Another Anniversary

Twenty years ago today, the East German government lifted all travel restrictions on its citizens. Later that night, Germans began tearing down the Berlin Wall.

The press seems to be taking much more notice of this one than they did of the Tiananmen Square anniversary.

I remember the events, but I didn't appreciate them as much at the time as I do now. This was a truly historic event, and was the highlight of the series of peaceful revolutions which dismantled the Communist bloc within only 2 years.

A miracle if there ever was one.

Too bad our President didn't think it necessary to attend the celebration. Peter Robinson says it best at National Review Online.

The Cold War was the defining struggle of the second half of the 20th century — a clash of beliefs about God, man, government, and economics so utterly basic, so primal, that it stands in comparison with the Persian Wars or the long conflict between Rome and Carthage. “My view of the Cold War is simple,” Reagan once famously explained. “We win, and they lose.” And with the fall of the Berlin Wall 20 years ago on Monday, that is just how it turned out. Liberty vanquished tyranny.

Barack Obama? He has no idea. No idea at all.

And from George Weigel:

It’s a very big deal, because the president’s absence bespeaks a woodenheadeness about the history of our times: a woodenheadness likely influenced by the classic left-liberal notion that the Cold War was just an action-reaction cycle between two “great powers” (“two scorpions in a bottle,” as a Jimmy Carter appointee notoriously put it), not a moral contest for the human future between imperfect democracies and pluperfect dictatorships.

There have been few moments in modern history when the good guys won, cleanly, and without mass violence; Americans had a large role in creating the conditions for the possibility of that. The fall of the Wall was the symbolic centerpiece of the Revolution of 1989 — it’s shameful and, frankly, embarrassing that an American president is not in Berlin to celebrate the implosion of the worst tyranny in human history. But it’s hardly surprising, given the president’s performance before Russian students earlier this year.

The politics of national self-deprecation — moral blindness wrapped in moral sanctimony — continues.

In Praise of the Great Leader!

The lyrics are here (there were two songs) if you have the stomach for it. Now, I know the President didn't have anything to do with this, but when I saw this, it literally sent a chill down my spine. This is how you build up a cult of personality. We do NOT do this kind of thing in America!

As an adult, fine, sing whatever you want, you have the freedom to do so. But to teach children this kind of thing in school is just plain wrong. Music has power, it conveys emotions very effectively.

We teach children songs to impress upon them that some things are worthy of respect or worship. We teach them to sing about our country, and our freedoms because we have reverence for them. At Church we teach them to sing praise to God because we reverence Him.

We do not worship our leaders in this country!

We do not bow to kings or presidents. All men are created equal. This is not the Soviet Union, and this is not North Korea. Leaders come and go, we revere the freedoms and ideas upon which our nation was founded, not whomever happens to have won the last election.

Just two more points:

1. Whoever did this is completely ignorant of history at best, and insane at worst and should not be anywhere near children.
2. This is showing up almost nowhere on the news. Can you imagine the uproar if kids were taped singing a song praising President Bush or the Iraq war?
3. Ok, three points. Maybe we didn't need to worry about the President's address to school children, maybe we need to worry about which teachers have complete access to our kids every Monday - Friday for 6 - 8 hours.

Is this the next song they'll learn?

Sensible Healthcare Reform

I've resisted posting on healthcare reform here for 2 reasons:

1. No one wants to read a 10,000 word rant complete with charts and analogies.
2. I can't find the time to write said 10,000 word rant.

So, I leave it to others with greater powers of brevity. Charles Krauthammer has two suggestions that should be tried before any radical restructuring of the current healthcare system. They will genuinely reduce costs and lessen the influence of government in our lives.

(1) Tort reform: As I wrote recently, our crazy system of casino malpractice suits results in massive and random settlements that raise everyone's insurance premiums and creates an epidemic of defensive medicine that does no medical good, yet costs a fortune.

I'm a lawyer, and even I agree with that. The inability of malpractice insurance companies to predict what crazy awards juries will give leads to astronomical premiums. In addition, it causes doctors to order unnecessary procedures "just to make sure:"

An authoritative Massachusetts Medical Society study found that five out of six doctors admitted they order tests, procedures and referrals -- amounting to about 25 percent of the total -- solely as protection from lawsuits. Defensive medicine, estimates the libertarian/conservative Pacific Research Institute, wastes more than $200 billion a year.

Krauthammer envisions something like the workers' compensation plan to handle malpractice incidents.

Abolish the entire medical-malpractice system. Create a new social pool from which people injured in medical errors or accidents can draw. The adjudication would be done by medical experts, not lay juries giving away lottery prizes at the behest of the liquid-tongued John Edwardses who pocket a third of the proceeds.

The pool would be funded by a relatively small tax on all health-insurance premiums. Socialize the risk; cut out the trial lawyers. Would that immunize doctors from carelessness or negligence? No. The penalty would be losing your medical license. There is no more serious deterrent than forfeiting a decade of intensive medical training and the livelihood that comes with it.

Second, uncouple health insurance from employment and from geography:

(2) Real health-insurance reform: Tax employer-provided health care benefits and return the money to the employee with a government check to buy his own medical insurance, just as he buys his own car or home insurance.

There is no logical reason to get health insurance through your employer. This entire system is an accident of World War II wage and price controls. It's economically senseless. It makes people stay in jobs they hate, decreasing labor mobility and therefore overall productivity. And it needlessly increases the anxiety of losing your job by raising the additional specter of going bankrupt through illness. . . . If we additionally eliminated the prohibition on buying personal health insurance across state lines, that would inject new and powerful competition that would lower costs for everyone.

Good common-sense things to try which will lower the cost of medical care and reduce both the need for, and the cost of, health insurance.

Darkness and Light - 20 years since Tiananmen Square

Since few others marking this day, I will.

The Tiananmen protests started in April 1989, when students began calling for greater democracy and anti-corruption measures. After weeks of protests, which saw the square packed with up to 1 million people, troops and tanks moved in on the night of 3-4 June 1989. An unknown number of people were killed in the crackdown. Estimates range from 0 - 5000. For what it's worth, the Chinese Government acknowledges 241 dead and 7000 injured. Thousands more were arrested throughout the country. Some are still held, others haven't been seen since. Among the "disappeared" is the unknown man in the photo above. It is known he was arrested, but the Chinese government has not been able to "find" him in response to international pressure.

The last official statement from the PRC government about the "Tank Man" came from Jiang Zemin in a 1990 interview with Barbara Walters. When asked about the whereabouts of the "Tank Man", Jiang responded that the young man was "I think never killed".

Kudos to the BBC - they have a story about the official Chinese reaction to the anniversary. And a video of a reporter trying to enter the square:



These brave students may well have been part of the cause of the great events of 1989 - the fall of the Berlin Wall being the most memorable. They were the last great uprising against communism to be ruthlessly suppressed, the ones that came after succeeded, and the world is a better place for their courage.

They deserve to be remembered together with The Hungarians in 1956, and the Czechs in 1968.

We must remember that Communism is not just another political system, it has objectively measurable, real effects on the lives of the people oppressed by it. The ultimate ends are the destruction of the human soul, both body and spirit, grinding pervasive poverty, darkness and death.

This darkness is not just spiritual, but literal as this composite satellite image of the nighttime Earth shows:



Japan is the string of lights from bottom center to top right, surrounded by the dark of the ocean - Japan is a thriving democracy, and is an island.

South Korea is center left, surrounded by darkness too - South Korea is a thriving democracy. South Korea is not an island.

The darkness to the north is North Korea - the "purest" communist nation on Earth. The scattered "Islands" north of that are Communist China.

No matter how much we talk and trade with them, communists are evil. We must never forget that. And we must never forget those who died 20 years ago today.

Putin's Genius

I read a very insightful article today on how Vladimir Putin's totalitarianism can survive when so many others have failed.

The author points out the one crucial difference which seems to make his rule palatable to ordinary Russians. I think he is absolutely correct. It's a thought I've had floating around in my head for a while.

People are often more tolerant of Government interference in big things than in little ones.

The new czar saw that most human beings don't care who governs them, as long as the government minds its own business. And if the ruler can revive the illusion of national power, so much the better.

In my way of thinking, this is a symptom of all forms of socialism, and part of what make socialism attractive to so many. Wants are supplied, and all that's required politically is to do nothing.

The author characterizes the unspoken bargain Putin has struck with the Russian people as:

"I get the political power, you get material progress and social freedoms. Behave in the streets, and I'll stay out of your sheets."

Do what you want on your own time in your own home, and the government will leave you alone, but the "commanding heights" of the political and economic life of the nation are off limits. Wear what you want, say what you want to your friends, buy the nice products we import for you, and be content. Protesting, public criticism, political opposition - these are signs of ingratitude and threaten the status quo.

Shamelessly cynical, Putin goes through the stage-managed forms of democracy. He even permits scripted media criticism of the state (though not of himself).

But there are limits to the new totalitarianism's tolerance. You can call Putin a baboon-butt monkey-boy over the vodka bottle at your kitchen table - but don't do it in public.

Cross that line and you are, literally, dead. A deal's a deal.