And the walls came tumbling down
The title of this post is adapted from a children’s song
about the battle to capture the city of Jericho during the invasion of the
promised land by the Israelites under Joshua’s leaderships. According to the
story recorded in the sixth chapter of Joshua, priests, at the Lord’s command,
blew their trumpets after the people had circumambulated the city and then its
wall collapsed.
Whatever else one may garner from that story, the story poignantly
reminds us in the twenty-first century that for three thousand plus years, people
have known that walls cannot guarantee their security.
Nevertheless, President Trump continues to push aggressively
for building a wall on the southern U.S. border, a wall that will, in his
words, “stretch from sea to shining sea.” Trump used “Build the wall!” as a
highly effective campaign slogan, repeatedly promising to force Mexico to pay
for the wall.
Trump, inadvertently, was correct. Mexico is paying for the
wall. That is, Mexico is footing the bill for hosting several thousand putative
asylum seekers from Latin America who have converged on the border hoping to
obtain asylum in the U.S. Contrary to prior practices, these asylum seekers are
now refused entry into the U.S.; they register with U.S. border authorities and
then await adjudication of their claim to asylum in Mexico. Concurrently, the
number of asylum seekers at the border who claim to have fled their country of
origin in fearing for their lives grows almost daily.
Trump, however, repeatedly errs in his comments about the
need for the wall. The preponderance of illegal drugs passes through secure ports
of entry, not through unprotected parts of the border. Very few of the asylum
seekers at the border are violent criminals or members of gangs. No crisis
exists at the border. Indeed, the numbers of illegal immigrants crossing into
the U.S. is dropping.
Facts matter. What might have happened had the priests blown
their trumpets before the people circumambulated Jericho the stipulated number
of times? Rational people, sharing common values, may differ about proposed
policy ukases. Nonetheless, agreement about facts provides the essential foundation
for the civil discourse without which democracy becomes impossible. Constructively
ending the debate about how to secure the southern border of the U.S. will
require Congress ignoring the President’s incendiary bombast and instead focusing
on actual facts and widely shared values.
Trump shutting down the government (he has repeatedly
accepted ownership of the shutdown) in an attempt to coerce Congress into
funding a border wall was not only ineffectual but also immoral.
First, the shutdown de facto punished the government
employees who were not paid on time, many of whom had to work in dangerous
jobs, and the contractors who lost business. Inflicting harm on a third party
to achieve one’s goals is always immoral.
Second, the shutdown punished the people who benefit from
the services that the shutdown interrupted. This includes most citizens. Again,
inflicting harm on a third party to achieve one’s goals is always immoral.
Third, the shutdown reflected Trump’s anti-government
sentiments. He demeans those who pay taxes, what the economist John Kenneth
Galbraith famously called “the price of civilization.” Essential government functions
include not only national defense and enforcement of the laws, but also
ensuring that food is safe to eat, medicines are safe to use, reliable weather
forecasts are provided, a safety net to ensure the survival of the most
vulnerable, etc.
Probably no one would argue that every dollar the government
spends is well spent. Yet examples of government waste are almost always in the
six or seven figures, i.e., less than ten million dollars. Even if government
waste totals one billion dollars annually, that is less than one tenth of one
percent of all federal spending. That’s a pretty good testimony to the fiscal stewardship
of government employees, especially when one recognizes that a substantial
portion of the waste is attributable to Congressional mandates, i.e., pet
projects of individual members of Congress. Additionally, some government “waste”
is in the eye of the beholder, i.e., citizens rightly differ on what is or is
not worthwhile.
The best hope for positive outcomes from the recent
government shutdown are (1) current efforts in Congress to enact legislation
designed to avoid future shutdowns and (2) the start of bipartisan
conversations about border security policy and funding that is not mired in sloganeering
and “alternative facts.”
If those positive outcomes materialize, we can rejoice that
some walls have actually come tumbling down!
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