The White Pill: A Tale of Good and Evil

by Michael Malice

On June 12, 1987, as Reagan drove in the presidential limo to Berlin’s famous Brandenburg Gate, he turned to his Chief of Staff Ken Duberstein and reiterated his decision. “The boys at State are going to kill me,” he said, “but it’s the right thing to do.” Directly behind the Brandenburg Gate lurked the Berlin Wall and all that it symbolized. Reagan stood in front of an enormous crowd—and an array of television cameras from all over the world—and issued his challenge. “General Secretary Gorbachev,” he said, “if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, if you seek liberalization, come here to this gate. Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate. Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.” The audience erupted into hysterics. The East German authorities were livid, and the Soviet ones not much better. What was seen in the West as a call of defiance was taken in Moscow as a challenge to Gorbachev personally and to the USSR specifically. Savvy minds on the far side of the Iron Curtain understood that if the Berlin Wall were torn down then the entire communist system would likely be tore down with it. Because