SOMETHING THERE IS (via Kevin Whited:

The Lion at the Gate (Steven Hayward, June 2004, On Principle)

"Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!"
—President Reagan, at the Brandenburg Gate,
West Berlin, June 12, 1987

Most of his senior aides didn’t want him to say it. Indeed, they tried repeatedly to talk him out of it. You’ll embarrass your host, West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl. You’ll anger and provoke Mikhail Gorbachev, with whom you’ve just started making progress on arms control. You’ll whip up false hope among East Germans—for surely the Berlin Wall isn’t coming down any time soon. Besides, Germans have grown used to the Wall. The ultimate reason: You’ll look naïve and foolish, Mr. President.

"Virtually the entire foreign policy apparatus of the U.S. government," Reagan speechwriter Peter Robinson recalled, tried to stop Ronald Reagan from saying "Tear down this wall," including Reagan’s Secretary of State George Shultz and the new National Security Adviser, General Colin Powell. "Some Reagan advisers," the New York Times reported without naming names, "wanted an address with less polemics." The State Department and the National Security Council persisted up to the last minute trying to derail it, including one meeting between Powell and White House communications director Tom Griscom that participants say was "tense and forceful." Reagan had to intervene against his own advisers. Ken Duberstein, serving then as Reagan’s deputy chief of staff, has offered different accounts of how the conversation went, but the gist of it was like this—Reagan: "I’m the president, right?" Duberstein: "Yes, sir, Mr. President. We’re clear about that." Reagan: "So I get to decide whether the line about tearing down the wall stays in?" Duberstein: "That’s right, sir. It’s your decision." Reagan: "Then it stays in."

What's important today is to get the full context of those words and their universal meaning:

n the 1950s, Khrushchev predicted: "We will bury you." But in the West today, we see a free world that has achieved a level of prosperity and well-being unprecedented in all human history. In the Communist world, we see failure, technological backwardness, declining standards of health, even want of the most basic kind - too little food. Even today, the Soviet Union still cannot feed itself. After these four decades, then, there stands before the entire world one great and inescapable conclusion: Freedom leads to prosperity. Freedom replaces the ancient hatreds among the nations with comity and peace. Freedom is the victor.

And now the Soviets themselves may, in a limited way, becoming to understand the importance of freedom. We hear much from Moscow about a new policy of reform and openness. Some political prisoners have been released. Certain foreign news broadcasts are no longer being jammed. Some economic enterprises have been permitted to operate with greater freedom from state control.

Are these the beginnings of profound changes in the Soviet state? Or are they token gestures, intended to raise false hopes in the West, or to strengthen the Soviet system without changing it? We welcome change and openness; for we believe that freedom and security go together, that the advance of human liberty can only strengthen the cause of world peace. There is one sign the Soviets can make that would be unmistakable, that would advance dramatically the cause of freedom and peace.

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!

The Wall was an artifact of a certain time and place. The message that Western-style freedom is necessary for a healthy society and for the future of all mankind is unbounded by temporal or physical restraints.

Posted by Orrin Judd at June 12, 2004 7:58 AM