The moments when it seems most impossible for liberty to triumph over tyranny are the moments when good men and women must fight hardest and believe most faithfully.
On Nov. 9, 1989, the Berlin Wall came crashing down. East and West Germans were soon reunited, and the Soviet Union was collapsing too. The free world, especially America, had defeated one of the most powerful Communist regimes, not in an all-out war, but in the Cold War. Liberty had a great triumph.
After the 2026 election, when Democrats so decisively swept so many races and made it extremely difficult for Republicans to take back national power within the next four years, many of us might be feeling almost hopeless. So many Republican leaders seem to be learning the wrong lessons, and there are days we feel powerless. We cannot allow our temporary disappointment to overcome our patriotism. We cannot allow ourselves to believe that any political party is invulnerable to defeat. Let us take this anniversary of the Berlin Wall’s fall as inspiration.
My mother often spoke to me about how, when she was young, it seemed nigh impossible to her and so many others even in America that the Soviet Union could ever fall or the Berlin Wall ever go down. She remembers how electrifying it was when U.S. President Ronald Reagan stood in front of the wall in 1987 and loudly cried a challenge to the Russian dictator, “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!”
Even some of Reagan‘s advisors didn’t want him to give that speech, as they were so worried about the aftermath. But Reagan believed what so many oppressed people behind the Iron Curtain who hated the Soviets also believed: that some causes are worth dying for, and that only those willing to take on seemingly impossible causes will ever succeed in crushing tyrants. And only about two years after his speech, the wall came down. I even own a little piece of that wall. It reminds me that no dictatorship or political organization is invincible.
Flashback: A ‘Wall Woodpecker’s’ Memory of the Berlin Wall’s Fall
When 12 Jews, most of them uneducated laborers, set out from Israel to evangelize the world in the name of Christ, it was insane to any worldly man that they could hope to convert even the Roman Empire, let alone any other pagan nation. Yet now, I can travel to Cambodia or Thailand or Israel or Italy or Ireland or Hawaii, and see the cross of Christ crowning churches in every one.
When the Spanish Christians began their nearly eight centuries of Reconquista, or the Irish began a millennium of resistance to Viking and then English invaders, it would have seemed tremendously discouraging**, even hopeless,** to all the generations who could not see the end result. For nearly 2,000 years, almost no one believed the Jewish people would ever reclaim their God-given homeland of Israel, and now Israel has one of the most powerful militaries in the world.
When the Founding Fathers took on the incredibly powerful British Empire with only about a third of colonists behind them and no professional military, the cause of liberty seemed practically suicidal. Yet 250 years later, America dominates the world. When the abolitionists first began to talk about the equality of all men, the slave owners sneered. But in the end, at least here in America, the slave owners lost.
And that leads right back to my main point. As it happens, we are now fighting the same enemies we fought during the Civil War. The Democrats launched the Confederacy, the Democrats founded the KKK and developed Jim Crow after the war, and the Democrats are stealing elections, rioting in cities, and rigging our courts and institutions now. The Civil War never really ended. It just shifted to a different battlefield and different weapons. The part that seems so discouraging is that many Republicans and independents do not recognize that we are at war for the survival of our country. We are not dealing with a mere political party but with a criminal, pro-terrorist organization trying to transform a republic into an oligarchy.
But we have the ability to change history. When George Washington and his men crossed the Delaware about 250 years ago for an attack at Trenton, they had no idea whether they would survive the night, let alone win a revolution and found a nation. When Abraham Lincoln took office with a country already split, there was every possibility that the American Union would never come back together again. When Ronald Reagan decided to take down the Soviet Union, most experts laughed at him. When the oppressed peoples of the Soviet Union dreamed of the ability to escape to free countries, it seemed impossible for decades. And yet all of them succeeded in the long run. Do we have the courage and faith that they had?
