Posted on 06/02/2016 5:12:01 AM PDT by Kaslin
When standing today at Hadrian's Wall in northern England, everything appears indistinguishably affluent and serene on both sides.
It was not nearly as calm some 1,900 years ago. In A.D. 122, the exasperated Roman emperor Hadrian ordered the construction of an 80-mile, 20-foot-high wall to protect Roman civilization in Britain from the Scottish tribes to the north.
We moderns often laugh at walls and fortified boundaries, dismissing them as hopelessly retrograde, ineffective or unnecessary. Yet they still seem to fulfill their mission on the Israeli border, the 38th parallel in Korea and the Saudi-Iraqi boundary, separating disparate states.
On the Roman side of Hadrian's Wall there were codes of law, habeas corpus, aqueducts and the literature of Cicero, Virgil and Tacitus -- and on the opposite side a violent, less sophisticated tribalism.
Hadrian assumed that there was a paradox about walls innate to the human condition. Scottish tribes hated Roman colonial interlopers and wanted them off the island of Britain. But for some reason the Scots did not welcome the wall that also stopped the Romans from entering Scotland.
The exasperated Romans had built the barrier to stop the Scots from entering Roman Britain, whether to raid, trade, emigrate or fight.
(Excerpt) Read more at townhall.com ...
“Fixed fortifications are monuments to man’s stupidity” - Patton
Personally I think that Patton made an overstatement; especially if they are used as part of a coherent strategy and not as the only strategy.
They should be considered a force multiplier...
-- plus heavy penalties for employers hiring illegals--for instance, the owner of a company hiring illegals should go to prison about the same time the company goes bankrupt from assessed fines----
Patton’s Army was an army of offense..rolling destruction and victory...and not defense.
Definitely an overstatement. He is speaking from historical experience of WWI and WWII (Maginot Line).
Were he commanding armies in the Middle Ages I don’t think he’d make the same claim. :)
There is a difference between a barrier and a fortification though.
One of the false protests that many raise against walls is that they aren’t 100% effective. Implicit is the idea that something that is not always adequate is not worth doing, as if even “often ineffective”, which would also be “occasionally effective” ... or mixed bag results at best, is the same as being “worthless”.
Fortifications are failure intolerant by comparisons.
The real reason the left doesn’t like walls is the symbolism that is all too clear to those on either side of them: someone takes this border seriously. For many on the left people’s mere circumstances justifies everything they do or want.
Personally, I’ve been joking/suggesting for more than a decade that we should rely on hedgerows where possible: really nasty long thorn hedges. We can fill them with all sorts of nasty critters, or at least post warning signs of all the sorts of nasty critters that might be there, declare the whole thing a bird sanctuary and get free enforcement from animal activist making sure no illegal alien overturns some bird nest (the last is part of the joke aspect).
Naturally I have always realized that REAL hedgerows take a long time to become really nasty, even if thorns several inches long can be found on relatively young plants, but like a wall the symbolism itself can be important.
My idea was penalizing companies that hire illegals, and if necessary, provide a finder’s fee to the person ratting out the company to the government.
So if a company gets fined $100,000 per illegal employee and has 50 illegals, that would be a $5,000,000 fine, and maybe give 10% finder’s fee, which would be $500,000.
Also, make illegals qualify for the finder’s fee, so they would have incentive to rat the company out, too.
Secret Service: 'Current fence simply is not adequate for a modern era'
Trump Mocks Obama's Plan to Heighten Wall Around the White House
The U.S. Secret Service is planning to heighten the fence surrounding the White House after numerous attempts by fence jumpers to breach the property. Republican frontrunner Donald Trump reminded Obama that building walls helps keep people who do not belong out.
“President Obama understands that you build strong, tall, beautiful walls to keep people out who don't belong,” he wrote in a Facebook post. “People who get permission can enter the White House LEGALLY!”
Siegfried Line
When asked about the Siegfried Line, General George S. Patton reportedly said "Fixed fortifications are monuments to man's stupidity."
Build two walls, say 100 yards apart, and make the space between them a free fire zone for any US citizen doing target practice.
The solution mat be as simple as giving the DC crowd something that they actually care about to enforce.
It is obvious that many don’t care about the border, consider ideas like sovereignty retrograde too, yet whenever you buy foreign suds, even Mexican beer or Canadian Whisky, you may be reasonably confident that it is in the country legally.
Why?
Because there is something that they care about being enforced: taxes.
Charge a fee for crossing the border, and impose a fine for crossing it without presenting proper ID, and the DC crowd might suddenly care about the border as well as tracking down those who enter illegally.
Which is to say: not caring would proverbially mean having less money to spend in the minds of those I’m speaking of ... and we can’t have THAT.
Of course Patton was speaking of fixed military fortifications such as the Maginot Line, not border walls for controlling immigration.
There were actually walled cities in WWII Europe that armies bypassed because they were too much trouble to bother with. They could be isolated and ignored, although Saint-Malo was bombed flat.
you are exactly right - different strokes for different folks.
a sodomite president won't build a wall to protect his own country.
strange how things go ...
Both ideas are very good; penalties work and even now the IRS uses rewards quite effectively.
I've always had a liking for the Remote Sentry Guns as seen in the movie "ALIENS".
It was never his country. His country has 57 states.
good point
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