Will Grigg's Liberty Minute

August 13, 2007

On this day ? August 13 ? in 1961, residents of Berlin awoke to a divided city. Communist officials in East Berlin had erected a crude six-foot-high barbed wire barrier that would eventually grow into an immense concrete wall ? the most powerful symbol of the unmitigated tyranny of Communism.

The embryonic Berlin Wall was built to contain the growing flood of refugees fleeing the Communist section of the city in search of freedom in the West. The relatively flimsy barbed wire fence was supplemented with sharpshooters with orders to kill anyone trying to escape. Before the sun set on August 13 the streets of East Berlin were decorated with the blood of martyrs to the cause of human freedom.

The Wall came down on November 9, 1989 ? ironically, the fifty-first anniversary of the Nazi Kristallnacht rampage that inaugurated Germany's long totalitarian nightmare. But we would be wise to remember that hideous testament to tyranny, a symbol of the evil of which every government is capable.

Let us take back the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free.