Freedom Week (UPDATED... with important information regarding another "week")

At the Brandenburg gate the East German border guards had shooed the weekend’s noisy celebrators off the Wall. But the guards weren’t carrying guns anymore and were beginning to acknowledge their audience and even ham it up a bit. Somebody offered a champagne bottle to a guard and he took a lively swig. Somebody else offered another bottle with a candle in it, and the guard set the candle on the wall and used a plastic cup to make a shield around the flame.

The people in the crowd weren’t yelling or demanding anything. They weren’t waiting for anything to happen. They were present from sheer glee at being alive in this place at this time. They were there to experience the opposite of the existential anguish which has been the twentieth century’s designer mood. And they were happy with the big, important happiness that – the Declaration of Independence reminds us – is everybody’s, even a Communist’s unalienable right to pursue.


The world’s most infamous symbol of oppression had been rendered a tourist attraction overnight. Poland’s political prisoners were now running its government. Bulgaria’s leadership had been given the Order of the Boot. The Hungarian Communist Party wouldn’t answer to its name. Three hundred thousand Czechs were tying a tin can to the Prague Politburo’s tail. And the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was looking disunified, unsoviet and not as socialist as it used to. What did it mean? The Commies didn’t seem to know. The Bush administration didn’t either. And you can be certain that members of the news media did not have a clue. Ideology, politics and journalism, which luxuriate in failure, are impotent in the face of hope and joy.



That from P.J. O’Rourke from his book Give War a Chance on the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Today marks the 20th anniversary of perhaps the most significant moment in the 20th century. The bulwark and symbol of an ideology that was directly responsible for the deaths of tens and tens of millions of people had been both physically and figuratively toppled.

And O’Rourke’s assessment then holds true today as 20 years on, we still don’t think that the punditry, many of whom were apologists for this virulent strain of collectivism, knows what to make of the collapse of communism and the fall of the Soviet empire. And apparently, neither does our President who has declined to participate in the festivities.

Because of the short shrift we believe this monumental event is given and with Veteran’s Day on November 11th, Beers with Demo is proclaiming this coming week as Freedom Week. Join us in celebrating, won’t you?

UPDATE #1:

Wow. How could we forget this one. Folks, it's Ronald Reagan’s “tear down this wall” speech from 1987.



And to think that things could not get any better, Freedom Week is divinely coinciding with San Diego Beer Week. There will be things going on all over town but we will be doing most of our hanging at the K&B Wine Cellars where they will be featuring a different San Diego brewery every evening. Tonight: Green Flash Brewery.