My family had long escaped the East when the wall fell, but the memory of Stalin has always remained seared in their minds, and has been of tremendous influence on me and my views on freedom and democracy.

Without being too corny, celebrations of the kind being held today should remind us all that freedom and peace came not from appeasing the Soviet threat and becoming more like them at home, but from confronting the enemy with strength, preserving liberty at home and not standing down in the face of adversity.

And on less corny and nearly unrelated note, nobody should ever talk about music without watching Pink Floyd’s “The Wall”, live at Berlin.