Good Fences

The possible topics for discussion this week seem endless. There’s the low hanging fruit of the Sony withdrawal of the film “The Interview” which satirically presented the conspiracy to assassinate the President of North Korea. It would seem the North Koreans were a little more upset with Hollywood than we were when a slightly more serious film was produced depicting the hypothetical assassination of our own George W. Apparently the North Koreans don’t have a sense of humor when it comes to insinuations of killing their dear leader and self-proclaimed deity. Now, joking about murdering an actual identifiable person probably should be filed in the “bad taste” category along with jokes about rape, pedophilia, or torturing someone’s pet; but I share the disappointment that many others have voiced that cyber-terrorists were able to bully a movie studio out of their freedom of speech, even if that speech was in poor taste. I will not however judge the studio for it’s decision, as many including our President have. I am always amused by how generous people “would” be with money they don’t have. “If I won the lottery”… “if I had Bill Gates’s money”… “If I were in charge at Sony”. Likewise, it’s easy to be principled and courageous when the knife is at someone else’s throat. I am disappointed that it has come to this, that the bullies won, that we are so weak. The true fault lies with a government that is doing everything except its one primary duty, to protect its citizens (and corporations) from threats foreign and domestic.

Then there’s the ending of the embargo with Cuba whereby President Obama gave new meaning to the word “lame” in lame duck. Apparently, we are told, sanctions are even less effective than waterboarding, but having made a statement all these years with the man that brought us the Cuban Missile crisis, it would seem that the sensible thing to do with the Castros being at death’s door, would have been to wait another week or two for them to actually pass through, and use that occasion to start a new era of cooperation rather than again projecting how weak we have become. The silver lining on this dark cloud is for Marco Rubio, in that this should be a golden opportunity for him to rehabilitate himself with the Tea-Party wing of the party.

On another story, when did nepotism become the default position for electing leaders in our country? Jeb Bush? Bush versus Clinton? Really? Oh, I don’t hate Jeb. We could do worse… but a third Bush for President? I know, there was John Quincy Adams who was John Adams son, and then there was Benjamin Harrison who was William Henry Harrison’s grandson… we all know how that worked out. The Roosevelts were distant cousins who seemed to share a progressive gene if not a political party. But it would seem that since JFK and “Camelot” we have retreated to our British roots for the idea of “royal families”. Listen to Andrew Cuomo speak; in what universe could he be elected to govern if his father hadn’t been Mario? The problem with royal families, as we all know, is in-breeding. People in the “ruling class” have become so insulated from the common citizens that they lose touch with real life, and real people. When that insulation extends from father to son, brother to brother, husband to wife we begin to develop our own peculiar royalty; a royalty that doesn’t know what it is to drive their own car through traffic, how much a gallon of milk costs, or what it’s like to be judged on your own merits. Our greatest Presidents like George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and Ronald Reagan were not part of some royal political family, and were not followed by a “part deux”. Our nation is rich with families, common men who would be extraordinary leaders. We should be exceedingly suspicious about electing members from one lineage… we fought a war about that!

But the story that really caught my attention this week was the secret service report that recommended building higher fences around the White House. Since President Obama has been in office there have been five or six unauthorized intrusions onto White House property; the last two being a little more serious than the toddler who squeezed through the rails in August. Building higher fences? Where have we heard that before? Oh yes, that would be from those crazy isolationists trying to stop not five or six intrusions, but five or six million at our southern border. Well, that discussion should inform the consideration of the higher fences at the White House. Understand that higher fences will just cause these White House intruders to get taller ladders, right? Or they’ll find more devious ways to get in, better to let them in over the shorter fences in broad daylight than in the shadows where we can’t see them. Maybe we don’t need a fence there at all, it’s a nice house, you really can’t blame some of the impoverished neighbors for wanting to eat off Michelle’s fine china once in awhile. And that child that squeezed through the rails, isn’t he a “dreamer”? Shouldn’t he be adopted into the first family? It isn’t his fault that his parents weren’t supervising him, having arrived is it really fair that he be deported from his new and wonderful home? Oh, I understand that we probably should have a few signs around the property, but at least couldn’t we grant some sort of blanket amnesty to the few people who have made it past the fence, and allow them to take up residency at the White House? We could give them guest worker status, give them jobs that no one else wants anyway… and I don’t see how that would encourage future intruders from doing the same… One condition of course, they need to promise to vote Democrat.

IMHO: Psychologists will tell you that children and adults will always seek to know where the limits are. Children will behaviorally push the limits, more to find out where those limits are than from a desire to exceed them. Adults locked in a dark room will almost universally feel for the walls to gain knowledge of their situation. We do no favors to anyone when we allow limits to be squishy and ambiguous. It has been said that good fences make good neighbors, or as Ben Franklin put it, “Love thy neighbor, yet don’t pull down your hedge.” Keeping the hedge may very well be an act of loving your neighbor, because the alternative to the hedge might be a shotgun.

Robert Frost in “Mending Wall” ridiculed the idea of building and maintaining fences between neighbors saying that “My apple trees will never get across and eat the cones under his pines…”, but what then if Frost’s neighbor crossed the line for a few of those apples, or perhaps a few bushel baskets? Or what would his neighbor think about him crossing over for one of his pines for a Christmas tree, or several to sell? Fences and walls are not always crucial, but clear limits are, because without them we have chaos.

We could wish for a world where limits, borders, and fences were unnecessary; but please remember that this world would include North Korean computer hackers, communist despots, and opportunistic politicians. Imagine that world without limits. If you want to try it anyway, let’s start with the White House fence and see how that works out.