The Fall of the Berlin Wall—November 9th, 1989

The Episcopal Church is not East Germany…but the methodology is quite similar.

The Communists built walls to keep up the myth of a workers paradise…otherwise the “workers” would flood out.

The Episcopal Church has also built a legal wall, called the Dennis Canon, to keep congregations from escaping, to keep up the myth of the existence of a vital, vigorous and progressive church when in fact she decayed and corrupt.

May she repent or meet the same fate

I’m glad our President is going to Germany to help commemorate this important moment in the annals of human freedom.  Oh, wait…

Actually, I do believe that commuism came out to the West when the wall fell rather than the other way around.

The Berlin wall fell in 1989.  I noticed in 1990 a sudden, wild lurch in the newspapers and television towards soviet style reporting and absolute hatred of Christianity in the West.  It puzzled me.  Why 1990? It was then pointed out to me, years later, that after the fall of the Berlin wall many left wing extremists who supported the USSR returned home to the West, dejected, but ready to carry on the fight in their own home countries.  Thus communism was sold tot he public especially via the media.  I can believe it.  UK TV across the 1990’s has just gone ‘Pravda!’

Now we have Lisbon Treaty and the EUSSR.

Oh, how I long for the Philippines…  Dear Lord, before the exit visas, please.

Nothing gladdens the heart like the sight of happy Germans rejoicing in the reunification of the Fatherland.

It always amazes me about people and “their country.”  I don’t know if we can appreciate it over here—or if I would feel the same way if someone tried to take The United States away from me.  This was TRULY a moment that changed the world!
I wonder when President Obama will return—if he will say anything substantial about this date.  Isn’t that Gate the place he declared himself the ruler for the world?

I doubt it, drjoan.  As I alluded to above, he was invited to attend the ceremonies and say something, and he snubbed the Germans, not to mention told us (again) something about his values.

Don’t forget the real reason the Berlin wall fell: the United States’ committment to protect weatern Eurpoe from Soviet incursion.  I and many of my brothers gave a substantial portion of our adult lives defending what I fear the next generation is now giving away. And Europe has universal health care and generous social programs because you and I footed, and continue to foot, the bill. I wonder why no one ever mentions that in the current health care debate?

They chose to leave socialism. The expressions on the border guards look like those of delegates to Anaheim and our “representatives” in government.

I look forward to the next election. Prayerfully, there will be one.

To fully appreciate the moment, we also need footage of West Germans seven or eight years earlier demonstrating against Reagan’s decision to install Pershing missiles.

Comments #5 and 8 (Obama “declared himself the ruler for the world” and may cancel next election) ironically mirror the wanton falsehood of totalitarian propaganda. An irony doubly apt for Berlin.
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I noticed in 1990 a sudden, wild lurch in the newspapers and television towards soviet style reporting and absolute hatred of Christianity in the West.—#3

I saw no such “wild lurch” in the newspapers. (I don’t watch much television.) What kind of newspapers were you reading?
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After the fall of the Berlin wall many left wing extremists who supported the USSR returned home to the West, dejected, but ready to carry on the fight in their own home countries.—#3

What’s the evidence that Western emigrés living in the USSR had significant influence after they returned to the West? They remained outsiders, and very marginal outsiders at that. The news media repeatedly portrayed them as sad losers who had sacrificed the natural loyalties of family and country for a cruel ideology now discredited and discarded.

Two questions:

—1- How could these conspicuous losers have so quickly amassed enough clout to cause a “wild lurch” toward Soviet-style reporting?

—2- Would you be kind enough to identify the most influential American returnees?

#7 David.  No we won’t forget and we won’t forget the President, Ronald Reagen who clearly differentiated the corrupt communist system for the freedom loving captitalism of the United States.
Thank you for your service.

I posted a similar video on my Facebook page and was thanked by a younger friend, “I guess I was too young to remember any of this and I’ve never seen this kind of footage - thanks for posting!!!”

That kind of struck me, in one year we had a referendum in Poland, the crowds gathering in Tiananmen Square, the crack down with “Tank Man,” the same day as the Polish elections, Hungary border opening, the East Germans scaling the West German embassy walls in Prague and camping on the grounds, tonight’s anniversary of opening of the gates, twenty year anniversary of the Velvet Revolution in Czechoslovakia and a bloody one in Romania yet to come. It was such a strange year, truly as one song put it, “watching the world wake up from history.”

The greatest was 12/25/91, when the red flag was lowered for the last time. The nation in the East, founded on atheism, collapsed on the Western Christmas.

Yet many of my friends, “sadly I have no memory…just read about it in books.” Kind of an awesome duty, to remember and retell these events, less those younger forget them.

#10

Hi Irenaeus, I live in the UK, not the US!
Europe was much more impacted than the US.
I hope that helps!

I was seven in 1989.  I would say that the Fall of the Berlin Wall, the Panama War, and Tianaman Square were among the earliest world events which shaped me.  To them I would at the Gulf War in 1991.

Still, there is a certain irony that the sacrafice of American defense dollers spent to defend Western Europe against “Godless Socialism” made it easier for Western Europe to embrace Godless Socialism through all their Labour and Social Democratic parties, though granted it is in a form which, so far, is milder and more free than Marxist-Lenist Communisim.