“Good fences make good neighbors,” Robert Frost wrote.  The border fence, between the United States and Mexico, is NOT a good fence. 
    Several weeks ago, we drove to a State Park near Brownsville and spent time riding bicycles.  Coming home, we decided to take the “scenic route” rather than the expressway.  Old Military Highway winds along the northern bank of the Rio Grande and offers a delightful view of the farms and countryside of the lower valley. 
    We had not traveled that route for several years and discovered there has been a major change in the landscape.  The highway is now flanked on its south side by the border wall.  Some places it is quite close to the road.  At other spots, farther away from the highway and nearly out of sight.  At points the wall looks like a picket fence on steroids: upright metal pylons about twelve feet high and several inches apart, set in a solid concrete base.   In other areas, it is a solid and continuous eight or ten  foot high barrier blocking all views of the other side.
    At many places along its route, farmers own and farm land on both sides of the wall.  So here and there are gravel roads and openings through the fence to allow access for farm equipment.
    No, that border fence is NOT a good fence.  It seems to me, in fact, that it functions more like a Band-aid than a barrier.  A Band-aid hides but does not treat the underlying wound.  Just so, the border wall hides but does not deal with the root problems between the U.S. and Mexico.
    It is an ugly, artificial scar on the landscape.  It publicly advertises the racism of the U.S. but does nothing to address the nation’s problems of drug abuse and economic fears.  Nor does it confront the economic instability, lawlessness and violence in Mexico.  It stands as a symbol – not of neighborliness and cooperation – but of one nation’s arrogance and assertion of unilateral power.
    It may slow the illegal influx of immigrants from the south but it does not stop it.  The border fence is just one more challenge faced by refugees seeking a better life in the U.S.  They’ve learned how to deal with the hardships of desert travel and avoid border authorities.  Through an informal support network, they learn the safest travel routes and where to get forged papers.  Undoubtedly they will soon master the challenge of crossing over, under, or through the border fence.  Their homeland threats of kidnaping, disappearance and assassination provide powerful incentive to overcome all barriers in reaching the physical and economic safety of the north.
    The 21st century is, of course, not the first time that nations have built walls for protection  from outside threats.  It was in the 5th century BC when several Chinese states began constructing a Great Wall around their borders to keep out invaders from the north.  Early construction was simple: piles of earth packed into wooden forms.
    About 300 years later, China was unified under the Qin dynasty and the wall was expanded.  Later construction included the use of rocks, trenches and bricks.  Eventually the barrier stretched 5500 miles in length.  It took a heavy toll on those who built it because the project is estimated to have cost one million workers their lives.
    For 1900 years, this huge defensive structure kept Manchurian and Mongolian invaders  out of China.  But, in 1449 AD, it was breached.  Nomadic enemies from the north defeated the Ming dynasty to control China. 
    A century later, the Great Wall was useless in protecting the nation from Mongolian hordes again.  A gate through the Wall was opened to them by a political dissident and Mongolian soldiers swarmed through it to capture the country.  This time, however, Chinese officials took a more creative approach.  They annexed Mongolia to China and extended The Great Wall around both countries!
    Other famous walls that failed to protect their city were the Walls of Jericho.  Jericho is one of the oldest inhabited cities in the world.  It had stood securely for over seven centuries near the banks of the Jordan River, protected by its strong walls. 
    Then Joshua and his rag-tag bunch of Israelite refugees surrounded the city.  Once a day, for six days, they silently walked around the city walls.  On the seventh day, the priests began blowing their rams’ horns and the little band circled the city seven times.  Suddenly, a loud battle cry was raised, and the walls fell down!  Without shooting an arrow or raising a sword, Joshua and his little band overran Jericho. (See the Old Testament book of Joshua, chapter 6, verses 1 to 27.)
    There is also a more modern example of a wall that failed.  In 1961, the German Democratic Republic (GDR), with the help of the Russians, began building a wall to divide Communist East Berlin from Democratic West Berlin.  “The wall,” they said, was necessary “to protect the citizens of East Berlin from Fascist influence.”  In fact, it was designed to stop the defection of citizens from the east to the west.
    The 87 mile long wall was described by the mayor of West Berlin as the “Wall of Shame.”  Originally, it was a solid mass of concrete, twelve feet high, augmented over the years with barbed wire, guard towers, mine fields, and a “death strip” on its eastern side.  It formed an important part of the “Iron Curtain” that divided Communist countries from the western world for nearly thirty years.
    Internal political changes within the Communist bloc nations in 1989 caused the East German government to ease restrictions on travel to the West.  That was all the encouragement needed by the citizens of both East and West Berlin.  They swarmed the wall and begin the process of tearing it down!  The re-unification of Germany followed soon after.
    Good fences may make good neighbors, but the historical record is that bad fences fail to protect.  Will we learn anything from these lessons of the past?  The US border wall seems to be far more effective in Washington, D.C. than it is in south Texas.  Can’t our great country do something more creative and constructive in dealing with the challenges on our southern border?  Maintaining a Band-aid on the border, it seems to me,  does little to preserve our security!