AOC says Trump’s wall is like the Berlin Wall
Of course it is. Isn’t that obvious?
They both are walls. They both are high. They both are strong. They both have towers with guards ready to shoot anyone who—okay, scratch that.
They both are built to imprison the people of the country that constructed them—okay, scratch that, too.
Here’s what AOC said:
I think it’s [Trump’s proposed border wall] a moral abomination… I think it’s like the Berlin Wall. I think it’s like any other wall designed to separate human beings and block out people who are running away from the humanitarian disasters. I just think it’s wrong.
I wonder whether AOC thinks the locks on her door are a moral abomination. After all, many of the people who might try to get in without her permission are probably poor or otherwise suffering in some way. Who is AOC to keep them out?
AOC is hardly alone in her argument; it’s actually quite popular on the left, and has been heard long before AOC burst on the scene. And yes, it would be nice to have endless compassion for every suffering human being in the world and mend their broken lives, whether they are in fact dealing with “humanitarian disasters” or not (poverty and leftism in Latin America is certainly a disaster, but it’s one that AOC would like to inflict on all of us).
We don’t have the power to mend the lives of every human in the world, of course. And as a country we (just like AOC with the locks on her doors) have not only a right but a duty to make decisions about who comes into our house, why, and in what numbers. That’s what legal immigration is all about.
And that is most definitely not what the Berlin Wall was about. One doesn’t have to know much history to know that. AOC is either ignorant of the barest basics of history, or she thinks that her constituents are ignorant, or both (yeah, yeah, the old knave/fool question). But don’t imagine that her argument falls on deaf ears. Many people—mainly young, perhaps, but not limited to the young—are indeed just that ignorant.
[NOTE: A post on a related subject can be found here.]
The argument is hardly unique to the left. There are plenty of loony libertarians, of the Volokh Conspiracy/Marginal Revolution variety, ready to argue that barring aliens from unrestricted entry to the United States is a major human rights violation.
Legal immigration occurs through walls and fences, through doors and gates, for reasons including limiting disruption, identifying human trafficking, controlling the transfer of illicit substances, mitigating the hidden consequences of planned parenthood protocol, etc.
The people who oppose extending the wall(s), are opposed to civil rights, support immigration reform in lieu of emigration reform, support labor arbitrage, an acute form of diversity, and oppose quarantine of alien antigens and vectors that place the elderly and children at risk.
That said, Ms. Pro-Choice, tear down the walls!
The argument is hardly unique to the left.
The left-right nexus.
AOC is working to control the news cycle.
She makes insane statements just so that she will BE the news.
This is a deliberate strategy to build her visibility for the long term.
I read somewhere that her district might be up for redistricting. I’d love to see her get kicked out of congress. Maybe she could then open a bar where Amazon would have been.
BTW, I spent some time in East Germany after reunification. It was horrible. Beautiful old buildings were vacant and left to fall apart. Concrete boxes housed the people. No one in the West would have wanted to live there. AOC doesn’t know a thing about the real world (fool) and doesn’t want to learn (knave).
Someone must have told her there once was a wall in Berlin.
I think AOC and the kind of person who likes her kind of talk are just stuck on stupid. Here’s a little excerpt from Camille Paglia (and I think it refers just as well to people of any age – ignorance is not just for the young) . . .
“What has happened is these young people now getting to college have no sense of history of any kind. No sense of history. No world geography. No sense of the violence and the barbarities of history. So, they think that the whole world has always been like this, a kind of nice, comfortable world where you can go to the store and get orange juice and milk, and you can turn on the water and the hot water comes out. They have no sense whatever of destruction, of the great civilizations that rose and fell, and so on, and how arrogant people get when they’re in a comfortable civilization, etc. So they now are being taught to look around them to see defects in America – which is the freest country in the history of the world – and to feel that somehow America is the source of all evil in the universe, and it’s because they’ve never been exposed to the actual evil of the history of humanity. They know nothing!”
This generous, dividend-paying, amazin’ amazon should just eat another cheeseburger or two and intone sagely about walls and bovines.
And free stuff. Lots of free stuff.
Maybe she’ll come up with something original like “Tear down this not-yet-built wall!”…
… or “Never send to know for whom the cow moos; it moos for thee.” (“She moos for thee”? Make that “Zhe…”)
I’m actually waiting for her to conquer the electorate by declaring all college loans null and void.
Yep, that should do it.
(SHE, certainly, ought to get her money back. ALL of it. With interest.)
Perfectly written post.
I think Edward is right.
Parker: What does she actually know about the Berlin Wall, or the Soviet Union?
She is a fool but I am a bit concerned about the people behind her. Her “Chief of Staff,” who wears tee shirt with Chandra Rose’ picture on it, is the one who recruited her and other Democrat Socialist candidates. I wonder who is funding him ?
Bryce Harper just signed a 13 year, 330 million dollar contract with the Phillies.
He’s covered for a full year after AOC’s “end of the world”.
TommyJay,
I have no clue what goes on in her mind beyond knowing that she is a very important person.
Of course the wall on the US – Mexico border is like the Berlin Wall, for we even use mine fields, shoot to kill rules of engagement, and automatic antipersonnel kill devices to keep those from crossing. – sarcasm intended.
See the linked post from the Weaponsman.com archive, He passed away far too soon BTW.
http://weaponsman.com/?p=18754
The rulers of that socialist paradise had to work hard to keep the West Germans out. /s
I spent 3 years working in West Berlin in the early 1980s. The East Germans had to stop the people from walking into West Berlin and then going to West Germany because East Germany was being depopulated. It’s a paradox, but when you give workers the socialist workers paradise, the workers flee to the capitalist hell. An obvious example of Marx’s false consciousness.
She is not looking at who or what makes the wall…
She is only looking that the point of the wall is to prevent people moving from one bad place to a better place…
in European sphere, the Russians refused to let people leave to a better place
in Americas sphere, the Americans refuse to let people leave to a better place
In so far as the wall is the fulcrum preventing such, she is right (or some professor of hers is). While this is an interesting philosophical point akin to empty glasses and other such things, its a snapshot and reality is a movie…
Only in academia do ideas exist apart from the reality they otherwise live in…
And in fools discussions that tend to leave large elephants under the rug…
the problem is that to fix the picture she has to take away the wall
the picture without the wall doesn’t look bad as the movie would…
Yeah so again, what exactly is it that the man who fights tyranny in order to maintain freedom for himself and his posterity, owes to people who either will not or cannot, do either?
I mean if your plan is to send in the drones and bombers to kill off the Mexican, and the Puerto Rican, and the Venezuelan kleptocracies, and parcel out the land to small freeholders, then you might have my support.
But you want to shit in my swimming pool because your own latrine is overflowing and you refuse to hold your nose and correct the matter?
Just where does my moral obligation to underwrite your own moral cowardice and behavioral incontinence come from?
Calling all sensitive conservatives … calling all sensitive conservatives … there is a man in the audience with a question ….
The main issue with the wall is the presence of a welfare state on this side of it. California tried to divide the two with Prop 187 20 years ago. It would have denied welfare to illegal aliens. It passed with 63% of the vote. It even had a majority in Hispanic precincts. An appeal was made, funded by a left wing billionaire and Jerry Brown, who was then AG, declined to appeal to the USSC,
AOC’s adament support for open borders has nothing to do with increasing the hispanic vote… right?
But she does expose democracy’s achilles heel; the vote of the many today who buy into her ignorant/mendacious lunacy counts just as much as the most informed…
I’m surprised she didn’t compare Trump’s Wall to the Great Wall of China, or to Hadrian’s Wall.
AOC probably knows as much about each one of them as she does about the Berlin Wall i.e. from the evidence, basically nothing but the name itself.
anyway..
did ya here, there is no more laws in north carolina… [roll eyes]
“AOC is hardly alone in her argument; it’s actually quite popular on the left”
I especially find it ironic when so many on the left where I work talk about walls being immoral, etc. Yet, they are the ones who not only have doors with locks; but, also live in doorman buildings!
Hmmm. Now she’s begun to threaten those of her fellow Democratic legislators who don’t think “correctly” (or at least those who don’t vote “correctly”).
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/ocasio-cortez-moderate-democrats-who-vote-with-republicans-are-putting-themselves-on-a-list
Well that didn’t take long, did it? (What is the expression? “Just look at my shocked face”?….)
This should be lots of fun to watch. (This together with “Black-prop” Tlaib and “You-ONLY-criticize-me-because-I’m-a-Muslim” Omar)
How to win hearts and minds, indeed!
File under: DPUSA (Stasi edition)
Artfldgr at 6:38 pm — Good point as to Alex’s viewpoint. Sounds right to me…if (if) she's really thought that "deeply" about it.
.
y81, it's a lot harder to love the Volokh crew than I'd like it to be. At least Eugene is on the right side of things gun-wise (and how!), and he's been front and center on the right of free speech. Viz. his defense of Pamela Geller's and Robert Spencer's "Draw Mohammed" event, in which some jihadist nutters were determined to ruin their day, but in the end failed as some good guy of a cop shot one of them.
Megyn Kelly did a great job here, too.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uVkNEVyD4Vw
M Williams on February 28, 2019 at 3:41 pm at 3:41 pm said:
I think AOC and the kind of person who likes her kind of talk are just stuck on stupid. Here’s a little excerpt from Camille Paglia (and I think it refers just as well to people of any age – ignorance is not just for the young) . . .
* * *
Indeed. And a note to everyone who actually knows the history of the Berlin Wall:
I wonder if AOC and others really do think that it was built by the West Germans (in order to keep the East Berliners OUT, rather than the historical reality of keeping them IN).
Since, after all, they have convinced themselves (and a lot of people who should know better) that the Republicans were the party of the historical KKK, that the Democrats were the party of Freedom, and that real Socialism hasn’t been tried yet.
As a non-loony libertarian, I think I understand the no-borders argument from their perspective.
Basically, all humans have the innate right of freedom of association, so if a person from the geographical region A wants to associate with the people in the geographical region B, there’s no rights-based argument against it.
I the l-l’s forget that the people already in B *also* have a right *not* to associate with A if they don’t want to.
Unlike high school, where the Cool Kidz always have the option of picking up and moving to another table if the Dweeb insists on trying to sit with them, the people of B have no option to exit when A shows up (because we live in a sedentary society), so the only option is to prevent A from entering.
While I consider myself a libertarian, I take a leaf from Stalin and proclaim myself in favor of “libertarianism in one country”. Let’s get it right in the US and *then* think about loosening the criteria for entry.
Bryan – the argument may work for libertarians, but the leftists have no credibility to use “right of association” in border issues, since they explicitly deny that ethic on grounds of “racist” or “homophobic” or whatever, when any conservative expresses a desire to NOT associate with persons who do not share their values.
On the other hand, the left quite readily refuses to associate with people who don’t share THEIR values, and agitate for others to do the same.
Not libertarian in the least; I don’t think “right of association” fits into their perspective at all.