The Wall/El Muro

Pointing to famous walls in history, the exhibit acknowledges that the idea of borders is ancient—and regrettably, so is fear of foreigners.

"The Wall/El Muro," a new exhibit at the National Building Museum in Washington, D.C., is a studiously nonideological exploration of border barriers. A placard invites attendees to challenge each other's views, suggesting the goal is to spark a conversation with a presentation of facts, not to push a narrative.

Pointing to famous walls in history, from the Great Wall of China to the Berlin Wall, the exhibit acknowledges that the idea of borders is ancient. With its timeline of U.S. immigration policy, it's clear that fear of foreigners is too. Long before Donald Trump rose to the presidency on a platform of building a wall on the Southern border, large sums of money were appropriated for escalating attempts to block people from crossing into the United States.

You also learn that the border crackdown has trapped would-be migrant workers in a permanently undocumented state and led to a spike in the number of deaths during attempted crossings.

What a better policy might look like is for you to decide. The exhibit shows that debates over the meaning and management of national borders will stretch into the future as well as the past.

Comments

[Chumby]

Reason fears libertarians

[Earth-based Human Skeptic]

Yep, we just will not recognize the moral superiority of our betters.

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[Jerryskids]

With its timeline of U.S. immigration policy, it’s clear that fear of foreigners is too.

Does it have a timeline of the Maginot Line? There was a “fear of foreigners” for you! Or Hadrian’s Wall maybe? Just the US?

[mad.casual]

Just the US?

The Union was just a bunch of xenophobes who hated all the undocumented immigrants coming across the Mason-Dixon line.

[Overt]

Came here to say this. People tended to build walls back in the day because those foreigners tended to conquer them.

I was reading about the Mongols. Quaint people really. While much of their “savage” reputation comes from 19th century Britain’s attempts to classify everyone from east of the Danube as inferior imperialism targets, they were nonetheless quite brutal.

Everyone knows that the Mongol M.O. was to sidle up to your city and demand surrender or see it burnt to the ground. What many people don’t know is that upon surrendering, a city wasn’t exactly out of the woods. Everyone was marched out of the city to prepare for an orderly looting.

The aristocrats of the city were paired up with soldiers, whom they would take to their private vaults. In return for cooperation, ONLY they and their male heirs would be executed.

If you were not part of the aristocracy, men and boys whose shoulders rose higher than the axle of a Mongol cart were pressed into service, where they were viewed as nothing more than livestock. The short, eventful life as one of these “Human Animals” generally included being driven on foot to the next city, and forced to pickup stones and charge the city walls. Your lot in life was to get that rock to the moat where your body and the rock would create a suitable substrate for the mongol army to cross with their siege engines.

You were of course, much more lucky if you were a craftsman. You’d be taken as a slave, and forced to march back to the mongol capital to live out your days practicing your craft to the Khan’s profit.

Yes. The fear of foreigners is quite ancient…largely because, anthropologically speaking, anyone who didn’t have a healthy fear of foreigners generally found themselves buried at the foot of the next wall built by their much more cautious conquerors.

[The Encogitationer]

Quaint? I trust tongue is firmly in cheek here.

[OpenBordersLiberal-tarian]

As a Koch / Reason libertarian, I believe walls are evil — except Israel’s. They’re allowed to have one. After all, Jews are God’s chosen people.

#LibertariansForTheJewishState

[JesseAz]

Idea of borders. What the….

The idea of front doors is ancient. The idea of self defense is ancient. The idea of private property is ancient.

[Kivlor]

The fact that trespassing and criminal break-ins happen, with millennia of front-door and property-rights failure is proof that we should just do away with these out-dated, evil concepts that prevent people from coming together as a global community.

[Mike Laursen]

No, but, as libertarians, we should be trying to create a legal immigration (and temporary visa) framework that maximizes freedom of association, travel, and work.

[JesseAz]

Step 1. Get rid of all government welfare. You can decide the following steps and I won’t care.

[Zeb]

And ancient walls you really needed or barbarians would come steal your shit and kill/rape everyone. Fear of foreigners is often pretty legitimate, historically and currently.
But I’m a bit of an idealist and I like to think that the world could get to where borders are mostly irrelevant.

[mad.casual]

Fear of foreigners is often pretty legitimate, historically and currently.
But I’m a bit of an idealist and I like to think that the world could get to where borders are mostly irrelevant.

So, in my house, I have a dog and three kids. One member of our culture, given a thousand years, would never learn/grow/evolve to the point of even being able to converse the notion of ‘yours’, ‘mine’, and ‘theirs’ out loud. Even if they did, they would no longer be a part of the culture they originally were. Cyberspace *could* alleviate some of that. If the dog steals a kids toy and dismembers it, I can instantiate infinite copies for both the dog and the kids. I can even grant both the dog and the kids the ability to do so. Even then, there’s still plenty of reasons to have walls. A complete lack of walls only makes sense in a reality of instant and absolute abundance for all and, even then, there will almost certainly be natural and exogenous barriers to entry.

I get the idea to soften borders, but the idea that borders are just abstract social concepts and, thus, should be done away with is willfully stupefying to self and others. In lots and lots of cases that produce obviously terrible moral outcomes, evil.

[mtrueman]

There are borders and frontiers. A border is a masculine thing, hard, impermeable, and clearly defined. Think river or mountain range. A frontier is a feminine thing, soft, permeable and vaguely defined, like a desert or a jungle.

[mtrueman]

“The idea of front doors is ancient.”

Front doors have long been used to keep potential democrat voters from crossing the threshold.

[kcuch]

The idea of private property is ancient.

How far back? I’ve been using the Magna Carta as the beginning of Western Civilization. Is that ancient, or did private property exist somewhere prior to that?

[mtrueman]

As the caveman said, ‘Leggo my loincloth!’

[Jerry B.]

Yep. Churchill wanted to keep out those hardworking German immigrants in 1939-1945, and China reacted strenuously to Japanese immigration during the same time period. What was their problem?

[Moonrocks]

And Good Ol’ Joe just wanted to keep those filthy Floridians from bringing their infection into the rest of the country.

[Mike Laursen]

You know that made no sense as an analogy, don’t you?

[Brandybuck]

Communist China has a wall, Soviet Union had a wall, Communist East Germany had a wall.

Why can’t we have a wall too? All the cool countries have walls! And after the wall, the turrets!

[Mike Laursen]

Ooh, can we have crenellations? Crenellations are cool looking!

[kcuch]

And after the wall, the turrets…

the difference is that their walls and turrets prevent their citizens from escaping their country. Ours are to prevent other countries’ citizens from trespassing.

[Mike Laursen]

Our wall must be for some other purpose than the one you stated, since it doesn’t work for keeping people out. It seems it’s purpose is to psychologically comfort Americans who are afraid of Mexican and Latin Americans entering the country.

[Diane Reynolds (Paul.)]

Because the only reason your border exists is because you’re “afraid of foreigners”. They literally serve no other purpose. Sort of like how the legally defined perimeter of the lot my house sits on exists because “I fear my neighbors”.

[mtrueman]

” Sort of like how the legally defined perimeter of the lot my house sits on exists because “I fear my neighbors”.

People also value privacy. The paper walls used in traditional Japanese houses, for example, aren’t designed to keep away scary neighbors, just nosy neighbors.

[kcuch]

The paper walls used in traditional Japanese houses,

You’ll find they were the exception, not the norm because they were impractical and inefficient. They are stereotypical and you are a racist.

[mtrueman]

A paper wall isn’t strong enough to keep a scary neighbor away. It will protect you from prying eyes, however.

[Chuck P. (The Artist formerly known as CTSP)]

and regrettably, so is fear of foreigners.

Now tell us about the plight of the Native American.

[mtrueman]

Their plight is heap big scary.

[The Encogitationer]

What does Steffie think about the borders around Vatican City? For that matter, what does The Vatican think about it’s own borders while it encourages open border policies in the U.S.?