The State of Things

Davids Medienkritik has a disturbing story out of Berlin regarding the very dim future of Checkpoint Charlie. The monument there has over one thousand crosses dedicated to all those who was murdered trying to escape East German Communist rule.

What makes this story all the more disturbing is the obvious conflict of interest involved. As we indicated above, the Communist PDS is currently a member of the coalition that governs the city of Berlin. But prior to 1990, the PDS was known as the SED, the party that ruled East Germany with an absolutist iron fist. It was the SED dictatorship that was directly responsible for the hundreds of murders that the crosses at Checkpoint Charlie memorialize. And guess what? The PDS wants the monument torn down!

It looks like the rewrite of history is well under way in Berlin, whose Senate for Urban Planning thinks the monument adds to a "Disneyland" atmosphere and added:

...the East German dictatorship cannot be equated with the atrocities of the Third Reich.

One can only speculate as to the choice of date, but it is hard to imagine that it is not a big "screw you" to the U.S. Medienkritik comments that regardless of intention the date is insulting to many.

Certainly, we feel that the outrageous timing of the monument's destruction is incredibly insensitive not only to the families of those killed at the wall, but also to all those Americans and their families who served in Berlin and around Germany during the Cold War.

Perhaps we in this world are doomed to continue repeating the same mistakes over and over again. As long as the symbols of freedom are to be erased by any governmental body that finds them unseemly, what reminders will we have that people craved it enough to risk their lives?

Also posting: Depleted Uranium, Daily Pundit, Tom McMahon