What’s with all the fences?

Really? Donald Trump wants fences across the Southwest to keep out Mexicans? Gov. Scott Walker (R-Wis.) wants them across our northern states to keep out Canadians? Canadians?! Hungary wants to keep out fleeing Syrians — Hungary was always all heart, remember the Holocaust! And Israel has had such success with its walls keeping out hostile Palestinians, even with the help of Egypt, who didn’t want them either.

{mosads}The notion that walls work to solve social and political problems is the height of simplicity. Ask Berlin how that idea worked for them? President Reagan’s best one-liner (in 1987) was, “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.” That remark became the metaphor for hostility to oppression. President Kennedy inspired it with his “Ich bin ein Berliner.”

Eventually there are cracks in all walls: trumpets and the marching feet of the Israelites made the wall surrounding Canaan “come tumblin’ down” at the Battle of Jericho.

Walls are the physical equivalent of secrets. Secrets can’t ever be kept secret, though people universally, and unsuccessfully, resort to them, illusory as they are. Or of executions as ways to end violence by participating in it as a policy.

Walls are never going to be the basis of successful state policy. People can climb over walls, or dig beneath them or topple them. Or they may erode. But the “reasons” behind their creation always remain. Politicians who advocate for walls need to be taught that lesson: Eventually they will be hitting their heads against them, and the only damage will be to their heads.

Goldfarb is an attorney, author and literary agent based in Washington, D.C. and Miami.