Today is VG Day

Today is V-G day; victory for Germay. On this day twenty years ago, the Berlin Wall was forced open, which signaled the beginning of the end of the Cold War. On this day in 1989, East Germany opened the gates to the Berlin wall, allowing East Germans to once again freely and safely travel to West Germany and freedom for the first time since

The action followed a decision a few weeks earlier by the Hungarian government to permit Hungarians to freely travel to Austria. Once that occurred, East Germans had been traveling to West Germany through Hungary and Austria, a fait accompli for the freedom-loving people of East Germany.

In a desperate bid to maintain power, the East German Communists offered the direct travel route, adding the diktat that the East Germans that they had to come back to East Germany after their visit.

It is the natural state of man to seek freedom, and the East Germans did so, not only fleeing to West Germany, but also tearing down the Berlin Wall, at first with their bare hands, and finally with machines. No longer slaves to the Soviet Union, Germany reunified.

On June 12, 1987, President Ronald Reagan spoke the people of Berlin at the base of the Brandenburg Gate, near the Berlin Wall, and thundered to the Soviet political masters on the other side of the Wall:

“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!”



Naturally, the weak-kneed American liberals in the United States dismissed this dangerous and inflammatory talk. Naturally, the liberal bedwetters were wrong, and little more than two years later, the wall came down, but Gorbachev had nothing to do with it.

Reagan was right, the liberals were wrong, and thank God for men like Ronald Reagan.

Where have all the cowboys gone?