Churches of Mass Destruction

Just when you turn your back, the sneaky bastards are sneaking off to Canada to pray. If you live in Maine, why can't you go to church in Maine? If you have to go to one of those fancy, possibly terrorist, nobody knows, Canadian churches every goddamned Sunday the least you could do drive is three hours each way so as not to inconvenience the U.S. government. There's a war on! Got us a war president, or so he says. Think he prays in Canada? Hell, no.

Serves you right that they fined you $10,000. Lucky they didn't shoot you.

Comments

[thoreau]

The lengths he would go to for superstition? He drove around a half-open gate. Not exactly great lengths.

A border security scheme that requires voluntary compliance. Brilliant.

I don't claim to know the right way to secure our borders. The opinions on this forum seem to run the gamut from "leave the gate wide open 24-7 and disband all border patrols" to "shoot every damn towelhead who tries to get in, and kill a few wetbacks too just to make a point". I do, however, know that fining this guy $10k makes no sense whatsoever.

[Critic]

thoreau,

The high price of superstition.
"Price."

[StMack]

lets do the math.

An unstaffed broder crossing with an easily bypassed gate

PLUS

48 hours to track down the guy who lives nest door to the customs building

Equals improved security.

If this is improved security I can't imagine what the sate of affairs was pre 9/11.

[Another Kevin]

Heard a great line on the radio this past Thanksgiving season. 'Twas Wednesday before Turkey day (one of the busiest travel days of the year) and the DJ was reminding everyone to give some extra time at the airport due to increased passenger traffic and the fact that (drumroll please!) it was a holiday. Why should a holiday matter? Well - the security checkpoints were understaffed due to the TSA running a holiday schedule - eg - less manpower.

So our gubmint gives our security people the day off on one of the heaviest - and therefore most dangerous - day of the year?

I'm glad I travel for a living...

[Jennifer]

This reminds me of those heartbreaking Berlin Wall stories I used to read in history class: families torn in half, friends unable to see each other for forty years. . .of course, it's only evil when our enemies do it. When WE use artificial borders to divide people, it supports freedom.

I'm a die-hard atheist, but this story makes me want to go to church.

By the way, if we are in such danger from terrorists, why do we close the border stations on Sundays? Why not staff them round the clock?

[some guy]

Jennifer, with all due respect, this is NOTHING like Berlin Wall.

[joe]

thoreau, in answer to your question, an important first step is to recognize that not all borders are created equal. The border between the US and Canada is not the same as our border with Mexico. The little district in northern Maine/southern Canada is geographically and functionally one coherent community. This is not the case when you go from the suburbs of San Diego to TJ.

[Jennifer]

Some guy-

It's a difference of degree, not a difference of kind. (That phrase is usually used in the context of evolution, but it works here.)

Actually, I'll agree with you if you or anyone can give a compelling explanation of how preventing this man from going to church, or requiring him to make a three-hour trip to get there, will actually improve our security. If it doesn't make us safer, then it's just a case of the government imposing its will simply because it can, which is very like the Berlin Wall. (Of course, the Soviets used the wall to prevent escapes. We use our border to prevent attacks from terrorists who happen to be honest enough to go through Customs.)

[some guy]

Jennifer,

"A difference of degree"? Then you could just as easily argue that all borders everywhere are like the Berlin Wall.

A compelling reason for the government horseshit that has happened to that poor man? Sorry, I'm just not that twisted.

[Jennifer]

Some guy--
No, I am not saying all borders are like the BW, but this one is: the powers-that-be are literally dividing a community in half. The government is telling law-abiding people that they are only allowed to visit friends and neighbors during those times that the gov't has Customs guys at work?

And OF COURSE you can't give a compelling reason for tormenting that churchgoer. That was the whole point. In theory, the US government is only supposed to infringe upon our freedom for the greater good (e.g., you do not have the freedom to murder, or to steal, or to rape.) Now, however, the government takes our freedom because. . .well, I don't rightfully know. Are Canuck Christians the next Al-Qaeda? Somehow I doubt it.

If I have the money and the organizational skill, I would LOVE to sponsor a "Drive-In" like the old "sit-ins" of the Sixties--have about forty thousand cars drive back and forth past that customhouse on the day its closed.

[Jennifer]

Some guy--
No, I am not saying all borders are like the BW, but this one is: the powers-that-be are literally dividing a community in half. The government is telling law-abiding people that they are only allowed to visit friends and neighbors during those times that the gov't has Customs guys at work?

And OF COURSE you can't give a compelling reason for tormenting that churchgoer. That was the whole point. In theory, the US government is only supposed to infringe upon our freedom for the greater good (e.g., you do not have the freedom to murder, or to steal, or to rape.) Now, however, the government takes our freedom because. . .well, I don't rightfully know. Are Canuck Christians the next Al-Qaeda? Somehow I doubt it.

If I have the money and the organizational skill, I would LOVE to sponsor a "Drive-In" like the old "sit-ins" of the Sixties--have about forty thousand cars drive back and forth past that customhouse on the day it's closed.

[Jennifer]

No! Better yet, a play-in; get a Little League team up there and have them play a game, with the baseball diamond drawn so that Home Plate is here in God's Country, while second base is in Canada.

[s.m. koppelman]

Let me get this straight:

At the height of the Cold War, the US and the USSR had an understanding in which tribespeople living on the farthest Aleutian Islands off Alaska could visit their friends and relatives on neighboring islands in Soviet territory and vice versa.

In 2004, people who live on the US-Canadian border need to pass though Customs.

Excellent.

[some guy]

Jennifer,

Sorry, but I'm still not buying it. The fact that the gate was locked on Sunday, forcing him to drive around it is similar somehow to barbed wire, mines and trigger-happy Saxons? You can keep trying to make this sound dramatic, but it really doesn't wash.

Don't get me wrong; I sympathize with the (literally) poor guy. And his ability to navigate safely around our "secure" borders with that "terrorist haven" Canada should have earned him a medal for exposing slack-ass US border policy. But the Berlin Wall, it ain't.

[some guy]

Actually, I'm surprised that the US and Canada never worked out a Schengen-like policy. It's still in effect with Germany, a country that has been proven to have a few terrorists here and there.

[Jennifer]

Some guy--
Let me again try to explain myself: no, I am NOT saying the Berlin wall and the Canada thing are equal in terms of architecture, human suffering, net attack on freedom, et cetera. I am pointing out that in both cases, an absurd and purely artificial border is being imposed by a government and disrupting normal everyday human interaction. The Berlin Wall mention is what we English majors call a "metaphor," (pronounced "met-a-four," as in "I met a four the other day but wanted to meet a five,") a comparison of two things. Get it?

[Jennifer]

Actually, "Berlin Wall" might be more of an allusion than a metaphor. . .well, either way it's a figure of speech.

[some guy]

Jennifer,

I am glad to hear that you have gotten that far in Eng101. Now let me introduce you to a new concept, something we college grads call an "inaccurate metaphor". Namely, yours.

Stll, the tragic heart of the matter is that this man has to foot the bill for government silliness.

[some guy]

You could make the case that you were using a metaphor.

[joe]

Jennifer, you have to be careful what accurate fact you notice about communist regimes. If it's not the tiny set of facts the Cold Warriors want you to notice, you're dead meat.

[Russ]

Jennifer,

Wouldn't suggesting that the Canada/US border is "like" the Berlin was be an example of "simile" rather than "metaphor"? I don't recall you writing that the border "is" the Berlin Wall.

Anyway, depite the literary nuances, I tend to agree with your argument but only to a point.

It's absolutely Orwellian for Americans to claim that their tighter border controls are symbolic of freedom. However, one should keep in mind.... the Berlin Wall was erected up to keep the East Germans from getting out.

[Jennifer]

Some guy-

Explain, if you will, why I was inaccurate in saying that the government is imposing an artificial border that interferes with normal everyday human interaction. I honestly do not understand. A harmless old North Maine guy is fined a big chunk of change for going to church on Sunday? The government would require him to drive an extra three hours each way? (Yes, the way to protect Americans from terrorism is to force us to use more oil.)

How is this not infringing with his daily human interaction?

[Ellie]

Now let me introduce you to a new concept, something we college grads call an "inaccurate metaphor". Namely, yours.

Technically, "The US-Canada border bureaucracy is like the Berlin Wall" is a simile ... ^_^

Anyway, some guy, I can't help but feel that you're trying to call her simile/metaphor/whatever "inaccurate" on the wrong grounds. "X is like Y because of C" should be inaccurate if X does not have the C characteristic. You seem to be saying that X is not like Y because X had A, B, D, and F characterstics too.

Either "the US-Canada border and the Berlin Wall are similar because they are a government dividing people from their communities," is true because they both are, or false because one or both is not. Whether or not one has mines and barbed wire is irrelevent to what Jennifer is saying.

[Jennifer]

People--

What I originally said was that the story of the man fined for going to his regular church had reminded me of being in high-schol history class and reading stories of families torn apart by the Berlin Wall. I did NOT say that this was identical to the Berlin Wall. Why are people taking this so literally?

On a related note, I wonder if anybody has ever watched Monty Python and then refused to go to England, for fear that a giant foot would descend from the sky and squash them?

Ellie's right in that any phrase using 'like' or 'as' is a simile (as an English teacher I should not have made that slip) but it is also "metaphorical" (there is no corresponding adjective for 'simile' except 'similar,' which means something else).

[thoreau]

Look, Jennifer was a little hyperbolic in her language, that's all. I get her point, even while I agree that maybe she picked a poor object of comparison. Can we move on?

Maybe a good first step in figuring out the best approach to border security (something in between the extremes of "kill every towelhead and a few wetbacks too" to "abolish all border patrols and throw the gates wide open") is to figure out what those borders are there for. Which of the following best describes the purpose of border security?

1) To maintain control over a line because, um, well, that's a line, damn it!
2) A make-work program for bureaucrats, funded by $10,000 fines on people who run afoul of bureaucrats.
3) Keeping violent people out of the country while allowing peaceful people to come and go in pursuit of commerce and whatever else they want to do.
4) Preventing Cruz Bustamante from importing MEChA sleeper agents for the eventual Reconquista of the southwestern US.
5) A border is a form of coercion used to prop up the power of the state, and the whole concept should be abolished.
6) Protecting the US economy from competition.

I think I covered the range of absurdist viewpoints, as well as a very reasonable viewpoint. I vote for #3, that border security should be used for the purpose of "Keeping violent people out of the country while allowing peaceful people to come and go in pursuit of commerce and other peaceful purposes."

It seems pretty clear then that allowing obvious holes in the border (e.g. a gate that you can drive around when nobody is guarding it) will help terrorists get into the US. It also seems pretty clear that chasing after a guy who's known to be harmless and slapping a $10k fine on him will not serve the purpose of keeping violent people out. (Those who picked #1 on the quiz will be saying "But there's a line there, damnit, and he violated it!")

[Jennifer]

I wish to be popular, so let me try a statement that everybody can agree with:

"I find all of this evocative of the old Berlin Wall stories, though at the same time I fully realize that an East German in the early 1960s would have been very grateful to merely face a huge fine as opposed to being fatally shot, or merely being unable to attend church as opposed to never ever seeing his loved ones again. Hooray for America, which is much better than East Germany, and hooray for the customs service, which is far more humane than the old Berlin Wall border guards. Of course it's still bad that the old guy had to pay a fine, but the badness of this isolated incident in no way detracts from the essential moral superiority of America compared to East Germany. Of course, 'moral superiority' does not translate into 'safe from actual threats.'"

Did I miss any important points?

[some guy]

Ellie and Jennifer,

Christ up a tree, I would never have guessed that calling attention to what I consider a flawed comparison would yield so much snide response (including my own).

It is simple. The fact that families were so tragically torn apart, the inability to see one another for forty years (which is not completely accurate) seems to be very overstated in this case. This man was impeded by a locked, yet unmanned gate normally open. He drove around it (hell, I would have too). People may still pass at that gate, I am willing to bet, with a modicum of inconvenience.

Neither was a community savagely torn apart. An American township and a Canadian town grew near to each other. Territory was not lost through war or ukas. For all practical purposes, the border was always there.

This is why I drew attention to the inappropriateness of the comparison. As I said before, if it is only a case of "difference of degree", then we could begin comparing ALL borders to the Berlin Wall. Which shows the weakness of the comparison.

No slur was intended (I believe I said "with all due respect"); perhaps having listened and talked to many of those people and families torn apart by the Berlin Wall has made me approach this with some tinge of emotion, which is regrettable, if true.

So, now you know and we can get back to the real subject: the fact that this man has to pay $10,000 because a border was not properly maintained.

[Xavier]

Comparing something to the Berlin Wall is like comparing something to Hitler or the Holocaust. Even if it's accurate in some technical sense, it's usually being done for emotional appeal, which greatly outweighs any explanatory value.

[Gadfly]

I remember flying the first time. The ground looked odd without the lines drawn on them like I'd always seen on the maps.

The gods are chuckling at us.

[Isaac Bartram]

Let me get this straight. One Sunday some guys drive up to this gate. They see it's locked so one says "Oh no, we could be fined 10 thousand dollars. We can't go blow up Boston and kill thousands of infidels. Oh well I'm sure Osama will understand"

Of course the authorities need to keep an eye on this guy Richard. I hear they all speak French up there. ;).

[Evan McElravy]

Last Friday, incidentally, was the 15th anniversary of the last murder by East German border guards of one of their citizens trying to sneak through the Wall. Really no comparison with the U.S. Border Patrol, and the silly debate here is just a distraction from the fundamental issue. Which is: this is retarded. Others have expounded on this theme more fully than I feel like, so I'll just provide an anecdote.

A guy I was talking to at a party last week here in Montreal told me of driving down to Vermont to ski the week before. It was on one of these rural roads, and the U.S. customs' station is just a booth off to the side that you have to pull over for. There is an exceedingly discrete notice in place to that effect. Anyway, my friend was feeling the groove of the road and had just smoked a joint, and went blazing through at 65; it took him about two miles before he realized he was in Vermont, at which point he of course immediately bugged out. He decided discretion would be the better part of valour, though, and just kept on going. To the best of my knowledge, he hasn't heard boo since.

Keep up the good work, guys.

[joe]

"Neither was a community savagely torn apart. An American township and a Canadian town grew near to each other...For all practical purposes, the border was always there."

Um, no. The fact that the stores and churches that served people in the US were located in Canada demonstrates that this was a functionally unitary community. Imaginary lines or not, it is no different from fining people $10,000 for going from their home on Elm Street to the supermaket on Main Street. If "the border was always there...for all practical purposes," there would have been grocery stores and churches on the American side as well, or there wouldn't have been homes there. And the poor persecuted bastid wouldn't have been driving back and forth his whole life. This clearly grew up as a single community.

[Ayn Randian]

Maybe we should send this over to the people at LewRockwell.com and tell them that this is why we shouldn't close our borders the way they want.

[Russ]

I'd rather send the neo-con thread over to the folks at LewRockwell.com

[some guy]

"Neither was a community savagely torn apart. An American township and a Canadian town grew near to each other...For all practical purposes, the border was always there." Nah, those statements still stand.

The border, unless there have been minor disputes since, has been there since 1820. Not "always" in a cosmic sense, but at least "always" in the span of Mr Albert's life.

Separate, but equal (to use a tired, old phrase) facilities are not obligatory on the immediate sides of a border.

Now, I'm guessing that St Pamphile is older than the township, but the township was started for employees of the local Maine logging company, not for citizens of St P look for a slice of American suburbia. And I have no doubt that the logging company said "Let's build a couple of houses here for the people. They can go across the border if they need anything."

What is true is that the connection between the handful of people in the township and those of St P has grown over time. In fact, had Mr Albert not been babysitting his niece in St P, he would have been at the border crossing in time. But it is not necessarily true that close proximity and sharing of facilities and services make two communities one. Just look at Frankfurt a. d. Oder and Slubice, and they were once one town.

[some guy]

$10,000 is one hell of a tithe.

[Critic]

The high price of superstition.

[michael stack]

I love this 'logic':

'"Since 9/11, we've enhanced our security and, yes, some of the situations require inconvenience to people, so we have to go along with what the regulations are," said Janet Rapaport, a public affairs officer with the bureau. She added that local residents had been told about the stricter controls.'

In summary:

1. Regulations inconvenience people.
2. Therefore, we should obey regulations.

I guess all the good PR types are over at Cisco.

[Larry]

""Since 9/11, we've enhanced our security and, yes, some of the situations require inconvenience to people, so we have to go along with what the regulations are," said Janet Rapaport, a public affairs officer with the bureau."

And what are the chances Janet will be doing three-hour commutes over dangerous logging roads?

Note that it took two days to actually catch up to Mr. Albert, even though his vehicle was well known by the customs officers. I wonder how they plan to find an anonymous car full of terrorists that doesn't hang around next door for fourty eight hours.

Security has been enhanced. Right.

[late for the boom]

Secuity was enhanced, but not on the days they have off you know....

I just cant get the image of a half of a gate blocking half of the road out of my head. So secure you have to drive around it, on the Canadian side, where there is obviously less security.

Proof that they will do anything to APPEAR like they are doing something.

[Mark S.]

I'm sort of torn on this issue:

On one hand, I'm outraged that people are being harassed in legitimate affairs because the all the T's weren't crossed and "ze paperz" are not in order.

On the the other, the atheist in me is laughing his ass off at the lengths some would go through to attend a religious service.

However, I guess I'm going to have to side with this fellow in the end. It's silly that our post-9/11 paranoia is interupting peaceful people's lives in order to stop a terrorist attack that will in all probability never come.

[cdunlea]

You folks out there chuckling over the religious practices of this guy (which sound pretty mainstream) need to remember: he was going where the shopping was too. He could just as easily have been going to Canada to get some milk and a loaf of bread on Sunday.

This reminds me of a story from a friend who used to live in Plattsburg, NY. His favorite barber who knew just how to cut his hair was over the border a few miles in, so every month or so he would drive into Canada foe a haircut. Usually he told the US border guards coming home that he went sightseeing, shopping, etc. until one day he said "I went to get a haircut from Clyde in the village." Not only did the guard not believe him, but ordered his car to the side and had a crew strip it apart looking for drugs! Maybe the guards didn't believe Clyde's haircuts were good enough to warrant a trip.

[thoreau]

Aw, Joe, why are you getting so angry with the gov't disrupting people's lives? Didn't you know that freedom is only about gun ownership, tax cuts, and invading Iraq? The notion that people have a right not to be hassled inother areas as well, especially people who want to go to Quebec (not only do they speak French, they're also Canucks, for God's sake!) is just some lefty drivel.

[Dan]

This reminds me of those heartbreaking Berlin Wall stories I used to read in history class: families torn in half, friends unable to see each other for forty years. . .of course, it's only evil when our enemies do it. When WE use artificial borders to divide people, it supports freedom.

Yes, when you build a wall to keep your citizens from fleeing the country, and murder anyone who tries to do so, that's evil. When you close one border checkpoint at a 200-year-old border two days a week and fine people who sneak through it, that is not evil. It's just stupid.

I have a suggestion for your next attempt at amateur historical analysis and moral posturing: try suggesting that Arizona's long refusal to recognize Martin Luther King Day is much like the institution of slavery itself.

By the way, if the border between the United States and Canada -- which was there when Richard Albert's great-great-great-great grandfather was just a gleam in his great-great-great-great-great-grandfather's eye -- is "artificial", what exactly qualifies as a "real border"?

[joe]

No one's questioning that the border was the de jure, but it was obviously not there de facto.

If somebody barged into your living room waving a deed and announced that he had owned your house all along, and sent you packing, I'm sure you'd consider a significant change to have occurred, even if the legal status had remained exactly the same.

[joe]

The point is, we need to make our legal institutions conform to peoples lives, not disrupt people's lives to make the adminstration of the law more convenient for the government.

[Evan McElravy]

OK, here's something to quietly consider: http://www.easterntownships.com/haskell/home.html

A pretty damned elegant factum....

[some guy]

joe, joe, joe,

"If somebody barged into your living room waving a deed and announced that he had owned your house all along, and sent you packing, I'm sure you'd consider a significant change to have occurred, even if the legal status had remained exactly the same."

True, but irrelevant. Even the Berlin Wall comparison was more on target than this.

Let dead horses rest in peace.

[garym]

Reading through this makes me *extremely* bored with "some guy"'s repeated insistence that "A is not identical with B" implies "A is not like B," and then that "the border always existed" because it was always legally there, even though it had no effect on people until the government decided that keeping people apart on the Maine-Canada border somehow protects us from terrorism.

And then there are the atheists who find something to laugh at because the person being persecuted wants to do something which they don't want to do. After all, it's only the freedom of somebody different, they're never going to interfere in our freedom, right? (BTW, I'm also an atheist.)

But the point is that our government is keeping people who are normally able to do business with each other from doing so, and putting serious difficulties -- like not being able to buy food anywhere nearby -- in the way of these people. That's an important, real-life issue, and a serious example of how our government is causing harm in people's daily activities in the name of "security." But no doubt I placed a comma wrong somewhere, and people will find it more important to nitpick that.

[some guy]

garym,

Pick a nit? Moi? I'm all with you for getting back to the subject of the injustice done to Mr . Albert. Hell, I've said it more than once.

[Chuck Divine]

I fear the DHS is always going to be with us.

I do, however, propose a name change. Let's rename DHS the American Security Service. And the people who work for them? Why, Homeland Officers for Law Enforcement, of course.

Seems appropriate to me.

[Larry]

Well, no. The situation in this tiny Canadian-American community is nowhere near as oppressive as the Berlin Wall.

Not yet.

At $10K per drive-through, any odds on how long it'll take to fund and staff a bigger gate?

[joe]

"I'm all with you for getting back to the subject of the injustice done to Mr . Albert. Hell, I've said it more than once. "

The injustice done to Mr. Albert is not just the fine. Another injustice is that the government allowed him, and his neighbors, to build their lives around a certain way of doing things, and then stepped in and forbade them from continuing to peacefully go about the businesses of living their lives, leaving them stranded without options.

A fine that will probably get tossed is bad. Setting a bunch of people up like that is worse.

[Michael McNeil (Impearls)]

I've replied to this posting over at Impearls. The article's also still available on Impearls' main page.

Michael McNeil

[Maroney Terry]

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