Titanic Post

I am thinking about the walls of Jericho, the fortifications of Troy, the Maginot Line, the Berlin Wall and that monument to stupidity they’re erecting along the West Bank. None of these walls brought lasting security to their builders and eventually they all fell.

I’ve heard several times now politicians saying how “good fences make good neighbors.” Not only is that phrase showing a prison warden mentality, but it is a misrepresentation of Robert Frost’s words in the poem “Mending Walls.” The phrase “good fences make good neighbors,” is not by the narrator of the poem, but the narrator’s dumb-ass neighbor.

American Indians have it right when they say that humans have the right to walk anywhere they want on the face of this earth. As one who lives on the border, I don’t want a wall between “us” and “them!” Remember— fences work both ways and they will also cause resentment and distrust. Remember, too, the life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness phrase? Does this apply to everybody or just to the pale skinned, male, wealthy citizen who emigrated here earlier?

The problem is not economic refugees coming across our border. The problem is the political coruption of Congress taking money and favors from corperate lobbyists. They are the ones who created the push and the pull to cross our borders in the form of NAFTA, CAFTA, and policies of the WTO, the IMF, and the World Bank. And, I might add, they support the corrupt regimes south of the border.

Walls meant to confine free people fall as do the regimes that build them.