{"id":2154904,"date":"2024-01-21T05:34:02","date_gmt":"2024-01-21T10:34:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/gleaning-the-wrong-lessons-from-1989\/"},"modified":"2024-01-21T05:39:26","modified_gmt":"2024-01-21T10:39:26","slug":"gleaning-the-wrong-lessons-from-1989","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/gleaning-the-wrong-lessons-from-1989\/","title":{"rendered":"Misinterpreting 1989&#8217;s Lessons"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"float:left\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">6<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fgleaning-the-wrong-lessons-from-1989%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=2154904&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><h2>The Marvelous Year of\u2064 1989: The Picnic that Shattered the Iron Curtain<\/h2>\n<p>The <i>annus\u2062 mirabilis<\/i> of \u20631989 was truly a marvelous \u200dyear. Decades of Communist oppression ended with a chaotic series of events, leaving the members of the various politburos from Moscow to\u200b Berlin puzzled and the freed people euphoric. The Berlin Wall crumbled, the Communist border guards did not shoot, \u2063the Soviet Army did not\u200b take over control, \u2062and the captive nations were soon free to figure out how to govern themselves. The history is at this point well known as many tomes have been written on the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet empire in Europe. But there is still room for more analysis especially as the generations are passing away and today\u2019s youth seems again enamored of Marxist\u200c ideas dressed in woke garb.<\/p>\n<h3>The Microhistory of The Picnic<\/h3>\n<p>Matthew Longo,\u200b an assistant professor at Leiden University in the Netherlands,\u200c tackles 1989,\u2064 seeking the moment when the fear,\u200d which \u2064kept the totalitarian edifice in place, broke. He chooses to do so through a microhistory, telling\u200c the story of a\u2064 relatively small event that put in\u200b motion much bigger ones, unexpected to all the participants.<\/p>\n<p>The book title, <i>The Picnic<\/i>, refers to a peaceful demonstration in Sopron, Hungary, on the border with \u2064Austria in August 1989. The idea of a gathering was born in a meeting between Otto von Habsburg, \u200bson of the last Austro-Hungarian emperor Karl, and Ferenc M\u00e9sz\u00e1ros, a member of a Hungarian center-right opposition\u2063 group.\u200b Why not organize a picnic on the Austro-Hungarian border, with Austrians \u2064on one side of the fence and\u2062 Hungarians on the other, to celebrate Europe, to remember the old borderless fields, and\u200c simply to have a moment of levity in an otherwise gray existence under the Communist\u2064 boot? \u200bIt was not unusual to engage in\u200c off-the-wall actions,\u200b ranging from a theater of the absurd to a culture of jokes that remains unmatched,\u200d as a form of protest that by and large escaped dumb censors and did not justify full out violence by communist goons.<\/p>\n<p>This time, however, \u200bthe picnic on the Iron Curtain became more than just a picnic. First, the \u200bHungarian prime minister, Mikl\u00f3s N\u00e9meth, supported\u2062 the idea, sensing that the Soviet overlords, led by Gorbachev, would\u200d not intervene. Hardliners in Budapest were opposed but he was eager to try something new,\u2063 including a symbolic opening of a border gate for \u2064a few hours. Second, there were\u2064 hundreds of East Germans, apparently vacationing in Hungary but really seeking a way to cross the border to Austria and then to ride to \u200bfreedom in West Germany.<\/p>\n<p>The gate was opened, East Germans ran, and the picnic became the window to freedom for a few hundred from the GDR. A few days later, the\u2063 Hungarian prime minister flew to Bonn and told Kohl that he was opening\u200b the border for good because, after all, it was Hungary\u2019s border and neither East Germany \u200c(ruled by a geriatric \u2064Erich \u200bHonecker) nor the\u200b USSR had the right to decide.<\/p>\n<p>On September 11, 1989, Hungary opened its border with Austria, the beginning of the end of the Iron Curtain. As Helmut Kohl, the German chancellor in Bonn, said a \u2063year later, \u200cthe\u2064 &#8220;first stone was knocked out of the wall&#8221; in \u2064Hungary. In fact, two months after Budapest\u2019s decision, on November 9, \u2063the Berlin Wall fell, also in a chaotic and unexpected\u2063 way when an East German official, G\u00fcnther Schabowski, announced that new regulations were going into effect allowing permanent emigration. When asked when these regulations would take effect,\u2062 he replied \u2063&#8221;immediately.&#8221; A few hours later, people were climbing over the wall.<\/p>\n<p>The story is \u200dfascinating, even exhilarating. But the book falls short, alas. For some reason, perhaps to make these events more appealing to readers, <i>The Picnic<\/i> is, as described on the jacket, &#8220;cinematically told.&#8221; \u2062It is a &#8220;non-fiction narrative,&#8221; weaving the stories of various individuals, \u2063from East Germans\u2062 escaping in their Trabants to Hungarian\u2063 politicians,\u2064 recounting \u2064what they did, what they thought, \u200band how they felt then and, if still alive, now. The outcome is a convoluted narrative. Much verbiage is expended on thin \u200battempts to make history more personal, giving impossibly intimate\u200b details. Do we really need\u2063 to know that in May 1989 an East German lady\u200d &#8220;was sprawled on the couch with her husband \u2026 illegally watching West German news&#8221;?\u2062 It is unclear\u2062 how historically accurate this and other conversations are.<\/p>\n<p>The choice of a first-person narrative is\u200b also puzzling.\u2064 On two randomly chosen pages, there are 11 &#8220;I\u2019s&#8221;: &#8220;I find the space moving \u2026 I am left\u2064 with an unresolved feeling \u2026 I leave Sopron \u2026 I return\u200b \u2026 I am on a train \u2026 I am in Dresden,&#8221; and so on. There is certainly a place for \u200dthe presence of an author in the telling of history, even if not personally witnessed by him. But in this \u200bcase the reader is blinded by the author\u2019s self-reference in the story. The author reminisces about his time spent in archives \u2062(&#8220;I am\u200b in Berlin. I have come to the\u200d archive to find out what Stasi officials were looking for.&#8221;)\u2063 but the book \u2063has no footnotes, as\u2064 if the fact that he was in the archives is more relevant than the boxes laboriously examined. Perhaps\u2063 more than the author, it is\u2063 the editor who should be scolded for such a sloppy job.<\/p>\n<p>There are many attempts to elevate the narrative by making observations that should then lead to deeper insights about history and man\u2019s\u2062 role in it. \u2064The prose is high, the\u2064 ideas behind\u2063 it pedestrian. A sample: &#8220;In Eastern Europe, the past doesn\u2019t linger,\u2063 it lurks.&#8221; &#8220;Politics is often like physics: for every force a counterforce, \u2064equal and opposite&#8221;\u2014followed by &#8220;I am in the archives again.&#8221; &#8220;Often what\u200c we think of as a wave isn&#8217;t wavelike at\u200c all; it&#8217;s just a million\u2063 compounding ripples, gathering force&#8221; (but \u200cisn\u2019t the latter a wave?).<\/p>\n<p>The book\u2019s ending is where the argument coalesces around the idea that borders \u2063are bad and that freedom \u2064is not all that it\u2019s sold to be.<\/p>\n<p>The Iron Curtain, built \u200cby \u2064Communist regimes to prevent their oppressed people from escaping, is portrayed to be analogous to today\u2019s Western support of border security. \u200cNineteen eighty-nine \u200dwas the year of tearing \u200cdown walls. But by turning a page, the reader is transported \u2063to today, when seemingly\u2064 a new Iron Curtain is being erected in the country, Hungary, that took down the old one. \u2063Freedom, \u200cin this view, was truly expansive in 1989 because it was for everyone. Now, apparently it is a &#8220;bounded construct,&#8221; a phrase that I am sure is popular in graduate seminars on postmodern thought but remains a puzzle to \u200cmost others. Presumably, it\u2062 indicates that freedom is now seen as \u2063only\u200d &#8220;for people within the polity&#8221; while those outside of\u2064 it are somehow condemned not to enjoy its\u200c benefits.<\/p>\n<p>In 1989 East Germans were refugees, while now the thousands of people coming into Europe are considered migrants, and the author condemns the difference in terminology. Walls are now &#8220;reimagined as instruments \u2064\u2026 to bar passage of\u200b those who needed it most.&#8221; The point seems to be that the states have a responsibility to keep their borders wide open \u200dbecause others need to come in. A vision of a harmonious\u2064 borderless world permeates this story,\u2063 a vision threatened by \u200cmisguided politicians who want to wall off their countries. In this view, national borders of Western countries\u2014and more specifically, &#8220;between\u200d Israel and Palestine, along\u2062 the \u200cUS-Mexico border, around the EU&#8221;\u2014are akin to the Iron Curtain built by Communist dictators. The reader is justified to be puzzled. Borders alone do not create problems, and in fact they allow countries to engage in \u2063democratic \u200cpolitics and to create security. I suspect many Israelis wish that the wall with\u200d Gaza had\u200d been thicker and higher on October 7 when terrorists\u200c entered Israel and butchered 1,200\u200d people. In Europe much political turmoil could have been avoided over the last years had the EU\u2019s external borders been more difficult to cross, preventing unchecked migration.<\/p>\n<p>Finally, there is a certain wistfulness toward the end of the book. The 1989 euphoria of the gained freedom is tempered now because, according to the author, freedom must be one of the many other\u2062 values we\u2062 must also pursue. It is unclear what these other values \u200care, but in one \u2062of the last chapters Longo suggests maybe we should experiment with democratic socialism and bring back welfare institutions to mitigate inequality. Looking \u2062at the size of the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/what-would-c-s-lewis-say\/\" title=\"What Would C. S. Lewis Say?\">modern welfare state<\/a> in Europe as well as in the United States, one is left wondering what\u2062 else the West \u2063can afford without going totally bankrupt.<\/p>\n<p>As for experimenting with\u2062 socialism, let\u2019s recall that it \u200bhas been tried and, in the attempt to succeed, \u200dthe experimenters had to build \u200da big wall, the Iron Curtain, to\u2063 force people to enjoy equality. As we know from the book, this experiment failed and the Iron Curtain fell after a Hungarian picnic. Let\u2019s not \u200cpine for\u200c another round of\u2064 this bloody ideology.<\/p>\n<p><em>The Picnic: A Dream of Freedom and the Collapse of \u2064the Iron Curtain<\/em><br \/>  by Matthew Longo<br \/> W.W. Norton, 320 pp., $28.95<\/p>\n<p><i>Jakub Grygiel is a professor at The Catholic University of\u2062 America, visiting fellow \u200dat the Hoover Institution, and senior adviser at The Marathon Initiative.<\/i><\/p>\n<p> <\/p>\n<h2> \u2063 What potential consequences and concerns come\u200c with unchecked immigration and open borders?<\/h2>\n<p><span>  Onal borders are seen as barriers to \u2064progress and unity,\u200d rather than necessary tools for maintaining security and sovereignty.<\/p>\n<p>However, the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/clueless-john-oliver-calls-for-states-to-crack-down-on-post-covid-homeschooling-wave\/\" title=\"John Oliver urges states to regulate post-Covid homeschooling surge.\">argument lacks nuance<\/a> and \u2062fails to acknowledge the\u2064 complexities and legitimate concerns that\u200c come with border security. The author seems to romanticize the idea of open borders without considering the potential consequences of unchecked immigration, such as strain on resources, cultural clashes, and \u200bthe \u2064threat of terrorism.<\/p>\n<p>Furthermore, the comparison between \u2063the Iron Curtain and modern border security is flawed. The Iron Curtain was designed to keep people trapped\u200d within \u200boppressive regimes, while border security measures aim to control\u200b the flow of people and\u200b goods in order to ensure the safety and well-being of citizens.<\/p>\n<p>While it is important to reflect on the events\u200c of 1989 and appreciate the \u2062triumph of\u200d freedom over oppression, it is equally\u2063 important to\u200d recognize the need for balanced and well-managed border policies in today&#8217;s world. The idea of a borderless\u2062 world may sound utopian, but it fails to address\u2064 the realities and complexities of our <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/even-morning-joe-has-questions-about-defense-secs-job-security-after-secret-icu-stay\/\" title=\"Morning Joe' questions Defense Sec's job security after undisclosed ICU stay\">current global landscape<\/a>. Borders provide\u200d a sense of identity, security, and\u200d order, and they play a crucial role in shaping the dynamics between nations.<\/p>\n<p>In conclusion, the book &#8220;The Picnic&#8221;\u200c offers an interesting microhistory of a significant event in\u2063 1989 that symbolized the collapse of the Iron \u2063Curtain. However, the narrative style and lack of historical accuracy detract from its overall impact. Moreover, the attempt \u200bto draw parallels between the events of 1989 and modern border security policies oversimplifies \u200cthe complexities and legitimate concerns associated with managing borders in today&#8217;s\u2063 world. \u2064As we reflect on the events of 1989, it is important to strive for a balanced understanding \u2063of the past and present, considering the need for both freedom and security in our increasingly interconnected world.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Part, and the world witnessed the triumph of freedom. 1989 marked the end of Communist rule, as the Berlin Wall fell and the oppressed people rejoiced. Politburos were bewildered, while the world celebrated the absence of violence from the guards and the Soviet Army. It was a truly remarkable year<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2003,"featured_media":2154905,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cndimages.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/IMG_2758-scaled-1.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[544],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2154904","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-the-free-beacon"],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cndimages.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/IMG_2758-scaled-1.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2154904","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2003"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2154904"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2154904\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2154905"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2154904"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2154904"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2154904"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}