our own wall of shame, and an army to guard it

borderwall.jpg
United States Border Patrol agents make use of All Terrain vehicles as they patrol along the U.S. border with Mexico in this undated photograph provided by the Border Patrol. [Reuters caption]


The Great Wall of China, Hadrian's wall, the Berlin Wall and the Apartheid Wall in the West Bank were and are all monuments to the failure of societies to relate to the other. Our own wall of exclusion along borders we captured from Mexico by force is an equally crude weapon and, like all the others, it's intended to separate people who are otherwise essentially indivisible. Some day we will understand this, but at the moment our ignorance and our fears are being successfully manipulated by demagogues.


[image from "US Border Patrol Handout" by James Tourtellotte via Reuters]

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Published on May 16, 2006 11:41 PM.

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