Tom Webb: Knight Ridder Election 2004

More moments

If you watched Tuesday night's session, you caught Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger of California. And as at the Democratic convention, the moment I found most powerful was his memory of life under oppression, and a reminder of the freedoms we too often take for granted in this country.

An excerpt from Schwarzenegger's speech:

"When I was a boy, the Soviets occupied part of Austria. I saw their tanks in the streets. I saw communism with my own eyes. I remember the fear we had when we had to cross into the Soviet sector. Growing up, we were told, 'Don't look the soldiers in the eye. Look straight ahead.' It was a common belief that Soviet soldiers could take a man out of his own car and ship him off to the Soviet Union as slave labor.

"My family didn't have a car, but one day we were in my uncle's car. It was near dark as we came to a Soviet checkpoint. I was a little boy -- I wasn't an action hero back then -- and I remember how scared I was that the soldiers would pull my father or my uncle out of the car, and I'd never see him again. My family and so many others lived in fear of the Soviet boot. Today, the world no longer fears the Soviet Union and it is because of the United States of America."

posted at # 7:21 AM