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July 5, 2005
Who Will Remember the Cold War as it Was?
The memorial at Checkpoint Charlie is no more. (hat tip: InstaPundit)
This is a shame and a tragedy, as such memorials keep alive the consequences of bad decisions. Think of how hard it is to convince someone who has seen Auschwitz that the Holocaust never happened. Yet as such memorials of the brutality of the Soviet sphere are removed - ironically at a time when Russia is again turning its imperialist eyes to the near abroad - it will become easier and easier to pretend that there was nothing more to the divide than a difference of opinion, a political matter of degree rather than of kind.
And then we see the tragic demonstration of the truth of Marx's reply to Santayana: "History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce."
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Excerpted from Davids Medienkritik:
Senators Thomas Flierl (PDS) and Ingeborg Junge-Reyer (SPD), repeatedly criticized the monument, stating that the somber crosses were turning the city into a sort of Disneyland.
I've been to Disneyland once. It was a long time ago, I admit, but I seem to remember lots of rides and shows. I don't recall seeing any monument to people murdered by Communists while trying to flee tyranny, but then again, maybe I just missed it.
Why am I not surprised that this decision was backed by Gerhard Schroeder's socialist party and the successor to East Germany's former ruling Communist party, of which Senator Flierl was a member up to the fall of the Wall?
Posted by: Brian at July 5, 2005 11:55 PM