Sometimes God works in self-evident ways, other times mysterious – His Plan is not ours, and mercy and signs are often missed until we stop. The light then may pierce the window, and the truth is found.
A week ago, I packed for a speech in Detroit, socks, shirts, suits. The speech had to be inspirational, rooted in history, given at the People’s Convention to AMAC members, something with heart, buoyant, fresh, sharp, tip of a dart.
I looked around my living room one last time and caught an idea. A piece of the Berlin Wall, dusty, the size of a basketball sat there looking at me, asking to be brought along. So, I threw it in my bag.
The impulse came from nowhere, but freedom is well represented by the Berlin Wall. In the early 1980s, I found myself behind the “Iron Curtain,” in Soviet-dominated Poland, East Germany, occasionally Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Yugoslavia, and the Soviet Union.
Today, liberty is again strained, even at home. People need inspiration and history to dare the impossible, envision, believe, and work for it. The Berlin Wall coming down was that fact, an impossibility achieved.
So, my piece of The Wall, purple and black on one side, scarred on both, went into the bag. Arriving in Detroit the next night, late on June 12, I was behind. Opening my computer, I wrote.
I thought about how amazing America is, how infrequently we tell our kids luck favors them like no other nation in the world or world history. I thought how we do not tell them luck is another word for blessed, that blessings are not an accident.
I thought we were all the product of freedom, the living embodiment of risk-taking in every aspect of life, personal exploration to entrepreneurship, pioneering to institution-building, those who invent, deploy, fight, and left home to pray at night.
We are not an accident. Neither is freedom’s trajectory, what it produces, how it inspires, opens doors, and lifts people. Freedom caused this country to prosper, and doing so helped the entire world to prosper – and it still does.
I thought about how Americans have used freedom to advance goodness “For All Mankind,” how we left footprints on the moon, and have earned 400 Nobel Prizes. Russia has 30, China 13. We are a beacon.
My fingers paused, mind wandered out the window. Where does time go? Every second matters, each a chance to educate, and celebrate faith and freedom. I thought about how our Founders set this “great wheel” in motion, and how Reagan spoke at The Wall.
I recalled how I stood there after it fell, with kids – capitalism runs deep – sitting on the ground with chunks, selling them. I asked, “How much,” got told 40 dollars, balked, “40 dollars for a piece of concrete, no way!” Then I caved and bought it.
Now, sitting in Detroit 30-some years later, I dug into my bag and found my chunk of The Wall. I recalled how Reagan ignored State advisors, threw down that day beside Brandenburg Gate, and said “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!”
God guided Reagan. He said so himself, as our Founders did. He, like Washington, called it “the Hand of Providence.” And on that day, it rested firmly on his shoulder.
Somehow, against the odds, Reagan thought the “evil empire,” oppressing some 300 million, was “destined for the ash heap of history.” He called a spade a spade and said so.
Like our Founders, like Lincoln in his time, Theodore Roosevelt on the eve of WWI, or FDR, Churchill, and Eisenhower mid-WWII, Reagan believed the impossible was reachable, that with perseverance and faith in a just and loving God, all things are possible.
And so they were. I thought about that, that moonlit night in Detroit. I jotted my thoughts down. I wondered what grabbed Reagan, and made him say those words. In our time, I wondered how he got the sign, and how he decided not to accept the unacceptable, but to speak his mind.
It was nearly midnight. I was sleepy. My little speech was done, and I hoped it might inspire someone. This long day, June 12, was ending. I will give the speech tomorrow. That is when I wondered, when did Reagan give that speech? I looked it up, in 1987, but when? I read the words and looked out the window at the moon. Reagan gave that speech on the 12th of June.
Robert Charles is a former Assistant Secretary of State under Colin Powell, former Reagan and Bush 41 White House staffer, attorney, and naval intelligence officer (USNR). He wrote “Narcotics and Terrorism” (2003), “Eagles and Evergreens” (2018), and is National Spokesman for AMAC.
