CNS News commemorates the 20th anniversary of President Ronald Reagan's "Tear down this wall" speech, also pointing out that Reagan had been calling for the wall to come down for a long time:
Reagan is on record as having called for the Berlin Wall to be dismantled as early as May 1967, when as governor of California he appeared in a debate with Sen. Robert F. Kennedy (D-N.Y.).
"Reagan was way ahead of everyone," Kengor told Cybercast News Service in an interview. "Right from outset, he envisioned a world without the Soviet Union, when even his political allies on the right pre-supposed it would be around for a long time."
At the time, liberals in the media and everywhere else were aghast that Reagan would say such a thing to their secret idols in the Soviet Union.
I was in England when the Wall came down, and I remember the euphoria felt by Europeans during that time. On New Years Eve 1989 I was celebrating with some British friends, and as we partied in the streets, I don't think there's ever been a time when I was so thanked for being a U.S. serviceman, with dozens of complete strangers hugging me and girls kissing me and thanking me (and so many others) for being there in Europe to force this change.
I now have a chunk of that wall downstairs in my mementos, and there is a section of that wall near the Civic Center in Rapid City. They remind me and all of us of the brutality and failure of Marxism, and also of what can be accomplished when people resolutely stand against evil.
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