Bromleyisms

June 12, 1987, Ronald Reagan stood before the Berlin Wall and demanded, "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!" Two years later -- make no mistake about the sequence of events -- Chinese university students boldly, if temporarily, stood down the communist regime.

To mark these annual dates, this past weekend's Sunday papers brought a duel of legacies in New York Times and Washington Post: The Times ran an op-ed by James Mann that tries to find "balance" between competing views of Reagan's "Tear Down This Wall" speech, entitled, Tear Down That Myth, while The Post went with 1989 and Jim Hoagland's rather sad take on Tiananmen and the future of democracy in China, Fading Echoes in Tiananmen Square.

Neither discussion of the one event mentions the other. Can it be? Were these unrelated events, Reagan calling for demolition of Communism's most hateful symbol, the Berlin Wall, and Chinese students constructing in downtown Beijing a model of democracy's most glorious emblem, the Statue of Liberty?

Truly, there can be no discussion of the one anniversary without consideration of the other. But so it goes:

Mann trudges the usual murky middle of academia's contorted and self-loathing reassessment of "The Reagan Legacy," and concludes that Reagan's leftist critics are wrong that "The Wall" speech was harmfully antagonistic, and that his rightwing advocates are wrong that the speech itself brought down The Wall. Mann's is a punt in the classic style of having it both ways by having it neither way. Nevertheless, Mann admits of impact of the speech:

Like his latter-day interpreters, those officials misunderstood Mr. Reagan’s balancing act. He wasn’t trying to land a knockout blow on the Soviet regime, nor was he engaging in mere political theater. He was instead doing something else on that damp day in Berlin 20 years ago — he was helping to set the terms for the end of the cold war.

In his take on Tiananmen Square, Hoagland rather dismisses the power of rhetoric entirely:

"The Chinese government does much to encourage the development of the economy and consumption of consumer goods, entertainment and sports. But any political media would be highly controversial," says Victor Yuan, the head of Beijing's most sophisticated market research and polling company. "This brings a real fever of entrepreneurship and a highly developed Internet culture on every subject, except political discourse."

President Bush predicted last week that this dichotomy could not last -- that free-market reforms would inevitably lead to political reform. China's leaders do not share this belief. Neither does the man who ranks as the most important dissident in China today.

Hoagland leaves it that the student protestors were heroes, but their legacy has been buried by economic gains that have failed to produce political reform or freedoms. The words of the President of the United States, that economic gains will lead to political reform, Hoagland dismisses. For the contrary proof, he listens to a Chinese dissident, Bao Tong, "a senior aide to Prime Minister Zhao Ziyang" who "played a leading role in crafting China's initial economic reforms in the 1980s."

Seems Bao went too far into reform, and he was jailed for "showing sympathy toward the pro-democracy demonstrations" at Tiananmen. Writes, Hoagland, "Released from prison into house arrest in 1996, he has only recently been allowed such freedoms as meeting with foreign journalists. In a long conversation last week, he confirmed that my eyes and ears were not getting the full story." Of the paradox that the President says will lead to reform, Hoagland quotes from Boa:

"Yes, there is change. When I walked in the park today, I heard criticism of the government that would have brought death sentences in Mao Zedong's time. But nothing like this can be broadcast or published in the media. Nothing like this can be said in an organized meeting. Nothing will be allowed that would affect the political situation.

"The change you see and hear is the flowers, and the leaves. But there is no change in the root. That is the party's control over everything, including control over the market. Money is to the leaders today what revolution was to Mao -- a tool to control the people," the 74-year-old former official told me. "The unchanged root is the one-party dictatorship."

So, did the students and workers of 1989 fail? No, Bao responds: "They should have protested, and they did. The party failed. The party violated the constitution and its own charter. It became a Communist Party without communism, without any concern for the people. I feel proud of those who protested. I feel ashamed of the leadership."

I don't get it. Do we accept things as are, Tiananmen lost, Bao powerless? Then what's the man doing talking to Hoagland in the first place? Either the Chinese government fears nothing from him, or things really have changed.

I say words matter. That this man can talk this way is extraordinary. How does Hoagland miss it? For that matter, how does Mann dismiss Reagan's words for a policy statement? Reagan wasn't setting "the terms for the end of the cold war," as Mann writes, he was demanding its very and ultimate form: a united Germany and no more communism.

If words do not matter, then go ahead and dismiss this from President Bush:

People living in tyranny need to know they are not forgotten. North Koreans live in a closed society where dissent is brutally suppressed, and they are cut off from their brothers and sisters to the south. The Iranians are a great people who deserve to chart their own future, but they are denied their liberty by a handful of extremists whose pursuit of nuclear weapons prevents their country from taking its rightful place amongst the thriving. The Cubans are desperate for freedom -- and as that nation enters a period of transition, we must insist on free elections and free speech and free assembly. And in Sudan, freedom is denied and basic human rights are violated by a government that pursues genocide against its own citizens. My message to all those who suffer under tyranny is this: We will never excuse your oppressors. We will always stand for your freedom.

Or does it not matter to say it, not even to an audience who but twenty years ago were right there -- suppressed, powerless, and abused -- right there where the North Koreans, Cubans, Sudanese, and Iranians are today. The President spoke these words last week in Prague. And he holds the Chinese to the same ideals, using the same kind of words, that Reagan used to free the Czechs:

We're also applying that lesson to our relationships with Russia and China. The United States has strong working relationships with these countries. Our friendship with them is complex. In the areas where we share mutual interests, we work together. In other areas, we have strong disagreements. China's leaders believe that they can continue to open the nation's economy without opening its political system. We disagree. In Russia, reforms that were once promised to empower citizens have been derailed, with troubling implications for democratic development. Part of a good relationship is the ability to talk openly about our disagreements. So the United States will continue to build our relationships with these countries -- and we will do it without abandoning our principles or our values.

If it's not said, it won't change. Yes, these words matter, and so do those languages of defeat that Hoagland elevates above their own logic.

Don't say it and it's sure not to happen. Don't say it and what the others say will rule. No, we musn't forget our own ideology, and we mustn't ever drop its rhetoric. I uphold President Bush for not leaving it alone, for not not saying it. He did it on what has become a righteous visit to Eastern Europe (and that the media has decided was best marked by a story that the President's watch was stolen while shaking hands with an Albanian -- non-communist, that is, crowd: "Mystery of President Bush's watch in Albania). And I uphold him for not giving up on Berlin or Tiananmen:

Bush Honors Victims of Communist Regimes
WASHINGTON -- President Bush, honoring the memories of those killed in communist regimes, said Tuesday that their deaths should remind the American public that "evil is real and must be confronted."

(Here for the White House transcript: President Bush Attends Dedication of Victims of Communism Memorial
Washington, D.C., June 12, 2007)

Does the rhetoric matter? I say it does.

We can now add this memorial to one of my favorite displays in DC, the Newseum's Freedom_Park in Arlington Virginia, which holds a chunk of the Berlin Wall, a replica of Martin Luther King's Birmingham jail cell, a pathetic little raft some Cubans escaped upon, and other memorials to mankind's ongoing struggle for dignity and life.

Yes, it is important, and the President is right to give voice and presidential presence to the Victims of Communism Memorial:

President Bush speaks at the dedication of the Victims of Communism Memorial in Washington, Tuesday, June 12, 2007 (AP)

Notes:

Here for the Reagan speech:
Remarks at the Brandenburg Gate, West Berlin, Germany, June 12, 1987

Here for Kennedy's "I'm a Jelly Donut" speech*, June, 1963:

All free men, wherever they live, are citizens of Berlin, and, therefore, as a free man, I take pride in the words, "Ich bin ein Berliner." *

Those words matterd. So did Reagans, so do President Bush's words. Without them, no Walls came down, no protests in Tiananmen, no hope that China will truly reform. If we don't ask, it won't happen.

(*The "jelly donut" myth dispelled here)

A few words on Chinese reform

The greatest political danger in the capitalist conversion of China comes in the same dangers that nearly brought down capitalism in the U.S. But for our happy beginnings in the Declaration and the Constitution, the Great Depression nearly brought Americans to drop those ideals of individual liberty for the enforced egalitarianism and economic mandates of socialism. Had FDR's New Deal survived the decade, the U.S. would not. The New Deal created a command economy that only lengthened the Depression and set conditions for lapse and inequality that would take decades to overcome. Whatever harm the New Deal brought -- and it is great -- it was never stronger than the core principles that Americans will never lose. Ever moderated by the Constitution, the New Deal economic regime and its legacies in the Regulatory State of today can never mitigate the power of the individual. Our right to succeed and fail on our own is ever stronger than socialism's attempt to squash both.

The question is not if China will adopt democracy following its economic success. Rather, the question is if China will be able to survive an economic crash. Economic advance will bring liberty and democracy; communism will only find reward in an economic crash. If the Chinese people can avoid political retrogression following an economic crash, then democracy shall come. If they don't, then a return to economic communism will not only ensure the survival of communist totalitarianism, it will ensure that economic success will not return, either.

A crash will come. Can the communists lay off it? I fear not. Sadly, the failure will be attributed to the "excesses" of economic liberty and not to those truly dangerous excesses of politics. Most assuredly, the only chance for survival of Chinese economic and political freedom is that we never lose, never drop, never stop the rhetorical pressure in defense of liberty..