On Nov. 9, 1989, the Berlin Wall was pulled down to the consternation of leftists, who still had faith socialism could work with the right leaders, and to the delight of conservatives, who believed that socialism and communism guaranteed mutually-shared poverty.
Two years later, the Soviet Union crumbled. Soviet communism might not have endured for 70 years had it not been for enablers in academia, religion and journalism. Lloyd Billingsley has written about them in "The Generation That Knew Not Josef," as in Stalin.
When the wall fell, leftists could not bring themselves to admit they had been wrong, much less apologize for their misplaced faith. So they did what they do best: they made excuses.
The Media Research Center (MRC) has compiled reports, editorials, articles and commentary that extend over the last 22 years revealing how the pre-Fox, pre-talk radio liberal media were the handmaidens of one of the greatest totalitarian evils to strike the planet. The underlying myth in much of their "reporting," notes the MRC's Rich Noyes, was that free market capitalism was a greater threat to human happiness than communism.
Reading these quotes, in light of history, resembles a "Saturday Night Live" comedy skit.
In 1987, before the wall collapsed, CBS anchor Dan Rather said, "Despite what many Americans think, most Soviets do not yearn for capitalism or Western-style democracy."
Strobe Talbott, then of Time magazine and soon to be an influential member of the Clinton administration, wrote on Jan. 1, 1990, "(Soviet leader) Gorbachev is helping the West by showing that the Soviet threat isn't what it used to be, and what's more, that it never was." How is it possible to simultaneously have been a threat, but not a threat? The millions who died in gulags, starved to death or were assassinated might have a different interpretation of Russian history under communism.
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