The Berlin Wall fell twenty-five years ago this month.

Jubilant crowds from East and West Germany began crossing it and hammering off pieces in 1989, as the Communist East collapsed. From the beginning, the Wall symbolized failure. What successful nation must build a wall to force its citizens to remain?

A few years later, my husband and I visited the few chunks of the Wall still standing. Not many were left. A reunited Germany now is a democracy and one of the world’s economic powers.

The lesson of the Wall for me is that we waited out the Soviets. We chose not to waste our lives and national treasure in a major war with them. Instead, we built up our economy and a strong middle class and universities that became the envy of the world. The rest followed.

We might remember that lesson today. We drift toward a nation of the wealthy few and the rest, with a dwindling middle class. How can we expect to win against today’s ISIS and other regimes more brutal than the Soviet if all we can show them is a dysfunctional government too influenced by big money?