Tear Down This Wall

I watched the President's remarks last evening and I watched the rebuttal from the Speaker if the House and the Senate Minority Leader. 

Nogales, Texas Wall

The President's address was fraught with untruths and misrepresentations of the truth. The facts can be checked at Fact Check. 

In listening to the response to the President, I was shocked at the way he liberally misused partial truths and untruths to attempt to justify an embarrassing wall. 

In one instanced he said: In Maryland, MS-13 gang members who arrived in the United States as unaccompanied minors were arrested and charged last year after viciously stabbing and beating a 16-year-old girl. 

When last i checked geography, the wall would be constructed no where near Maryland. I am not sure how the this incident was related to a wall on the southern border. He never asserted that the unaccompanied minors came to America through the area where the wall would be built, or how a wall would have kept them out of the country.

And finally, two years ago, the President was elected and both the House and Senate were controlled by the Republicans. Why didn't the wall get funded then? Why has this waited until he could focus blame on the Democrats rather than realizing that the majority of Americans do not want to fund a wall. There are other ways to ensure border security. 

Americans have been against walls, it was Ronald Reagan who standing at the Berlin Wall uttered the famous words: “Secretary General Gorbachev, if you seek peace–if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe–if you seek liberalization: come here, to this gate. Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate. Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.” President Reagan went on to say: “Standing before the Brandenburg Gate, every man is a German, separated from his fellow men. Every man is a Berliner, forced to look upon a scar.”

Despite what the President saying about walls being built because we love those inside, history paints a different story. They become objects of oppression.

I support the image that Senator Schumer made when he said: The symbol of America should be the Statue of Liberty, not a 30 foot wall.

-- Bob Doan, Elkridge, MD