I well recall reading the John Le Carre novel the Spy Who Came in from the Cold and shuddering at the idea of the East German police state. The Lives of Others, one of the most touching movies I've ever seen, is also concerned with the Stasi, the Ministry for State Security, the East German state security service and how it spied on everyone in East German, having partners spy on one another, breaking into flats and planting bugs. Controlling all information and being, well, secret police. This movie, by the way, is a big hit, secretly viewed of course, in totalitarian countries like China.

Notice it's "Freedom" instead of "Freiheit."

On November 9, 1989 the East German government announced that its citizens could visit West Germany. The prison-camp state was ended. I recall watching this on television and was somewhat embarrassed, even in private, to find my eyes leaking. Since the early 60s the desire for freedom of people stuck in a Communist, spy-riddled state was so great that the East Germans had to erect four separate walls to make one which was nearly impenetrable. After President Reagan's invocation, "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall"; after the inability of the Soviet Union to keep up with our defense spending; after years of restive satellite states, the wall did indeed come down. And people just--walked--across Checkpoint Charlie as the East German police stood there. Moving. Very moving indeed.

Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor, is throwing a huge bash to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the fall of a wall more emblematic of totalitarian oppression than any other divider on earth; the entire country will be celebrating. The world will be celebrating, as it should. And she issued an invitation to Barack Hussein Obama to attend. Mr. Obama is, after all, one of Mr. Reagan's successors in office.

Mr. Obama has stated that he is too busy to go, and so will not. Mr. Obama is also too busy to meet with General Stanley McChrystal, the commander of the U.S. Forces in Afghanistan, who has repeatedly asked for a meeting. Nonetheless Andy Stern, the union boss of the SEIU--the thugs who interrupt the town-hall meetings--has been to the White House twenty-two times.

I'm quite sure that Mr. Obama is too busy to go because he is concerned that he will not be the star of the event, and he so covets his rock-star status. There is no question that this man's ego is such that he considers his preening before a camera to be more important than the celebration of one of the most important events of the last century. I never thought that I'd see a man with more ego than Ross Perot and T. Boone Pickens rolled into one.

Perhaps Mr. Obama would go if someone promised him a shiny new TelePrompTer and a hotel room with mirrors on every wall and on the ceiling. Or perhaps some German children's choir could see his praises. Like they do in America.