I have in my office a big picture of a small child behind barbed wire, with a soldier anxiously looking over one shoulder as he leans to pick the child up and put him on the other side.  It’s a real life photo that I purchased in Berlin and it reminds me of what I can’t take for granted: that I live in a free country. (Human rights tribunals aside, I am free to rail against the pro-abortion status quo, and no one has declared me an undesirable on an official level or put me in prison, or threatened my family because of beliefs I hold, or pulled me in for questioning because of things I’ve said. I understand what is at stake with the HRTs but the reality is there are those who are fighting against them and winning, too.)

I wouldn’t wish it on anyone, really, living in a Communist country, but I do think many underestimate the cruelty–even without murders and jail, etc. That, and they overestimate the role of the Russians in bringing the whole thing down. Toss in a splash of anti-Americanism and we are into full blown historial revisionism territory.

So today’s post offers a link to George Jonas because he really gets it. When the Berlin Wall fell, I remember it well, at least in part because no one in my family believed it would.

Things to be grateful for.