Here is Larry Reed’s 2001 article remembering the anniversary of building the wall in 1961. Given the health care bill that just passed the House, this article reminds us that socialists of every stripe want us to conform to their Utopian visions even if it means using force.
By one estimate, a total of 254 people died at the wall during those
28 years [1961-1989]?shot by police, ensnared by the barbed wire, mauled by dogs,
or blown to bits by land mines as the ?Workers? Paradise? sought to
keep them imprisoned in a statist hell.In my office hangs a copy of a famous photo of a poignant moment
from that sad day in 1961. With obvious apprehension, a young East
German soldier glances about as he prepares to let a small boy pass
through the emerging barrier. No doubt the boy spent the night with
friends and found himself the next morning on the opposite side of the
Wall from his family. But the communist government ordered its men to
let no one pass. The inscription below the photo explains that at this
very moment, the soldier was seen by a superior officer who immediately
detached him from his unit. ?No one,? reads the inscription, ?knows
what became of him.? Only the most despicable tyrants could punish a
man for letting a child get to his loved ones but in the Evil Empire,
that and much worse happened all the time.
