Proponents of cap and trade legislation and an international treaty to reduce greenhouse gas emissions are pushing for President Obama to make the trip to Copenhagen. For instance, Carter Roberts, CEO of the World Wildlife Fund affirmed, “We believe it’s fundamental for the president to go to Copenhagen, to look other leaders in the eye convey our commitment as a country, and secure theirs.” President Obama has the left the plane door open for a trip to Denmark, saying, “If I am confident that all of the countries involved are …
On November 9, 1989, the Berlin Wall fell and Central and Eastern Europeans were freed from the constraints of communism. Twenty years later, the world that President Obama inherited from Ronald Reagan’s legacy is profoundly changed. Those suffering under planned economies and the denial civil rights are now living in free market economies and democracies. On the twentieth anniversary of this historic day Obama was absent. Instead, he sent his Secretary of State to Berlin in his place. Dr. Nile Gardiner points out that the administration added further insult to …
On June 12, 1987, President Ronald Reagan stood at the Brandenburg Gate in West Berlin and said: “General Secretary Gorbachev, if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, if you seek liberalization: Come here to this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!” On November 9, 1989, just two years after Reagan made his Brandenburg Gate speech, the people of Germany did tear down “this wall” and in so doing they freed hundreds of millions of people from …
The social and political drama that played out across Eastern Europe in the decade before the fall of the Berlin Wall had a profound spiritual dimension. From the time of John Paul II’s visit to his Polish homeland in 1979 to November 9, 1989, what historians have called a “revolution of conscience” occurred that led to the collapse of communism with little loss of life – the combined result of President Ronald Reagan and Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s policies of peace through strength and the Pope’s relentless messages of spiritual …
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2prVpI7m4tM[/youtube] Lee Edwards, Distinguished Fellow in Conservative Thought at Heritage’s B. Kenneth Simon Center for American Studies and Chairman of The Victim of Communism Memorial Foundation discusses the anniversary of the Berlin Wall, the fall of Communism and the Gulag painting collection, currently being exhibited at The Heritage Foundation with ReasonTV. Visit the new Global Museum on Communism here.
Sometimes the best-known lines of famous speeches are only indicators of the rest of their content. “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall” may be the best known excerpt from President Reagan’s speech in Berlin, but the whole is well worth a read. Several paragraphs near the end especially highlight the significance of faith, love, and virtue to free society, and the totalitarian world’s self-destructive antipathy for these. Like that most famous quotation, these prophetic lines show too that successful statesmen must be sober realists about men’s ideals: In a word, …
On September 30, 2009, The Heritage Foundation hosted “The Year of Miracles: The Fall of the Berlin Wall Twentieth Anniversary.” A reoccurring theme of the event centered on America’s use of government-sponsored broadcasting and its effects on U.S. influence during the Cold War and how it must be used today. While government-sponsored broadcasting was just one of the many successful public diplomacy tools utilized by the United States, former Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs, James Glassman emphasized that the United States still has much to learn in …
“The Gulag Collection,” 50 compelling paintings of life and death inside the Soviet Union’s notorious prison camps, will be on view at The Heritage Foundation beginning this morning, Sept. 30. The exhibit opens as part of “The Year of Miracles: The Fall of the Berlin Wall,” a Heritage-sponsored event marking the approaching 20th anniversary of the collapse of the Soviet Union. Gulag survivor Nikolai Getman created “The Gulag Collection,” an unparalleled visual record of the hundreds of penal camps that held more than 14 million political prisoners — many of …
The 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, which culmitated a series of events in the summer and fall of 1989, allows us to begin looking through the lens of history. Important lessons are to be learned from the “year of miracles,” as Czech play-write and dissident Vaclav Havel called it, lessons about American leadership and lessons about the importance of engaging in the war of ideas with enemies of ffreddom and democracy. The world has changed so dramatically since 1989, but many of us will never forget …
