President Ronald Reagan: "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!"

Halbhh

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The Berlin Wall kept people in. No one was trying to get in.
A conservative Christian Democrat German Chancellor....would know the German people better than you and me.

Consider a nation that has gone vastly faster (and really had too many come in just 1 year) than we have in admitting refugees as a % portion of the nation's population.

German chancellor Angela Merkel’s decision in 2015 to keep her country’s borders open and give shelter to hundreds of thousands of refugees was praised by commentators and leaders around the world. Her decision was also approved of by thousands of German citizens who welcomed refugees and provided clothes, food, and other support.

The term welcome culture, or Willkommenskultur, was frequently used in political debates and the media to describe the events of autumn 2015.

But a year later, the picture had changed dramatically. By the end of 2016, the public debate had shifted to focus on the so-called refugee crisis, or Flüchtlingskrise, alongside the religion of refugees and migrants, and limits to Germany’s capacity to integrate them. The change of perspective was reflected in discussions about upper limits – Obergrenzen — of the numbers of refugees that should be allowed to enter the country.
We asked Germans what they really felt after Angela Merkel opened the borders to refugees in 2015

Merkel is a Christian Democrat, conservative. And....seems to be familiar with God's way.

But there is an upper limit politically in how much a nation can tolerate all at once. We are nowhere close to what Germany did. Not close.

In America, our immigrants did not all come in 1 or 2 or 3 years. They came gradually over decades.

We know and love them. Many of us.
 
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redleghunter

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A conservative Christian Democrat German Chancellor....would know the German people better than you and me.

Consider a nation that has gone vastly faster (and really had too many come in just 1 year) than we have in admitting refugees as a % portion of the nation's population.

German chancellor Angela Merkel’s decision in 2015 to keep her country’s borders open and give shelter to hundreds of thousands of refugees was praised by commentators and leaders around the world. Her decision was also approved of by thousands of German citizens who welcomed refugees and provided clothes, food, and other support.

The term welcome culture, or Willkommenskultur, was frequently used in political debates and the media to describe the events of autumn 2015.

But a year later, the picture had changed dramatically. By the end of 2016, the public debate had shifted to focus on the so-called refugee crisis, or Flüchtlingskrise, alongside the religion of refugees and migrants, and limits to Germany’s capacity to integrate them. The change of perspective was reflected in discussions about upper limits – Obergrenzen — of the numbers of refugees that should be allowed to enter the country.
We asked Germans what they really felt after Angela Merkel opened the borders to refugees in 2015

Merkel is a Christian Democrat, conservative. And....seems to be familiar with God's way.

But there is an upper limit politically in how much a nation can tolerate all at once. We are nowhere close to what Germany did. Not close.

In America, our immigrants did not all come in 1 or 2 or 3 years. They came gradually over decades.

We know and love them. Many of us.
Legal immigration is the life blood of the USA.

Illegal immigration actually inhibits legal immigration.

Don’t know the point about Merkel. The Berlin Wall was built to keep people in. To compare the union of East and West Germany which for centuries was one nation, to the illegal crossings into the USA is false equivalence.

I spent some time in Germany speaking with people who were of West Germany. They were happy what happened with the reunion. But really hated what happened to the economy when the East was incorporated.
 
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brinny

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An American conservative president many loved had some things to say about walls to separate peoples from each other:


What has the wall that kept people prisoners got to do with securing borders and keeping a free and sovereign nation safe?

:scratch:
 
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SoldierOfTheKing

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A conservative Christian Democrat German Chancellor....would know the German people better than you and me.

She’s hardly in a position to judge. Whatever else one could say about Erich Honecker, it would scarcely have occurred to him to throw the borders open to whomever and what ever wanted a bite of the country’s largesse the way Merkel did. Whatever other problem’s people had in the old DDR, women weren’t being sexually assaulted on the streets en masse. More and more Germans are understanding this, which is why Merkel’s party is tanking in the polls.

It served as serious warning to us as to what would happen in our country if Hillary Clinton had been allowed into the White House.
 
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FireDragon76

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Borders are just lines on a map . There's a Dutch historian, Rutger Bregman, that believes that they will be widely recognized as an injustice hundreds of years from now.
 
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Kaon

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Borders are just lines on a map . There's a Dutch historian, Rutger Bregman, that believes that they will be widely recognized as an injustice hundreds of years from now.

It isn't the borders that are the injustice, it is the prejudice, ignorance, apathy and lack of compassion people have that keep those borders us.

This plane of existence could easily be borderless and meet every basic need, but we don't have any self worth as humans. No other race of creature actively works to murder its own (for currency, or no real reason) as much as we do.
 
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Halbhh

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She’s hardly in a position to judge. Whatever else one could say about Erich Honecker, it would scarcely have occurred to him to throw the borders open to whomever and what ever wanted a bite of the country’s largesse the way Merkel did. Whatever other problem’s people had in the old DDR, women weren’t being sexually assaulted on the streets en masse. More and more Germans are understanding this, which is why Merkel’s party is tanking in the polls.

It served as serious warning to us as to what would happen in our country if Hillary Clinton had been allowed into the White House.
Regarding the mistakes in German immigration policy about 4 years ago? Yes, I think the great majority of people already agreed on this about 2-3 years ago, and it was widely considered clear, without any significant dispute, that allowing in immigrants without extensive screening is a bad idea.

That's old and well settled. I never have even seen anyone here advocating open borders. Not that there might not be someone, but I've not seen them. Have you?

The debates here I've seen are instead about how many completely law-abiding true refugees we should admit -- between Christians that want to allow typical numbers of screened, law-abiding refugees to immigrate to the U.S. for their physical safety, after screening, and what appears to be a group here that never actually says they want to allow even law-abiding, screened refugees here.

Of course, the position of allowing no refugees at all is entirely un-Christian. Those having that position seem to be of some other persuasion.

As to the typical cyclic of voters getting rid of political parties after a time, it's remarkable actually that Merkel's party the CD held onto power for so long. It's unusual. They must have really struck a chord with the German people to hang on so long. Just like here in the U.S., the voters reliably dump the old party in power after enough years. But to last as long as they did really does stand out. Merkel will go down in history as one of the great leaders of Germany it looks.
 
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mindlight

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An American conservative president many loved had some things to say about walls to separate peoples from each other:

I was in Poland as a missionary when communism collapsed there. People were prisoners in a corrupt , oppressive and run down system. Reagan, Thatcher and the pope were 3 primary actors in bringing that wall down but it was the people of Eastern Europe who suffered communism all those years and prayed for freedom through them.

People in this thread seem to be trying to draw parallels with the Trump wall with Mexico and Merkels openness to refugees from the failed Muslim states of North Africa and the Middle East but really these are entirely different cases with different kinds of motivation.

The thing I learn from the Berlin wall is that the system that built it could only keep control by making its people prisoners.

The Trump wall is about depriving people who want the opportunity of living in America from getting in.

Merkel let the walls down as an act of compassion to some very desperate and needy people and maybe also because Germany has a major demographic problem with it lack of babies.
 
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Halbhh

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I was in Poland as a missionary when communism collapsed there. People were prisoners in a corrupt , oppressive and run down system. Reagan, Thatcher and the pope were 3 primary actors in bringing that wall down but it was the people of Eastern Europe who suffered communism all those years and prayed for freedom through them.

People in this thread seem to be trying to draw parallels with the Trump wall with Mexico and Merkels openness to refugees from the failed Muslim states of North Africa and the Middle East but really these are entirely different cases with different kinds of motivation.

The thing I learn from the Berlin wall is that the system that built it could only keep control by making its people prisoners.

The Trump wall is about depriving people who want the opportunity of living in America from getting in.

Merkel let the walls down as an act of compassion to some very desperate and needy people and maybe also because Germany has a major demographic problem with it lack of babies.
Yes, see post #11 just above also then, about Merkel and the flood of refugees to Germany.

It's interesting you were a missionary in Poland before the iron curtain dissolved!

I remember fervently praying (as I'm sure very many people did!) for the iron curtain to fall, to be undone.

For me, the main view of it was the Berlin Wall, and with very great excitement I read every newspaper article I could in the time leading right up it that moment when citizens took pick axes and began banging on it, and the heady days right after, and the amazing sights on TV.
 
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mindlight

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Yes, see post #11 just above also then, about Merkel and the flood of refugees to Germany.

It's interesting you were a missionary in Poland before the iron curtain dissolved!

I remember fervently praying (as I'm sure very many people did!) for the iron curtain to fall, to be undone.

For me, the main view of it was the Berlin Wall, and with very great excitement I read every newspaper article I could in the time leading right up it that moment when citizens took pick axes and began banging on it, and the heady days right after, and the amazing sights on TV.

I was a Protestant missionary in a devoutly Catholic country living on the global prayers of 70 years of Christian supplication. I remember approaching a Polish nun and trying to convert her , through my translator! But I was instead deeply impressed by the deep devotion of the womans life and the level of faith in the country generally. Communism broke from within. Noone really believed it by the time it broke and in Poland faith was a major part of it. East Germany came after that and was more atheistic. The wall was a symptom of oppression not its cause. It came down when the people were ready to break it and with Gorbachev removing the fear that kept them from doing that.
 
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Ada Lovelace

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An American conservative president many loved had some things to say about walls to separate peoples from each other:



One of the most iconic speeches President Reagan ever delivered, one of the most celebrated in history, was written because Berliners impressed upon the speechwriter the anguish caused by the wall severing not only the land but families, friends, community.

The speechwriter is a fellow at my university's think tank, and on the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall spoke about his experiences in Berlin while writing the famed speech. It was not President Reagan himself who directed the line, nor was it the experienced American diplomat the speechwriter spoke to with the hope it could guide him. It was having dinner with Berliners that inspired the line “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall." He'd been astounded by the wall's omnipresence, how it impacted every facet of daily life, and yet curiously was rarely spoken of by Berliners. At the dinner he asked his companions if they had, as the diplomat insisted, really become used to the 27-mile barricade that enclosed their city. He said there was a silence, and he feared he'd committed just the kind of gaffe that the diplomat stressed he wanted the president to avoid. The Berliners looked at each other and one man pointed and said, ‘My sister lives just a few kilometers in that direction but I haven’t seen her in more than 20 years. How do you think we feel about that wall?’” Then for the rest of the evening, the guests shared their experiences, of their heartbreaks and anguish, and he realized that Berlin residents had simply stopped talking about the wall rather than become used to it.

He wrote the line unsure if President Reagan would be willing to deliver it. State Department and National Security Council advisers found the passage outlandish and provocative, and one White House official even thought it was even un-presidential. But President Reagan had the courage to do what was right and deliver the line, and that was the moment defined a turning point in U.S.-Soviet relations. The speech was strategically delivered in a location where it was clearly heard on both sides of the wall. It was tremendously empowering to Berliners, East and West, and two years later that wall was torn down. A piece of it was gifted to President Reagan's library in Simi Valley, and stands there not far from where he and Mrs. Reagan are buried.
 
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