Twenty years ago today, the Berlin Wall began to fall. Hearing on state television that travel restrictions to the West would be eased immediately, East Germans began gathering at the infamous Checkpoint Charlie, wondering if they could simply walk over, without fear of being gunned down, to West Berlin.

That first night, only one East German crossed to freedom, a woman who somehow squeezed down an exit corridor behind an Associated Press reporter who'd been observed taking notes in the crowd and was being expelled.

Reporter Alison Smale, now executive editor of the International Herald Tribune, recently tracked down Angelika Wachs, her co-traveler for those few historic moments, to supply the final note in a gripping reflection on that day and the momentous 20 years since. Her story, published yesterday in The New York Times, relays a fact that probably means more to me, an American, than it did to her, a Brit.

It turns out that 10 years after leaving totalitarianism behind, the East German Ms. Wachs met an Englishman. They married this year, and the date they deliberately chose for their wedding was July 4. It was, she said, "a way to mark independence, and freedom."

They are not Americans -- he's English! -- yet for them, our nation's birthday stands as a symbol for a philosophical covenant as dear as their covenant to each other.

But here in the land whose founding they so esteem, how are we faring?

In the week or so framing the East Germans' day of triumphant remembrance, we find ourselves veering from Election Day to Veterans Day. We moved from remarkably low turnout at the polls in many states Tuesday to dismally attended parades honoring our troops here and around the country on Saturday.

That passage of days was violently punctuated in the middle by the massacre of soldiers, by a soldier, at Fort Hood, Texas, but our horror didn't shake us from our lethargy. It didn't move us to turn out for the easiest part of citizenship -- waving flags and cheering for those who have made personal sacrifices so we'll have polls and parades to go to. Or not.

Is it harder to live free and remain free than it is to become free?

When you're on the wrong side of a wall, your movements restricted and closely watched, your grocery stores often bare, living in pervasive hopelessness and cynicism, expressions of self and faith denied, there is clarity. It's easy to see that liberty is far preferable to tyranny.

At the earliest opportunity, you will squeeze through the first opening in the wall you find and sprint to freedom -- or die trying, as hundreds of people did before the wall fell.

But on the other side of the wall -- on this side of the wall -- things aren't nearly so clear.

Liberty is chaotic. Sure, we're free, but how should we then live?

This week, while elections and parades were unfolding, tens of thousands of citizens gathered for a spur-of-the-moment protest against the latest version of health care reform. Others celebrated Saturday when the House bill passed. What seems to some an appropriate expansion of this society's blessings strikes many others as a foolish erosion of the very liberties that make such bounty possible.

How do we secure liberty at home? How do we protect -- or extend -- it abroad? Can we? One troubled man found his country's current effort so misguided and his looming inclusion in it so distasteful that last week he turned his weapons on his comrades, his own people, and killed 13.

Yesterday at church, we prayed for the Fort Hood shooter, that he'd find redemption and peace. Our veterans stood to be acknowledged -- the Vietnam-era vets with long, graying ponytails, a crisp, 30-something soldier in uniform and beret, a World War II pilot still spry and strong enough to be a pillar of our church.

A pastor interviewed the pilot for a few minutes and asked him how best we can honor our veterans. He said, simply, "Remember the ones who didn't come home."

He was a teenager then, an American stationed in England, fighting back the sweep of Nazi tyranny across Europe. Liberty reclaimed half of the continent, but the other half, its communist enslavement symbolized by a wall, had to wait more than four decades to be free.

Tyranny wears many faces. The battle against it is eternal and will cost some their lives. The struggle to deserve their sacrifice is the moment-by-moment responsibility -- and privilege -- of every one of us who is free.

Looking for more from the Post-Gazette? Join PG+, our members-only web site. You'll get exclusive sports content, opinion, financial information, discounts from retailers and restaurants, and more. Our introduction to PG+ gives you all the details.