You might take some refuge in knowing that in the great arc and mystery of who we are that you took the time to recall someone special, someone who touched a part of you, just as you now, with some invisible reach, touch him.

The Wall, we might remember, is first and foremost about the destiny of men, about their plight and pursuits and flirtations with the human condition. Your friend my not have known the politics of The Wall, but he wasn’t so far removed as you might suspect. That Wall is within all of us to some degree, just as we are part of it in another.

I think your friend would feel better about himself knowing that you recounted his final days in the spirit of a transcendent occasion. Like the collapse of The Wall itself, your friend’s final days invite a greater meaning to our end.

In the same way, when it fell, to me, it was unbelievable. We had just gone through a political battle to place missiles in europe just to confront the USSR. We were supporting central american countries fighting Communist insurgencies and we had invaded Grenada to stop it going into the Soviet Block. Then suddenly, the great Soviet bear folded. Like a steroid bulked up Wrestler it suddenly collapsed under its own weight. And for the first time since I was born, the spectre of Mutually Insured Destruction was over. Oh, we still have the possibility of someone launching a nuke, but it won’t set-off the end of the world (we’re supposedly doing that with our cars).

Notable before that was Hungary opening its border to Austria – with a nod from Gorbachev.

The fall of the wall didn’t hit me the way other monumental events have. I don’t remember where I was when I learned the wall had fallen or even how I learned it had fallen. Perhaps it was because the wall’s fall was part of a larger event that already was underway: the fall of the entire Iron Curtain.

But I do remember as a nine-year-old in England sitting at my paternal grandmother’s kitchen table and reading the headline in the Manchester Evening News one March day in 1953. It said in huge type: “STALIN DEAD.” That may have been the beginning of the end for the Soviet Bloc.

I recall seeing and hearing men like your friend, and those who managed — God knows how — to undertake the bleak ministry of tending them. That’s courage.

http://gatewaypundit.firstthings.com/2009/11/wash-u-shuts-down-freedom-memorial-on-20-year-anniversary-of-end-of-communism-it-was-too-offensive-video/

One vivid memory of mine: I hosted a reception in my house for visiting jurists, lawyers, etc, from one of the Baltic states (can’t remember which one). I asked a law professor, what was the biggest problem in transitioning? She thought for a long moment — I thought she would say something like, we need good legal textbooks, or better judges, or something like that. She said, ‘getting the people to understand that there is such a thing as a rule of law.’

Her point was that under the communist legal system, judges ruled according to party bosses, not actual law. People still didn’t trust the legal system, and that was the biggest problem.

Randy: Thanks for sharing a very personal account. Mine wasn’t so interesting. I read about it here in Washington, and watched it on tv. Later, I was involved in the Central and East European Law Initiative (CEELI), which was a program with the ABA to bring the rule of law to former communist countries. It was a big success, and I’m glad I played a small role in helping to develop that.

Randy, not that it would be particularly important to you, but if you were involved in something like that, I’ve just gained some new-found respect for you.

Thank you for your story about your friend, David. I suspect it will get lost in the shuffle of comments on the Wall and who was doing what at the time, but I’m sure he would be touched to be part of your remembrance of an historic event.

Mine wasn’t so interesting. I read about it here in Washington, and watched it on tv.

Later, I was involved in the Central and East European Law Initiative (CEELI), which was a program with the ABA to bring the rule of law to former communist countries. It was a big success, and I’m glad I played a small role in helping to develop that.

It’s such an embarrassment to be an academic sometimes; great job, but not always good for one’s sense of moral worth (“What did you do today, Daddy?” — “Censored books. Made sure no one was offended by freedom or American victory over totalitarianism.”

There a clue to be had here. This almost unique “victory over totalitarianism”, among all the failures, did not involve a US invasion.

Of course, whether the US can claim sole, or even significant, credit for the collapse of the iron curtain is another issue. You don’t need to be American to be enamoured of freedom. Indeed, this century, the US has fallen out of love at an alarming rate.