Pick 69 - The Wall

We have been hearing a lot lately about walls. Some walls are figurative like the great divide between Liberal and Conservative members of Congress. Each side of the Isle seems to have at least one issue that is so important to them that they have erected an imaginary wall around it. Compromise on that issue, they say, would betray their constituents. Likewise, the opposition would like nothing better than for the trumpets to sound and that wall to come tumbling down.

Photo by Isai Ramos on Unsplash

Other walls are quite literal. It is not  unusual to build a wall for security purposes. Israel already has walls along the frontiers with Lebanon, Syria, and Jordan. Most nations have walls to protect their borders:

• The United States is building a wall to keep out illegal Mexican immigrants.
• Spain built a wall, with European Union funding, to separate its enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla from Morocco to prevent poor people from sub-Saharan Africa from entering Europe.
• India constructed a 460-mile wall in Kashmir to halt infiltrations supported by Pakistan.
• Saudi Arabia built a 60-mile wall along an undefined border zone with Yemen to halt arms smuggling of weaponry and announced plans in 2006 to build a 500-mile wall along its border with Iraq.
• Turkey built a wall in the southern province of Alexandretta, which was formerly in Syria and is an area that Syria claims as its own.
• In Cyprus, the UN sponsored a security wall reinforcing the island’s de facto partition.
• British-built barriers separate Catholic and Protestant neighborhoods in Belfast

It does not matter whether the wall is built with bricks n' mortar or barbed wire n' chain link fence. It serves the same purpose; keep something in or keep something out. Only the builder's perspective determines the purpose.

November 9th, 2014 marked the silver anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Historians tell us that President Ronald Reagan challenged Russian leader Mikhail Gorbachev to "Tear down this wall" during his June 1987 speech near the Wall. That afternoon, Reagan said,

We welcome change and openness; for we believe that freedom and security go together, that the advance of human liberty can only strengthen the cause of world peace. There is one sign the Soviets can make that would be unmistakable, that would advance dramatically the cause of freedom and peace. General Secretary Gorbachev, if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and eastern Europe, if you seek liberalization, come here to this gate. Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate. Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!

 On Nov. 9, 1989, jubilant East and West Berliners began tearing down the Berlin Wall, a symbol of the Iron Curtain for 28 years.

When President Clinton visited in 1994, he told the crowd of Berliners, "You have proven that no Wall can forever contain the mighty power of freedom."

The hidden value in walls is not that they keep people or ideas in or out. The hidden value lies in the hope that one day the wall will come tumbling down.

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