Build a wall between friends not between enemies

WALLS DON’T WORK BETWEEN ENEMIES

Donald Trump wants to build walls between Mexico and the United States and force Mexico to pay for it. Good luck! I just hope and pray that there are enough voters with common sense in the States, so we will never have to worry about that possibility.

Canadian journalist, Marcello di Cintio visited controversial eight walls and wrote a book about them. He, in the introduction, also mentions several historical walls e.g. the Great Wall of China, the Walls built by Roman Emperor Hadrian in Britain, Maginot Line before WW II, and the Berlin Wall during the Cold War. He concludes: “History has not been kind to the old walls. Almost all the historical walls inspire scorn and, when they failed (almost all of them did) ridicule.”

Di Cintio visited and examined more recently built walls, barricades, and fences such as the fence around the Town of Mount Royal in Montreal to keep French speaking people out, the West Bank walls to stop Palestinian terrorists, the one that separates Catholics and Protestants in Belfast, the one between Greeks and Turks in Cyprus, and the Western Sahara wall to keep Saharawi out of Morocco.

His conclusion: none of them have been working, nor have produced results as the builders wanted to. Then how come some people still think they are worth the money? I guess it’s the price you have to pay when you ignore the lessons from the past.

Granted fences can be good: “Mending the fence,” means repairing a damaged relationship. A fence, in this case, means a respect for individual dignity and privacy. So here is what I think: barriers, fences, and walls work for the better where there is already good relationship existing. But if there is hatred between them, barriers exacerbate a bad situation. Then any separation mechanism never works, because resentment leads people to find ways to circumvent it, or even to tear it down. So work on becoming better neighbours first.

Di Cintio quotes Dr. Seus’ book about the wall between Yooks and Zooks: A Yook grandfather tells the need for the wall, ‘It’s high time you know the terrible horrible thing Zooks do. They eat bread with butter side down. We Yooks eat it with butter side up.” Walls can make enemies out of two good peoples. But good neighbours can build a beautiful fence together to celebrate friendship.

3 thoughts on “Build a wall between friends not between enemies

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *