The Fall of the Berlin Wall and the Fate of the West

<div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCXW192054858 BCX4"> <p><span data-contrast="auto">November marks the anniversary of the fall of</span> <a href= "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=snsdDb7KDkg"><span data-contrast= "none">the Berlin Wall.</span></a> <span data-contrast="auto">In 1989, this symbol of Communist tyranny came tumbling down, marking the end of a totalitarian nightmare. After the threat of Nazism was defeated, Communism turned a third of the world into a police state the likes of which had never been seen.</span><span data-ccp-props= "{"201341983":0,"335559731":720,"335559739":0,"335559740":480}"> </span></p> <p><a href= "https://www.ncregister.com/news/john-paul-ii-reagan-and-thatcher"><span data-contrast="none"> Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, and Pope John Paul II</span></a> <span data-contrast="auto">recognized, in a clear-eyed way not shared by many other academic and political elites, that Marxism’s blood-red banners meant not liberation but oppression. More than this, they saw that Communism was not only something that</span> <em><span data-contrast="auto">should</span></em> <span data-contrast="auto">be opposed, but that</span> <em><span data-contrast="auto">could</span></em> <span data-contrast="auto">be. Their collective strategies worked even faster than the most optimistic expected. As that deadly edifice of Communism tumbled down, its fractured walls meant a no-longer-divided Berlin, no more</span> <a href= "https://www.britannica.com/topic/Stasi"><span data-contrast= "none">Stasi</span></a><span data-contrast="auto">, no more secret arrests. </span><span data-ccp-props= "{"201341983":0,"335559731":720,"335559739":0,"335559740":480}"> </span></p> <p><span data-contrast="auto">In the joy of that moment and the collapse of the Soviet Union two years later, famed political scientist Francis Fukuyama declared the “</span><a href= "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_End_of_History_and_the_Last_Man"><span data-contrast="none">End of History</span></a><span data-contrast="auto">.” He believed that t