Meghan Cox Gurdon: The Wall separates Reagan from Obama

If you knew nothing more of Ronald Reagan and Barack Obama than what each man said about freedom at Berlin’s Brandenburg Gate, it would still be painfully obvious which of the two was a fierce defender of liberty, and which the avatar of toothless internationalist generalities.

At the height of the Cold War, President Reagan knew what he was about. The Soviet tyranny that held half of Europe in its grip had to be defeated. Reagan called it what it was: an evil empire. Worldly types snickered. Yet deep in Soviet forced labor camps, hearts leapt: Prisoners urgently tapped out in secret code to each other what Reagan had said, the bitter truth they knew that he had dared to utter.