You Can't Stifle or Suppress People's Desire for Liberty

He was a student of history, a hard conservative, hardcore Republican and hardcore anti-communist all his life.

My pop called me around 8:00 that night -- though my timeline is a little fuzzy now. It was unusual for him to call at all let alone when he knew we had put the girls to sleep.

"Quick, turn on the T.V., you're not going to believe this!"

And there they were. Standing there, fists and arms defiantly thrust skyward, dancing there, chipping at it, hammering at it, tearing it down.

My wife and I sat mesmerized for hours.

You can argue whether it was Reagan or Thatcher or John Paul II or Solidarity or Perestroika or Glasnost or Communism collapsing under it's own weight.

In the end, one way or another, it was the will of people who wanted to be free.