The Berlin Wall and the Hunger for Freedom

(Based, in part, on a previous post commemorating the 20^th anniversary)

Some – even those that would say a lot less charitable things about “flyover states” – must admit that last night’s election victory of Donald J. Trump came in part because many Americans fear the loss of freedom. But it was not just Americans concerned about freedom celebrating today. And, odd as it may seem, some Americans are pleased with Trump’s victory because of their concern for the freedom of others around the world, too.

This morning I have been inundated with calls, emails, and texts from friends both in or from Sudan and South Sudan congratulating me — and America — on Trump’s election. One friend described the joyous celebration taking place in the streets of Juba, South Sudan. Another, from the Nuba Mountains, believes that now there will be a real effort to bring freedom and end Omar al Bashir’s genocidal war on the people of Sudan, and that the U.S. will support the freedom fighters rather than tell them to sign useless peace agreements with the Islamist regime.

I reminded both friends that, coincidentally, today is the 27th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. “And now America’s Berlin Wall is falling,” my South Sudanese friend exclaimed. President Ronald Reagan had urged, “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.” Likewise, we implore God for grace and courage to help tear down all the remaining walls of tyranny, persecution, and injustice in every corner of the globe.

An irresistible hunger for freedom in the human spirit led to the dismantling of the hated wall of concrete and barbed wire in Berlin, and to the toppling of despotism throughout Eastern/Central Europe.

Today many seem to have forgotten the value of this gift of freedom and how it comes at such great cost. During the 25^th anniversary of the fall of the Wall in 2014, Germany honored those who lost their lives fighting to be free. An article by Hope Harrison in the Wilson Quarterly described The Freedom Memorial at the Checkpoint Charlie Museum that established 1,065 wooden crosses dedicated to people who had lost their lives trying to escape.

The Berlin Wall Memorial and the Center of Historical Research in Potsdam conducted a four-year study on the killings. They found that most victims were young men between the ages of 16 and 30. Sadly, many of the soldiers who shot them were about the same age. Peter Fechter was only 18 years old when he became one of the first victims of the Berlin Wall border guards. He was shot trying to climb over the wall on August 17, 1962. He fell back onto the east side of the wall and bled to death. Fechter’s agonizing, hour-long death was witnessed by people on both sides of the wall, but his screams for help went unaided, with both sides afraid to intervene. The Peter Fechter memorial constructed on the Zimmerstrasse at the spot where he died reads, “He just wanted Freedom.”

Now, as I work with Christians and others fighting for freedom in Sudan, and for a still precarious, fragile freedom in South Sudan, the stories of these freedom fighters give me hope for the Darfuri, Beja, Nuba, Nubian, and Blue Nile freedom fighters of Sudan, and for the fledgling democracy of South Sudan. Our Sudanese and South Sudanese friends are well-acquainted with how freedom may only come in death. But more nations are now struggling under the despotism that they faced. The violent, intolerant ideology of Islamism has gained power through the passivity and political correctness of both the European and the United States governments and through accommodation by anti-Western secularist Leftists.

Even before the hijrah (migration for the cause of Allah) of radicals orchestrated by ISIS, Islamists were pushing for the kind of Islamic Shari’a state in Europe that they are attempting to establish in the Middle East and eventually throughout Africa. Accommodation and über-tolerance have led to “no-go zones” in Islamist enclaves euphemistically named “sensitive urban areas” (SUAs) in France, Germany, and elsewhere. Police and non-Muslims avoid these areas which operate by their own law.

Eastern Europe, and particularly Germany were warned in the past that they must act to maintain the freedom for which they fought or else succumb to this new tyranny. Sadly, with the onslaught of “Syrian” “refugees” into these nations, tyranny is taking hold. Most shockingly for liberal, brazenly secular Europe, girls and women are scolded and told to be more like their submissive refugee sisters – accept the new normal: cover up, keep eyes averted, and/or stay inside with the doors locked, or be raped.

In America we face the same threat, usually in the more benign form of a “stealth” jihad, the creeping insurgence of Islamist ideology. But the attack on American sovereignty and freedom has become increasingly overt – witness jihadist attacks on Ft. Hood, the Boston Marathon bombing, honor killings of Muslim women and girls in Dallas, Phoenix, Buffalo, and elsewhere, beheading of Americans both by IS abroad and by Islamists in America, and more recent attacks such as those in San Bernardino and Orlando.

This despotism of dhimmitude and acquiescence is aided by passivity, political correctness, and pathological denial on the part of secular and religious, liberal and conservative society. It has also been supported within the context of increasing government control heretofore never experienced by the American people. Which brings me back again to the surprising defeat of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton by Donald J. Trump.

The East Germans’ cries of Wir sind das Volk remind us that a democratic republic has to be ruled by the people, not by a government imposing its will on them nor by a dangerous foreign ideology. During their revolution Hungarians declared, “Stand up, Hungarians, your country calls. The time for now or never falls. Are we to live as slaves or free? Choose one. This is our destiny!” and Romanian protestors fired upon by the Securitate sang, “Wake up, Romanian, from your deadly sleep, Into which you’ve been sunk by the barbaric tyrants. Now or never, your fate renew, to which your enemies will bow to.”

With the election of Donald Trump, many Americans believe we are standing for freedom like those that tore down the Berlin Wall. And some, the ones that I most respect and love, care enough to believe that we are joining our Sudanese brothers and sisters in their fight for freedom. May there NEVER be a memorial to America constructed on the Mainstrasse of every U.S. city that reads, “We just didn’t want Freedom enough.”