8 November 2009

A QUOTE SOMETIMES ATTRIBUTED TO TROTSKY is that “revolution is impossible until it is inevitable.” On the anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, my thoughts always return to just how impossible it all seemed up until the very moment happened. The fall of The Wall is among a few of those “I remember where I was” moments. Ironically, I was driving a Chinese student friend to the grocery store. Events in his country just months before gave plenty of reason to believe that Warsaw Pact countries could also survive through sheer brutality. This parade rolled through East Berlin just a month before the wall fell. Look at the phalanxes of armor, the rogues’ gallery (at 1:15, complete with North Koreans) in the reviewing stand, and the smug confidence on Erich Honnecker’s face. The only word that describes it is “invincible:”

When the moment of decision came, however, the same army that had been shooting down border crossers for years held its fire. Why? Had they opened fire, I don’t doubt that there would still be an East Germany, even without a Soviet Union to back it.

HOW WILL THE LEFT ANSWER for the revelations of North Korea’s atrocities? My bet is it won’t; it will just do what it did during and after the revelations of Stalin’s atrocities and change the subject. National Review has an interesting piece on an exhibit of art painted by a survivor of the gulag. The Volokh Conspiracy has more on the topic of double standards and abuses by states that call themselves socialist.

I WONDER HOW MANY LIVING PEOPLE COULD BE FED for what it costs to keep the carpets clean in Kim Il Sung’s mausoleum.

PROTESTERS IN TEHRAN ARE ASKING a question that deserves an answer:

I marvel that they still dare to resist. I hope they make it. We ought to be standing with them.