Posted on 05/28/2006 9:02:14 AM PDT by beaelysium
In most parts of Berlin today, one has to look hard to find the double strand of bricks embedded in sidewalks,
>snip<
the Berlin Wall was one of the most visible, despised, politically and ideologically charged boundaries on earth. It was also the quintessence of an unnatural border, one drawn not by nature, language, ethnicity or colonial hubris, but an artificial, man-made and deliberate cleaving of a culturally and linguistically homogenous society.
>snip<
very simply, no major world city had been cleaved in half so abruptly and violently.
>snip<
What happened in East Germany, many Germans are realizing, was not an easily dismissed historical oddity. Although now formally united for 15 years, many Berliners insist that the east-west divide remains stark and palpable today. The Wall is gone, but a wall remains.
>snip<the psychic toll of living in the Stasi-controlled state and the nature of the German divide, says the habits of the Cold War era are not easily erased, or abandoned.
>snip<
Even for younger Germans, there is something distinctive about being from "over there."
>snip<
"There is an east German culture, or east German identity,"
>snip<"they expect to be moving closer together, east and west, but in some ways things are moving closer together and in other ways moving farther apart, like a wave. We lived two completely different lives."
>snip<
A recent survey of 2,000 Germans by the Free University of Berlin found that just shy of a quarter of Germans who live in the west want the wall re-erected; even more startlingly, 12 percent of Germans who live in what used to be the German Democratic Republic also want the barrier rebuilt.
>snip<
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
We are doing this on a smaller scale in the US. We call them gated communities.
It is done mostly to keep the inner city ghetto out.
I immediately discount any comparison between our border and the Berlin wall as idiotic rhetoric.
Anything rather than grow emotionally distant from our neighbors. Gosh, I just couldn't handle THAT.
What you are proposing is allowing 50 to 100 million Mexicans, plus another 50 million Central Americans, into the U.S. Allowing them in with no benefits would result in 30 million Spanish speaking kids with no education, 500,000 illegals dying outside hospital doors, and innumerable crimes committed by imported criminal.
I didn't know we had renamed this site, RinoRepublic.
Good fences make good neighbors.
We should build the wall. From the Gulf of Mexico to the Pacific. We can always tear it down when it's no longer needed. I really don't give a damn if Vinciente Fox's feelings are hurt by the wall. Who is he to tell us what we should do? Let him clean up his own act so his people won't want to come here.
There are already walls between the border crossing cities.
Ridiculous.
The Berlin Wall was a wall bulit to divide a city that had been there for hundreds of years! NOT a wall dividing two countries that are totally seperate and distinct! Berlin was a city of Germans (in Germany)- Mexico and the USA are two different countries!!!!!
How utterly stupid to compare the two.
Great Wall of China- ok maybe compare that. Heck, even Hayden's Wall.
Berlin Wall? -Sorry,no dice.
I always thought those were communes.
No surprise here ... since the merging of the two cultures has been a tremendous expense to the German government, it is not surprising that 25% of the 'west' would like to NOT have that expense and go back the way it was. Also not surprising is that 12 percent (I would think it would be higher) would like the supposed 'welfare' state of communism. I mean 'going back to Egypt' is a quite familiar thought pattern for those that have had forced change brought on them, regardless of how good it is for them ... what is 'familiar' is always more attractive.
the right way to look at this 'negative view' article is that over 87% of the east are happy the wall is down, and 75% of the west welcome the expense of the re-patriotism of their brethren.
Same stats, just spoken differently.
I'm calling a (steaming load of BS" on this article. The Berlin Wall was to keep people *in*; we need to keep undesirables *out*.
Let's be real here ... on the one hand, the 'wall' or active border acknowledges the differences in government between our two countries, different currencies, law enforcement (or lack thereof), etc. It is not just a deterrent to people working in a country that is not their own.
You make one valid allusion - and that is the physical 'border' is not the real problem with illegal immigration, rather it is the 'virtual' border (ease of getting work, non-enforcement of immigration laws, etc.) that is in need of work.
"if we do build the wall between Mexico and America, will it result in differences that are irreparable?"
If we don't build the wall between Mexico and America, the results and differences will be irreparable.
The good news is the kids always learn English. My wife was playing soccer against a team composed of mostly Mexican immigrants. I was sitting off to the side with my kids, and the other kids congregated.
One of the little ones asked what the blue marks were on my arms and legs. I told her, and the term "Sangre azul!" was repeated throughout the back of the throng.
Just as the German immigrants (the names Eisenhower and Nimitz may ring a bell) left Germany to escape the ossified poverty, class, and militarization, current Mexican immigrants leave the ossified poverty, class, and militarization which oppressed them. There will be some push back (just as Social Security in the US was modeled in part on Bismark's social programs), but in the long run, freedom is a great motivator and a wonderful experience.
If we could civilize the Irish, the Mexican's will be easy.
Precisely. This is just another ideological myth to keep from really doing anything that matters...
I see you swallowed the latest globo-socialist talking points.
Listen carefully: Without border control we don't have national sovereignty. Without sovereignty the government cannot do what it's representatives were elected to do, and your vote becomes MEANINGLESS.
Got it?
Mexico has hated this country for 150 years. Its entire history is one of corruption, despotism, crime, violence, poverty, and squalor. Their kids have been taught for generations that it's our fault. Get over it.
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