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Wikio
Get exclusive travel deals and book discount cheap flights
Comments from an AP history
and government teacher in Raleigh, NC.
e-mail betsynewmark AT gmail.com
Commissions earned from selling items through Amazon will go towards buying materials for my classes. Thank you.
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Monday, November 09, 2009
The fall of the Berlin Wall
As we commemorate the fall of the Berlin Wall, we should take time to reflect on why it fell and what it symbolized. The WSJ expresses it well today.Yet if the West's stand in Berlin demonstrates anything, it is that moral commitments have a way of reaping strategic dividends over time. By ordering the airlift in 1948, Harry Truman saved a starving city and defied Soviet bullying. As importantly, he showed that the U.S. would not abandon Europe to its furies, as it had after World War I, thus helping to pave the way for the creation of NATO in April 1949.We'd like to think that the United States was truly united in the Cold War, but that would be seeing history through rose-colored glasses. The Media Research Council has done a report on what some were saying at the time and it's a reminder of how, especially after the Vietnam War, we were actually divided in not only fighting the Cold War but in how we perceived it. Cal Thomas summarizes some of the more egregious statements that the MRC reports.
By holding firm for 40 years, Truman and his successors transformed what was supposed to be the Atlantic alliance's weakest point into its strongest. To know what the West stood for during most of those years, one merely had to go to Berlin, see the Wall, consider its purpose, and observe the contrasts between the vibrant prosperity on one side of the city and the oppressive monotony on the other.
Those contrasts were even more apparent to the Germans trapped on the wrong side of the Wall. Barbed wire, closed military zones and the machinery of communist propaganda could keep the prosperity of the West out of sight of most people living east of the Iron Curtain. But that wasn't true for the people of East Berlin, many of whom merely had to look out their windows to understand how empty and cynical were the promises of socialism compared to the reality of a free-market system.Reading these quotes, in light of history, resembles a “Saturday Night Live” comedy skit.It's a good reminder of how the mainstream media chose to portray communism in the decade before the fall of the Soviet Union. How much else do they get exactly wrong because of the ideological blinders they wear?
In 1987, before the wall collapsed, CBS anchor Dan Rather said, “Despite what many Americans think, most Soviets do not yearn for capitalism or Western-style democracy.”
Strobe Talbott, then of Time magazine and soon to be an influential member of the Clinton administration, wrote on Jan. 1, 1990, “(Soviet leader) Gorbachev is helping the West by showing that the Soviet threat isn’t what it used to be, and what’s more, that it never was.” How is it possible to simultaneously have been a threat, but not a threat? The millions who died in gulags, starved to death or were assassinated might have a different interpretation of Russian history under communism.
After the liberation of Eastern Europe, according to the MRC, some journalists attacked capitalism for “exploiting” the newly freed workers. A Los Angeles Times reporter touted “communism’s ‘good old days,’ when the hand of the state crushed personal freedom but ensured that people were housed, employed and had enough to eat.”
In fact, Soviet communism spread misery through its own 12 time zones and in many parts of the world, though NBC’s John Chancellor refused to see it. In 1991, as the Soviet coup unraveled, Chancellor said, “the problem isn’t communism; nobody even talked about communism this week. The problem is shortages.” Wait, according to the Los Angeles Times reporter, there were no shortages because everyone was housed, employed and had enough to eat? Both can’t be true.
Ted Turner, the former CNN mogul, is always good for an outlandish quote and when it came to Soviet Russia, he offered a cornucopia of self-deluded statements, none better than this one: “(Gorbachev is) moving faster than Jesus Christ did.” But Time magazine bested him with this howler when it described Gorbachev as both “the communist pope and the Soviet Martin Luther.”
Never ones to admit failure for their favorite theories, the Left still refuses to acknowledge their errors. They simply moved on to new errors, in this case to Cuba. In 2006 an Associated Press story said, “For all its flaws, life in Cuba has its comforts. Many Cubans take pride in their free education system, high literacy rates and top-notch doctors. Ardent Castro supporters say life in the United States, in contrast, seems selfish, superficial and — despite its riches — ultimately unsatisfying.” Is that why so many Cubans have risked their lives to reach America?
Again, Ted Turner on North Korean dictator Kim Jong-il: “I saw a lot of people over there. They were thin and they were riding bicycles instead of driving cars.” An incredulous Wolf Blitzer replied, “A lot of those people are starving.” Turner said, “I didn’t see any brutality.” (Read more at www.mrc.org.)
3 comments
Comments:
As we commemorate the fall of the Berlin Wall, we should take time to reflect on why it fell and what it symbolized. The WSJ expresses it well today.
3 comments
As we commemorate the fall of the Berlin Wall, we should take time to reflect on why it fell and what it symbolized. The WSJ expresses it well today.
Yet if the West's stand in Berlin demonstrates anything, it is that moral commitments have a way of reaping strategic dividends over time. By ordering the airlift in 1948, Harry Truman saved a starving city and defied Soviet bullying. As importantly, he showed that the U.S. would not abandon Europe to its furies, as it had after World War I, thus helping to pave the way for the creation of NATO in April 1949.We'd like to think that the United States was truly united in the Cold War, but that would be seeing history through rose-colored glasses. The Media Research Council has done a report on what some were saying at the time and it's a reminder of how, especially after the Vietnam War, we were actually divided in not only fighting the Cold War but in how we perceived it. Cal Thomas summarizes some of the more egregious statements that the MRC reports.
By holding firm for 40 years, Truman and his successors transformed what was supposed to be the Atlantic alliance's weakest point into its strongest. To know what the West stood for during most of those years, one merely had to go to Berlin, see the Wall, consider its purpose, and observe the contrasts between the vibrant prosperity on one side of the city and the oppressive monotony on the other.
Those contrasts were even more apparent to the Germans trapped on the wrong side of the Wall. Barbed wire, closed military zones and the machinery of communist propaganda could keep the prosperity of the West out of sight of most people living east of the Iron Curtain. But that wasn't true for the people of East Berlin, many of whom merely had to look out their windows to understand how empty and cynical were the promises of socialism compared to the reality of a free-market system.
Reading these quotes, in light of history, resembles a “Saturday Night Live” comedy skit.It's a good reminder of how the mainstream media chose to portray communism in the decade before the fall of the Soviet Union. How much else do they get exactly wrong because of the ideological blinders they wear?
In 1987, before the wall collapsed, CBS anchor Dan Rather said, “Despite what many Americans think, most Soviets do not yearn for capitalism or Western-style democracy.”
Strobe Talbott, then of Time magazine and soon to be an influential member of the Clinton administration, wrote on Jan. 1, 1990, “(Soviet leader) Gorbachev is helping the West by showing that the Soviet threat isn’t what it used to be, and what’s more, that it never was.” How is it possible to simultaneously have been a threat, but not a threat? The millions who died in gulags, starved to death or were assassinated might have a different interpretation of Russian history under communism.
After the liberation of Eastern Europe, according to the MRC, some journalists attacked capitalism for “exploiting” the newly freed workers. A Los Angeles Times reporter touted “communism’s ‘good old days,’ when the hand of the state crushed personal freedom but ensured that people were housed, employed and had enough to eat.”
In fact, Soviet communism spread misery through its own 12 time zones and in many parts of the world, though NBC’s John Chancellor refused to see it. In 1991, as the Soviet coup unraveled, Chancellor said, “the problem isn’t communism; nobody even talked about communism this week. The problem is shortages.” Wait, according to the Los Angeles Times reporter, there were no shortages because everyone was housed, employed and had enough to eat? Both can’t be true.
Ted Turner, the former CNN mogul, is always good for an outlandish quote and when it came to Soviet Russia, he offered a cornucopia of self-deluded statements, none better than this one: “(Gorbachev is) moving faster than Jesus Christ did.” But Time magazine bested him with this howler when it described Gorbachev as both “the communist pope and the Soviet Martin Luther.”
Never ones to admit failure for their favorite theories, the Left still refuses to acknowledge their errors. They simply moved on to new errors, in this case to Cuba. In 2006 an Associated Press story said, “For all its flaws, life in Cuba has its comforts. Many Cubans take pride in their free education system, high literacy rates and top-notch doctors. Ardent Castro supporters say life in the United States, in contrast, seems selfish, superficial and — despite its riches — ultimately unsatisfying.” Is that why so many Cubans have risked their lives to reach America?
Again, Ted Turner on North Korean dictator Kim Jong-il: “I saw a lot of people over there. They were thin and they were riding bicycles instead of driving cars.” An incredulous Wolf Blitzer replied, “A lot of those people are starving.” Turner said, “I didn’t see any brutality.” (Read more at www.mrc.org.)
Comments:
The comment from Talbott reminds me of Clinton's penchant for hiring people with no apparent talent for the job. As they say, "A's hire A's and B's hire B's", of which Talbott and George Tenet were prime examples. That doesn't even begin to address the recent spate of "czar" hires.
The comments about media personalities like Chancellor and Turner should remind us all that our access to important information passes through filters that are far from impartial and in the case of the latter, far from rational.
Here's to hoping that as the old media dies off and the new media takes it form, competition for audience/readership will be decided by a better educated demographic. Good luck to Betsy and her colleagues across the country as they attempt to instill young minds with an ability to think critically!
There's also Ralph Nader's fatuous observation that the free market economy meant that Russians no longer had to stand in endless lines which had allowed them to contemplate the meaning of life.
Ralph is a true believer. Just wait until he finally realizes that he has been condemned to the gulag of irrelevant leftists deemed unnecessary by Obama and his supporters.
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