FREEDOM, THEN AND NOW

"Ich bin ein Berliner."

After "ask not . . .", they were John F. Kennedy's most famous words.

In the Summer of 1963, Kennedy gave a speech on what was then the  hottest line in an almost two decades long cold war -- the city of West Berlin.  

At that time, the city was divided in two and separated by a physical wall.  The wall had gone up in August 1961. Communist East Germany, which was part of the Warsaw Pact uniting seven east European countries ruled by communists with the Soviet Union in a so-called treaty of friendship that was actually a Soviet political and military prison, had put up the wall. Though it claimed the wall was designed to keep fascists out of East Germany, its real purpose was to prevent East Germans from emigrating to West Germany.  

The entire city of Berlin was located in East Germany.  Its western sector, however, was controlled by the American, British and French in the wake of World War II and that control allowed those Berliners to avoid the fate of their municipal brethren in the Soviet sector, which became  a part of communist East Germany. As an oasis of freedom and democracy in the middle of a totalitarian regime, it also became a magnet. Between the end of World War II and 1961, 20% of the East German population emigrated, many by simply walking from East to West Berlin or from East Germany into West Berlin.  

The wall was set up to stop this.

Initially it was a stretch of barbed wire and fencing that ran from one to the other end of the 27 mile line dividing East and West Berlin, along with a separate 97 mile stretch of barbed wire and fencing that cut off the outer ring of West Berlin from East Germany. By the time Kennedy arrived in 1963, however, the wall had morphed into a cinder block and concrete outer wall between eleven and thirteen feet high and a separate inner wall six to ten feet high.  The inner wall was 110 yards from the outer wall and the houses between the two were later torn down. The area between the two was called the "death strip".

On June 26, 1963, Kennedy spoke to 120,000 West Berliners. With an eloquence much of today’s politics has lost based largely on the idiocy that insults signal authenticity and intellectual rigor masks elitism, his speech was an ode to freedom . . .

And free men.

He began by reaching back in history.

"Two thousand years ago," he said, "the proudest boast was 'civus Romanus est.'" 

That phrase, Latin for "I am a Roman citizen", had been made famous by Cicero, a Roman lawyer, politician and philosopher revered by both America's founders and their 18th century enlightenment brethren -- Locke, Hume, Voltaire, Montesquieu and Edmund Burke. He uttered it in the fifth session of his prosecution before the Roman Senate of Sicily's former governor Gaius Verres for corruption, extortion and bribery, explaining to the court that Verres' corruption had even extended to arresting returning Roman sea merchants (whose ships and goods he illegally seized) and then summarily killing them. 

The seizure and plunder was bad.

But the illegal deaths were even worse.

Romans could not be summarily executed.  They had to be tried and convicted. In fact, the protections afforded Roman citizens were so complete that merely mentioning one's citizenship sheathed the executioner's sword. For Verres' victims, however, it became a death sentence. As Cicero put it in his prosecution, "The necks of Roman citizens were broken in prison in a most ignominious manner, so that that [the] supplication  'I am a Roman citizen,' which has often brought help and safety to many in the remotest lands among the barbarians, would bring them a more bitter death and a sooner punishment."

"Today, in the world of freedom," Kennedy continued, "the proudest boast is 'Ich bin ein Berliner.'"

Kennedy wasn't the first veteran of World War II to serve as President. That honor belongs to Eisenhower, the Allies' Supreme Commander in Europe.  But JFK was the first foot soldier to become chief executive, had tasted war and seen battlefield death, and knew there could be no compromise with Soviet communism. It had already reduced eastern Europe to a host of servile states and even killed Hungarians in 1956 who had tried to revolt.

The Germans in East Berlin, however, created a more daunting challenge.  

They could just walk to freedom.  

If the East Germans and Soviets had invaded and overtaken the western sector, they would have had to kill American, British and French troops stationed there and started World War III.

So instead of fighting the allies, they decided to fight their own.

By imprisoning them.

"Freedom has many difficulties and democracy is not perfect," Kennedy proclaimed, "but we have never had to put up a wall to keep our people in, to prevent them from leaving us."  He then praised Berliners themselves, explaining that he knew of "no town, no city, that has been besieged for 18 years that still lives with the vitality and force, and the hope and determination of the city of West Berlin."

The wall, Kennedy intoned, was "an offense not only against history but an offense against humanity." It separated families, "dividing husbands and wives and brothers and sisters, and dividing a people who wish to be joined together."  From their "defended island of freedom", he implored them to look to the future and lift their "eyes beyond the dangers of today, to the hopes of tomorrow."

He then concluded:

"Freedom is indivisible, and when one man is enslaved, all are not free."

"When all are free, then we can look forward to that day when this city will be joined as one [with]  this country and this great continent of Europe in a peaceful and hopeful globe."

And . . .

"When that day finally comes, as it will, the people of West Berlin can take sober satisfaction in the fact that they were [on] the front lines for almost two decades."

"All free men, wherever they may live, are citizens of Berlin."

"And, therefore, as a free man, I take pride in the words 'Ich bin ein Berliner.'"

On Monday, the Republican Speaker of the Texas House of Representatives announced that Democratic legislators could leave the Capitol in Austin only if they signed permission slips agreeing to return  on Wednesday and allowing the state police to trail and monitor them to insure they did so.  Those who refused to sign the slip were confined to their offices, and those who left (with or without signing  the slip) were literally shadowed by the state police on a 24/7 basis.

Texas's Republican Speaker is Rep. Dustin Burrows. This piece of childish immaturity and rank illegality was justified, so Burrows claimed, because Democrats earlier in the month had left the state in order to make it impossible to convene a special legislative session.  No legislative session can occur absent a quorum, which requires the physical presence of at least two-thirds the sitting members. The Texas House has 150 members. 88 are Republicans and 62 are Democrats. At least 100 members are needed to constitute a quorum, and without the absent Democrats that was impossible.

The GOP called the special legislative session to redraw Texas's Congressional district lines and create five additional Republican seats. Though redistricting is usually done every ten years when the census is taken, President Trump ordered Texas to engage in this additional round of redistricting because he fears Republicans will lose the House of Representatives in the 2026 mid-term elections. Given that Trump's overall approval rating is at 38% in some recent polls and his Big Beautiful Bill (which guts Medicaid and supplemental food assistance, balloons the deficit, and lines the pockets of the super-rich) is almost universally despised by the public, this is a reasonable fear.

Drawing lines to capture seats is known as gerrymandering.  The word was created in 1812 when Massachusetts Governor Elbridge Gerry signed a law redrawing Congressional lines that created a Boston district in the shape of a salamander. Hence . . .

Gerry-mander. 

Over the years, and in fairness, both Democrats and Republicans have done it; Gov. Gerry himself did it to benefit the Jeffersonian Democratic-Republicans and hurt the Federalists.  Of late, however, the GOP has embraced the practice with abandon, and with computer-driven data banks that allow cartographers to know voting behavior almost down to the household, while good government groups in two of the largest Democratic states (California and New York) have made the practice illegal.  The result is that, once Texas's mid-decade redistricting becomes the law, the GOP will more likely than not win an additional five seats in that state without, under the current rules, the Democrats picking up additional seats anywhere else solely on account of the lines.  

The communists against whom JFK railed in 1963 had elections. They just never mattered, dictated as they were by the only permitted party. We are not there yet with gerrymandering, but the trend is bad. In 1992, the number  of states with a divided government was 31. Today it is 13, which means 37 states are now controlled by one party. In the best of all worlds, a Constitutional amendment or national legislation would eliminate the practice and have independent commissions draw the lines in every state. We, however, do not live in that world.

So . . .

In response to Texas, California Gov. Gavin Newsom is now supporting a ballot initiative that would change its law and create district lines that favor Democrats if Texas actually redraws theirs. And New York Gov Kathy Hochul has said she too will propose a law redrawing New York's. The California change would be in time for the 2026 mid-terms.  The New York change would not.

None of this appears to have mattered to Texas or Trump. 

The Texas House passed its new map on Wednesday and its Senate is expected to do so today.. Its Governor will sign the new lines into law shortly thereafter.

Earlier this week, one of Texas's Democratic House members, Linda Garcia, left the Capitol in Austin and drove three hours to her home in Mesquite. Her car was trailed by the state police for the entire trip. When she went grocery shopping later that night, the cop followed her down every aisle.

In his speech in Berlin, Kennedy excoriated apologists for communism.

"There are many people in the world," he said, "who don't understand, or say they don't, what is the great issue between the free world and the communist world. Let them come to Berlin. There are some who say that communism is the wave of the future. Let them come to Berlin. There are some who say in Europe and elsewhere we can work with communists. Let them come to Berlin. And there are even a few who say that it is true that communism is an evil system, but it permits us to make economic progress . . .

Lass sie nach Berlin kommen. Let them come to Berlin."

He also made it quite clear we were different.

"Freedom has many difficulties and democracy is not perfect," he claimed, "but we have never had to put up a wall to keep our people in, to prevent them from leaving us."

Oh, well . . .

Let them come to Austin.