Next Monday, November 9th, marks the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. For 28 years, from 1961 to 1989, it stood as a symbol of the tyranny of the totalitarian state under which the individual was viewed as the property of the state, with no right to leave the “workers’ paradise” without the permission of that state. And if you tried, you ran the risk of being killed by the armed guards of the East German communist government.
In a new piece that I’ve written, “The Fall of the Berlin Wall and the Tyranny of the State,” I explain the history and human tragedy of the Berlin Wall, in terms of the dozens of people who lost their lives trying to escape to freedom over the Wall.
We need to emphasize the threat that Big Government represents to all our freedom -- including the right of freedom of movement -- and which should be remembered on this 20-year celebration of the fall of the Berlin Wall.
Unfortunately, the Collectivist mentality did not end with either the fall of the Berlin Wall or the collapse of communism in the former Soviet Union. It remains alive and well in America and around the world, with its insistance that the individual lives for and is to be sacrificed to “interests” of the state.
We still have our work cut out for us, to demolish the numerous political “walls” with which the government continues to enslave us through its police power in the growing interventionist-welfare state and the threatening economic fascist order.
Richard Ebeling
