After listening to what passes for rhetoric in our politically-dominated world, I wonder if those who clamor for governmental solutions to problems created by the state ever pause to consider the implications of what they propose. The angry, nationalistic fervor that underlies the advocacy of a wall along the U.S.-Mexican border provides such an opportunity. Would such a wall be used to keep Central Americans from coming into the United States, or to keep Americans from leaving?  Robert Frost’s observation that “something there is that doesn’t love a wall,” should remind us that walls cut both ways: they both protect and restrain. Did the erstwhile Berlin Wall serve to keep Western Europeans from hotfooting it into the East German paradise, or to prevent East Germans from escaping?

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