Twenty years ago this Monday, the greatest political development of my lifetime occurred: the opening (which precipitated the closing) of the Berlin Wall. For Westerners, the Berlin Wall served as the symbol of Communist oppression. In the Communist Bloc, the Berlin Wall functioned effectively as the survival mechanism of the German Democratic Republic. Twenty percent of the East German populace--more than three million people--had escaped in the decade or so preceding the Wall's construction. Had the rate of exodus continued, East Germany would have ceased to exist by about 1989. Read my contribution to City Journal's symposium celebrating the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, alongside remembrances by Claire Berlinski, Judith Miller, Roger Scruton, and Guy Sorman.

Fall of the Berlin Wall? Nothing to see here, move on now.

It's unfortunate, but history will repeat itself and we'll see another wall representing the same tyranny somewhere because there aren't any Reagans around and our political class has devolved into whimps and panderers.

I do get a laugh out of those who have spoken about the Wall's demise and not a mention of Reagan but much about Gorbachev. Revisionist history anyone?

And the Fraud in Chief making his 'World Speech' about it when, if he were in power, not only would the Wall have been still standing but it would probably have been moved to Belgium.