Twenty years ago today the people of an unofficially united Berlin began the process of tearing down the wall that had divided them since 1961. The first holes were punched through a day or two after the East German government stopped shooting people who approached the wall without authorization.
One way not to celebrate this event comes today in the form of this Cal Thomas' column.
When the wall fell, leftists could not bring themselves to admit they had been wrong, much less apologize for their misplaced faith. So they did what they do best: they made excuses.
Thomas quotes the Media Research Center, a right-wing nonsense group, and quotes that infamous socialist Strobe Talbott of the Daily Worker . . . no, sorry, that would be Time. He also quotes anti-capitalist Ted Turner, who wants everyone to not make money, just like he didn't.
If anyone is stupider, and meaner, and more ridiculous, on the occasion of celebrating this monumentally wonderful event - an event like the French Revolution in many ways insofar as we have yet to absorb all it has to teach us - I haven't seen it. Thomas is too stupid and lazy to quote actual socialists, communists, and western Stalinists (yes, there are a few), and calls Ted Turner an apologist for Leninism. Furthermore, as a self-professed leftist, I for one remember getting quite emotional when I saw what was happening in Berlin. I had been following the disintegration of communism across Central Europe (not "the Eastern Bloc" as Thomas calls it; and it wasn't "liberated"; these were individual revolutions brought by the people) since the spring, when Poland held multi-party elections and Hungary opened its border with Austria. When the first news reports that there were people dancing on the Berlin Wall, I was stunned, but the feeling I remember most was joy.
Thomas' mean, small-minded, and stupid column, in which he can't even bring himself to cite actual leftists, and finds quotes most likely ripped out of all context to support his claim that our horrible Stalinists at CNN and Time gnashed their teeth at the collapse of communism is part of a right-wing mindset that continues to believe this is all the work of one man, US Pres. Ronald Reagan. Except, it's not. While Mikhail Gorbachev certainly deserves more credit than Reagan, especially for signaling to the East Germans that the Soviets would no longer support their decision to kill their own citizens if they wished to travel to West Berlin, it is the people of Poland, Hungary, East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Romania, and Bulgaria that deserve the credit. They did it. Not Reagan, not Gorbachev - it was the people who did it.
This left-winger celebrates today with them. I know of no one, not even die-hard western communists, who continue to support the terror regimes in the Soviet bloc, although there have been some who used to do so. It would have been nice if Thomas had the decency to admit that even we leftists are happy that the wall got some holes in it.
