I know y’all just want to read about Jussie Smollett and Kim has the latest here. And, then there’s the Covington Catholic Boys and Narcissi will have coverage of that cluster you know what today. I am obsessed with The Wall. I am obsessed with building the wall, the opposition to the wall and the funding of the wall. So, it was with interest that I read a New York Times editorial by Greg Grandin with the title “The Myth of the Border Wall”. Wait, was this history professor saying that The Wall did not exists? Hmmm?

Greg Grandin is a professor of History at New York University and a graduate of Yale University. From a general perusal of the books that he has written, I surmise that he is not a fan of the United States of America. You can find the books on his website here. Grandin is also obsessed with blaming the United States and the Border Patrol for the death of the seven year old Jakelin Maquin last year. You won’t be able to watch this whole video. I know I couldn’t.

Just watching the first minute, you get the idea who this guy is, right?

Here is what he says about the wall in his opinion piece:

All nations have borders, but only the United States has had a frontier — or at least a frontier that served as a symbol for freedom, synonymous with the possibilities and promises of modern life and held out as a model for the rest of the world to emulate.

For over a century, the American frontier represented the universalism of the nation’s ideals. It suggested not only that the country was moving forward, but also that the brutality involved in moving forward would be transformed into something noble. Extend the sphere of America’s influence, as James Madison believed, and you would ensure peace, protect individual liberty and dilute factionalism. As our boundaries widened, all of humanity would become our country. There was no problem caused by expansion that couldn’t be solved by more expansion.

Russia had a frontier, Mr. History Professor, a frozen frontier, Siberia. But Professor Grandin is right. The United States and the frontier is more of an idea, symbol or aspiration. When we reached the Pacific Ocean, we expanded up and out. I disagree that “all of humanity would become our country”. We never wanted to annex Russia, China or Europe. To glean from the ideas of their best and brightest, yes. To trade with those peoples in goods and services, yes. That’s part of why borders and walls are important. One needs to know where the your property ends and your neighbor’s begins. Again, from the article:

But today the frontier is closed. The country has lived past the end of that myth. After centuries of pushing forward across the frontier — first, the landed frontier, then the frontiers of expanding economic markets and sweeping military dominance — all the things that expansion was supposed to preserve have been destroyed, and all the things it was meant to destroy have been preserved. Instead of peace, there is endless war. Instead of prosperity we have intractable inequality. Instead of a critical, resilient and open-minded citizenry, a conspiratorial nihilism, rejecting reason and dreading change, has taken hold.

Where the frontier once symbolized perennial rebirth, Donald Trump’s border wall — even if it remains mostly phantasmagorical, a perpetual negotiating chip between Congress and the White House — now looms like a tombstone.

What was supposed to have been preserved that was destroyed? Mr. History Professor doesn’t elaborate. “Instead of prosperity we have intractable inequality.” Are you kidding me? There is a level of prosperity in this country that has never been seen before in the world. Our poorest poor are better off than most people in the world. We, the people of flyover country, reach out every day to our fellow citizens and we do not reject reason or dread change. We are still expanding our knowledge of the world and the universes far beyond our world. We, Americans, still want to understand … everything about the world, material and formal.

The Wall will have many doors aka ports of entry. What we want to do is scrutinize those who come into the country to make sure they are not malefactors. We want to make sure that opioids are not flowing into our Country and destroying lives. Is that so very wrong?

The big, beautiful wall is not a tombstone. The United States is still an open and free country. Build the Wall and let the United States stay free.

Photo Credit: Pixabay Mabel Amber/License