I Like The Blue One

Last week, we got our first glimpse of the eight border wall prototypes vying to replace the inadequate – or non-existent – barriers along our nearly 2,000 mile national demarcation with Mexico. I like the blue one.
We call it a border, but it is much more than that. It is a boundary containing our national identity; our political, economic, and social order. Without it, we are not a nation-state, and our political rights – from the Bill of Rights to present laws – are meaningless. That millions of Americans fail to understand this is testament that we have done a poor job teaching civics in our public school classrooms.
The promise of a physical barrier along our southern border was a big part of what put Donald Trump in the White House. Seeing those prototypes put a smile on my face. The concrete and steel sections lack grace, but what they represent is beautiful national resolve.
Six wall sections were the color of desert sand, one was gray metal, but one was sand-color at the base with dark blue metal stretching toward the sky. I don’t know which will prove the most impervious to illegals trying to steal that which doesn’t belong to them, but the blue one struck me as most esthetically-pleasing.
Function must trump esthetics for our border barrier, but I have one suggestion for the final design: Make the wall educational. Use the wall as a classroom white board, a place where ideas can be written and lessons taught. In those areas where Mexicans and Central Americans are most likely to try to break into our country, let’s adorn the wall with engravings of the words that make the United States a great nation, that separate us from all others.
What could be more natural on a wall marking a national boundary than the ideas that mark us as unique? For some, “nationalism” is a dirty word. But the desire to form a distinct state, a “more perfect union,” is what created our nation in the first place. Nationalism is embodied in our Constitution’s preamble: “secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity.”
The words – in English and Spanish, of course – that should be permanently engraved on the south-side of the wall include the Declaration of Independence and Constitution. I’d add the Gettysburg Address and a couple of other historic presidential speeches. Though it may seem counter-intuitive, Reagan’s “Tear Down this Wall” speech from Berlin should be up there. After all, this is not a wall holding a people prisoner to a tyrannical state; this is a wall protecting a free people from those who would take from us that which is not theirs.
Pictures worth thousands of words might cause a few potential illegal aliens to pause in their tracks. Despite Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto’s claim that Mexico is “a proudly mestizo, multi-cultural and diverse nation” and a country that “firmly believe(s) that this mestizo fusion is the future and destiny of human kind,” a collage of the most recent 10 Mexican presidents and first ladies shows a very Spanish-looking, and in some cases Anglo-looking, group. Mexico is a racially and ethnically-stratified county where indigenes hold little power; Pena Nieto throws stones from his perch in a glass house.
Pena Nieto is leader of country with a national average IQ 10 points below ours. Illegal immigrants from Central America passing through Mexico come from countries with average IQs 10 points lower still. This is one reason why the debate about who will pay for the “big, beautiful wall” misses the point. Even if President Trump can’t find a way to tax remittances from Mexicans living in the US – money earned here but spent in Mexico – the wall will pay for itself by stopping even a small percentage of illegals from settling in our country.
The Center for Immigration Studies made a compelling case in a paper earlier this year that due to lower earning ability and higher use of social services, “illegal border-crossers create an average fiscal burden of approximately $74,722 during their lifetimes.” If a wall stopped a mere “9 to 12 percent of those expected to successfully cross in the next decade” the social and economic savings would be $12 to $15 billion – enough to cover the cost of the wall.
A nation has a sovereign right and obligation to its citizens to protect its interests and control its territory. The United States has been failing at this basic duty for decades, at substantial social and economic cost. Mr. Trump, build up this wall!

Ken can be reached at kengorrell@gmail.com