A few years ago I was standing in a parking lot in the town of Falkirk in Scotland. Along the edge of the parking lot was a low nondescript earthen embankment not unlike what you would see on the edges of a river to control flood waters.
I didn’t think much of it until I saw the historical marker announcing that these were the remains of the Antonine Wall, which marked the extreme northern boundary of the Roman Empire in Britain.
As a Scot, I am pleased to report that my blue-painted ancestors chased their little Latin derrieres back south forthwith, and forsooth.
Back to where?
Well, back south to the better-known Hadrian’s Wall, which lies roughly on the border between modern-day Scotland and England.
Been there too.
While you can follow the path of Hadrian’s Wall for much of its 84-mile length, if you want to see and touch the actual stones laid down by the legionnaires, you need to haunt the medieval churches, castles, and farms in the area. That’s where most of the Wall ended up after being filched, stone by stone, for “adaptive reuse.”
The missus’s employer sent her on a business trip to China. She stood on the Great Wall. She advises that the restored sections of that 5,500-mile Wonder of the World are largely tourist destinations for foreign visitors to what used to be called the Middle Kingdom.
Passing through Fulton, Mo., we stopped by Westminster College. In a speech delivered on its campus in 1946, former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill described another kind of wall: “From Stettin on the Baltic, to Trieste on the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the continent …”
A hint of how that worked out is provided on the same campus by an 11-foot-high by 32-foot-long chunk of heavily graffitied concrete. It used to be located near the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin, Germany, as part of an historical obscenity called the Berlin Wall.
Is anyone out there starting to sense a theme here?
Walls are not a permanent answer to anything – no matter who builds them and no matter who pays for them.
During the recent presidential campaign, progressives were chided for taking Donald Trump literally, but not seriously. Trump whisperers insisted Trump should be taken seriously, but not literally. Sure, he kept talking about building a wall and making Mexico pay for it; that’s what he meant seriously but that’s not what he meant literally, they said. The rhetoric, we were assured, was solely a sop for the Trump base. The reality was that he was talking about secure borders, and the wall was only a figurative symbol of that concern.
Only days into his presidency, it appears President Trump should be taken both seriously – and literally – because he’s still talking about the wall and making Mexico pay for it.
Look, if you want to build a 2,000-mile-long edifice that can be seen from space as some kind of public works project to put folks to work, that’s one thing. There are probably projects where the money could be better spent but, hey, creating jobs is a good thing – and the jobs would fulfill a campaign promise.
If, however, you seriously expect a wall to secure our southern boundary, well, based on historical precedent, and I wish there was a more elegant way to say this, that’s just plain stupid. If you don’t mind looking foolish, that’s none of my business. If you make my country look foolish among the nations of the earth – and threaten diplomatic relations with one of our two neighbors, then it becomes my business.
By all means, take your bows when you have reason to do so. As this is written, the Dow Jones average exceeds 20,000. Most, if not all, of your cabinet nominees (and their collectively HUGE IQ) will be confirmed. You had a great first meeting with the leading CEOs of the corporate world who are salivating over the thought of lower corporate taxes and the trashing of reams of regulations.
Who knows how all of that will play out, but not knowing is no reason not to try a different approach. After all, you are the president, and you are entitled to try riding your own trick ponies.
But the outcome of building a physical wall is known. They aren’t worth the time and treasure invested.
For pity’s sake, Mr. President, drop it and move on.
The Ferries Wheel 