave on the debate between Communism and Freedom. I recall that Ayn Rand mentioned in one of her essays the value the two Germanys had as a literal test country. She explained how in a nation of the same people and same culture, with the only major difference being political structure, West Germany thrived while the old GDR (that’s East Germany, for you Millennium babies) was stifled into third-world status. Who would be stupid enough to ever again suggest that statism would lead to productivity and bliss?

I’ll tell you who’s stupid enough: we are. Congress is preparing to pull off this healthcare stunt tomorrow--on Christmas Eve, no less--which will drive us even farther down the road to serfdom than Obama has already taken us. I’m not about to get into a discussion of healthcare policy or any of the other country-devouring tactics Obama and the Congress have already used. My point is simply this: We are approaching, and possibly by tomorrow night will have reached, the threshold of what Reagan warned about in his farewell address. Why? Because we don’t have the old Soviet empire--the Communist’s North Star--to steer us away from the same kinds of mistakes which built it. There is nothing anywhere in the world today which can clearly illustrate the fallacy of socialism the way the Berlin Wall did, by contrasting the stable, peaceful, advanced West Germany with the miserable, starving East Germany. Because of the naïvete and historical illiteracy of the American people, we are now doomed to repeat the mistakes the Brits made after WWII, the Russians made after WWI, and--yes--the Germans made in between. I hope I don’t have to tell you how that turned out.