One of my favorite professors, Paul Kengor, wrote this wonderful tribute to Caspar Weinberger. My conscience bothered me for linking to that horrid AP story yesterday, and I felt it necessary to point out some of the great contributions Weinberger made to our nation.
Here’s one of my favorite lines from Kengor’s column:
I had interviewed Weinberger a number of times over the years. In one of our conversations, the Berlin Wall came up: “I want you to do me a favor,” Weinberger told me. “As a professor, as a speaker, as a writer, any time that the Berlin Wall comes up in one of your discussions, I want you to ask the crowd this question: In which direction did those East German guards face?… The answer: East.”
Perhaps that is one of my favorite parts of the article because, having taken several classes from Kengor, I know when the Berlin Wall comes up…he does ask that question. But more importantly, that line shows why Cap Weinberger and the other cold warriors’ fight was so important, and what a great debt of gratitude the world owes them. As Kengor explains,
More than any other secretary in the Reagan Cabinet, Weinberger made that collapse possible. In so doing, he helped free millions from Budapest to Bucharest, from Warsaw to Moscow.