Tuesday, April 1, 2008

Jesse Ventura on "The Wall"

Jesse "The Body" Ventura, the former Governor of Minnesota, appeared tonight on Larry King Live and stood up to Lou Dobbs on the proposed wall between the US and Mexico that has a lot of landowners up in arms. Dobbs said earlier today screw them, the feds should use eminent domain and seize the land -- without compensation, one might presume.

Ventura (no fan of any of the candidates running for President) pointed out that if you build a wall now to keep the Mexicans out, within ten years it could be used to keep Americans in, just like the wall that surrounded West Berlin for nearly three decades and made the people in the city virtually stateless.

Bravo, sir. That's precisely the point. You make people fear a false threat; then when it's too late you fear the people within and suspect even your spouse of being a spy for the government. In a climate of fear, there can be no democracy.

The Europeans on the Continent figured it out. They got rid of their borders (or more accurately, border controls) all together. They live in less fear than Americans, and have less crime and less illegal immigration than the United States. They also coordinate ther security policies and have each other's backs for tracking fugitives who cross the invisible lines on the map. And the member states of the EU and EFTA are certainly more democratic than the United States is at this point in time.

You couldn't even get a G-man to give the time of day to a Federale. Let alone an illegal immigrant. And don't forget, you can always dig under a wall or fly above it.

Lou Dobbs can prove there's nothing to fear from the wall by doing one simple thing. Turn in his passport. Naturally, he won't -- because he's so jingoistic he probably doesn't have one to begin with.

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