The Berlin Wall: Model of "compassionate conservatism"

Christy Hardin Smith on the GOP Christian-compassionate ethnic cleansing anti-immigration bill:

The thought of rounding up and deporting 11 million people is daunting and logistically impossible, considering the manpower shortage we already have in local police forces who are stretched thin by national guard deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan. On the one hand, we clearly need to have a better handle on what happens with our national borders — there are obvious security concerns about having porous borders in the wake of 9/11 and with the rising level of threats and animosity toward this country around the world. How to best do that, though, is a process that deserves a lot more consideration than simply saying "let’s build a wall around the country and shut everyone out."

The Dubya Bush era has been hard on satirists. Reality keeps catching up with even the most outlandish satire. Steve Earle wrote a song several years ago now in the earlier yers of the Bush administration called, "Amerika v. 6.0". It included the lines:

Hey, let's build a wall around the country club
To keep the riff-raff out until the storm is through
Yeah, I know, it ain't exactly democratic
But it's either them or us
And it's the best we can do

It was clear when it came out that it was more-or-less satire. Now I'm not sure it would be so clear at all.

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