{"id":198894,"date":"2019-02-13T22:48:05","date_gmt":"2019-02-13T17:18:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/?p=198894"},"modified":"2019-02-18T14:16:56","modified_gmt":"2019-02-18T08:46:56","slug":"president-trump-looked-for-the-failed-idea-of-a-wall","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/index.php\/president-trump-looked-for-the-failed-idea-of-a-wall\/","title":{"rendered":"President Trump Looked For The Failed Idea Of A Wall"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Patrick Mendis<\/a> –<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Prof. Patrick Mendis<\/p><\/div>\n

The talks over the \u201cWall of Trump\u201d between the US-Mexico border security broke down with Congressional leaders over the weekend. After the renewed call for a wall at his second State of the Union, President Donald Trump attended a political rally in El Paso, a \u201csafe\u201d border city in Texas. Even with a Congressional deal, the White House intends to deploy American military at the Mexican border and continues to threaten Congress that the president would declare \u201cnational emergency\u201d to get his border wall.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Characterizing Trump\u2019s exaggerated claims on the border crimes and naming immigrants as \u201crapists<\/a>\u201d and \u201canimals<\/a>,\u201d Congresswoman Veronica Escobar representing El Paso called the president \u201ca liar<\/a>.\u201d The bipartisan Congress does not also seem to fully fund the Trump wall.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span>Long before Trump, however, there was an original love affair with China\u2019s Great Wall<\/a>. It was none other than Benjamin Franklin, the chief disciple of Confucius and chinoiserie among<\/a> the Founding Fathers of the United States.<\/p>\n

Unlike President Trump, Franklin was an American statesman who always had the veracity for facts and joined the military for national unity\u2014a character of authentic Americanism to its founding conviction. \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Soon after commissioning him as a military commander, Governor Robert Morris of the Pennsylvania Colony dispatched Franklin to defend the British colonists against the encroaching French and their Native Indian allies by building a \u201cline of forts<\/a>\u201d in the French and Indian War (1754\u20131763). Envisioning a China Wall, Franklin wrote<\/a>, \u201cYou cannot protect the country from Indians on the warpath by forts. They can pass between them through the forests, burn and pillage and massacre the people of the scattered villages, and return again in perfect safety. Only a Chinese wall the whole length of the Western frontier would be a sufficient protection against these savages.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Once the war broke out in the Ohio River Valley in 1754, Pennsylvania was divided on a provincial security strategy. While some argued for carrying the war to the enemy, Governor Morris and Franklin advocated<\/a> a defensive strategy with forts that \u201cwere connected by a wall like that of China.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

After building Fort Allen, Franklin supervised the construction of three other fortifications\u2014Forts Franklin, Hamilton, and Norris\u2014over the Blue Mountains of Pennsylvania. To galvanize public opinion to unite the colonies and defense against France, Franklin published a now-famous political cartoon in 1754, \u201cJoin or Die,\u201d and wrote<\/a> to support the construction of forts on \u201cthe Back of our Settlements in all our Colonies.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Not everyone in colonial America agreed. In his letter to Franklin in 1776, the Chevalier de Kermorvan, a French engineer in the Continental Army under George Washington, disagreed<\/a>, arguing that \u201cthis work would be as useless here as the great wall of China, which has not preserved this empire from being conquered by the Tartars.\u201d In his exist interview, likewise, General John Kelly, former chief of staff for President Trump, realized the futility of a wall when he concluded<\/a>, \u201cif you want to stop illegal immigration, stop US demand for drugs, and expand economic opportunity in Central America.\u201d<\/p>\n

Unlike the American experience, however, the Great Wall of China was built by laborers with human tragedies over a period of two millennia, beginning roughly with the years of Confucius (551-479 BC). But, the Emperor Qin Shi Huang<\/a> of the Qin dynasty (221-207BC) and the first emperor of the unified Imperial China connected a number of remaining network of fortifications into a single defensive system against the invading Mongol, Turkic, and other nomadic tribes. In the ensuing centuries, various dynasties continued to construct a strong defensive border-wall to safeguard against foreign invasion, regulate immigration, and manage trade until the Ming dynasty (1368-1644 AD). While it hardly prevented the non-Chinese nomadic intruders like the Mongols and Manchu from establishing the Yuan dynasty (1279\u20131368)\u00a0and the Qing dynasty (1644-1912) respectively, the Great Wall has indeed played a historic role in unifying China and its national identity.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

President Trump\u2019s \u201cimmoral<\/a>\u201d campaign to build a \u201cGreat Wall\u201d of concrete and steel across the US-Mexican border, on the other hand, has more to do with the white nationalism shrouded<\/a> in the White House\u2019s immigration policy. The president\u2019s descriptions<\/a> of invading \u201ccaravans\u201d of migrants and \u201ccriminals\u201d coming through the border and the arriving war refugees from Muslim countries seem to resonate with yet another \u201cwall\u201d sentiment of the nascent republic.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

In considering the New York Constitution, for example, John Jay, who later became the first chief justice of the US Supreme Court, suggested<\/a> that \u201cwe must erect a wall of brass around the country for the exclusion of Catholics,\u201d who were generally meant to include French, Irish, Italians, and Spanish as opposed to white Protestants. The New York Constitution in 1777 adopted<\/a> that freedom from \u201cspiritual oppression and intolerance wherewith the bigotry and ambition of weak and wicked priest and princes have scourged mankind\u201d and then declared \u201cthe free exercise and enjoyment of religious profession and worship, without discrimination or preference, shall forever hereafter be allowed, with this State, to all mankind.\u201d\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

In politics now as it was then, the perennial debate over the inkling of a physical \u201cwall\u201d is still in the public discourse as it has always been with Thomas Jefferson\u2019s metaphor of a \u201cwall of separation\u201d between church and state. The American experiment born out of the Jeffersonian ideal that \u201call men are created equal\u201d was meant to eventually make the new republic into a great melting pot. Unlike with the rising and falling empires of Chinese civilization that has evolved, the US was created by the enlightened men envisioning a \u201cphilosophic empire\u201d as a work-in-progress for the posterity to build a \u201cmore perfect union.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Ironically, however, while Trump continues to advocate a \u201cbeautiful<\/a>\u201d wall, Chinese President Xi Jinping has delivered<\/a> a clear message to the White House that \u201cthe wise man builds bridges, the fool builds walls.\u201d\u00a0Similarly, while visiting Panama last week, Pope Francis also remarked<\/a> without directly referring to Trump that \u201cwe know that the father of lies, the devil, prefers a community divided and bickering\u201d by building walls, not bridges.<\/p>\n

In his farewell address<\/a>, President Ronald Reagan invoked John Winthrop\u2019s famous \u201cModel of Christian Charity\u201d phrase \u201cshining city on a hill\u201d to describe authentic Americanism when he said, \u201cif there had to be city walls, the walls had doors, and the doors were open to anyone with the will and the heart to get here.\u201d Surely, the American experience that progressed through the French and Indian War has made this Reaganite idea into a global nation\u2014not a politically opportunistic slogan of \u201cAmerican First\u201d with shameful \u201cisolationism<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

As Congress contemplates the very idea of a wall and the cost of another government shutdown and national emergency, these representatives ought to remember that we are transitory guardians with diverse faith traditions on a land expropriated from the rightful owners of Native Americans; thus, they must restore the enlightened founding vision to make American democracy safe for global diversity. The Republican leaders should also educate Trump, reminding their inspired leader Reagan who said<\/a> in 1987 to his Soviet counterpart at the Berlin Wall, \u201cMr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.\u201d That is authentic Americanism.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

*Professor Patrick Mendis<\/a>, the author of Peaceful War<\/a>, is a former American Field Service (AFS) inter-cultural exchange student from Sri Lanka to the United States and later adopted by the community of Perham in the state of Minnesota, which he considers his \u201cbirthplace\u201d in America.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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