"Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!" With this statement, uttered on June 12, 1987, by then-President Ronald Reagan, the history of the world changed, as Communism fell across Europe and Germany was reunited for the first time since the end of World War II.
It is a statement that the current president, Joseph Biden, would do well to repeat to Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer. I am not referring to the construction of the controversial wall along the Mexico border that was the goal of former President Donald Trump.
Having grown up in the suburbs of Washington, D.C., there were many times when I could freely walk the grounds of the United States Capitol building.
That all changed early this year when a group of insurrectionists - stirred in part by the vitriol from the White House - stormed the building on the day the Electoral College vote was being certified. Following that event, a seven-foot-high fence topped by razor wire was erected around the entire capital complex prior to the Inauguration of President Joe Biden. That fence was set to come down in late March, until a motorist breached the perimeter of the building and killed a security guard. As a result, the fence remains.
Regarding contemporary American foolishness, there really is no such thing as rock bottom.
In normal life, when there is no penalty for failure, failures proliferate. In government, failure, far from being penalized, is often rewarded. Those whose bad judgments botched the Capitol’s security on January 6 now are granted seemingly unlimited deference regarding their judgments about needed security measures. Hence, their infuriating project currently scarring the epicenter of American democracy: more than three miles of seven-foot-tall fencing topped by razor wire and patrolled by soldiers. This seals off from a phantom menace the Capitol, Supreme Court and Library of Congress, symbols of liberty under law, and the reign of intelligence.
On March 4, while Senate business proceeded, the House skedalled, having suspended its session because of rumors, a.k.a. “intelligence reports,” of a second siege of the Capitol, supposedly scheduled for that day. Until 1933, March 4 had been the date for presidential inaugurations. This, some social media chatter indicated, electrified a smattering of lunatics who, for reasons too ludicrous to detain us, thought March 4 would bring the second coming of their savior, the previous president, the aforementioned Donald Trump, who some actually believe is still the rightful president.
All that being said, a tiny portion of the 330 million people in this country are stark raving mad, and their madness is reciprocated by those in charge of the national capital’s security. The security providers’ prescription for a better America is the same as every government agency’s prescription: Spend more on what we do. Given that the government cannot say “Enough already!” regarding sugar import quotas, electric-car credits or pandemic/stimulus trillions, it will never say there can be too much spending on “security."
According to President Joe Biden, Democrats were supposed to be building bridges - not walls. That same party is actually considering a permanent, razor wire fence around the Capitol complex.
I do, however, question the sanity of turning the bastion of American democracy into a maximum-security fortress.
The irony of what is being suggested is not lost on those Americans who watched Washington, D.C. burn during the summer riots. Optics really do matter and how people look at the building matters. The Capitol is the citadel of democracy for the world. Of all the seats of government in the world, our Capitol has always been one of the most accessible and the most open to the public.
The acts of Janiuary 6, as despicable as they were, should not be an excuse to separate the American people from their government. But, the way to stop all the violence is not to build a barrier, but to keep the building as open as possible, so people can get the sense that this is a country where people freely debate and work with each other.
And, let us face it, there are a lot of ways to attack a building or a group of buildings that no barrier will ever stop. Because, at the end of the day, the real threat is surrendering the freedom our country stands for to stop an invasion that may never happen.
The Capitol Hill riots ought to be condemned as an un-American spectacle, but it would also be un-American, and a change with worrying symbolic power, if the locus of popular government were forever visibly separated from the people themselves. If we want to lower the temperature, we need to stop dividing the country into “us vs. them” instead of “our ideas vs. their ideas.” The more we stray from debating the issues to degrading other people, the more dangerous America becomes.
Is it, however, too much to ask that someone in power say aloud what everyone knows - that pursuit of the last possible increment of safety produces disproportionate measures that are embarrassing, or worse? In 2006, Ron Suskind reported in The One Percent Doctrine, that soon after 9/11, Vice President Dick Cheney said, “If there was even a one percent chance of terrorists getting a weapon of mass destruction . . . the United States must now act as if it were a certainty.” So, it was on to Baghdad, spurred by intelligence reports as accurate as those about March 4.
Those who could order the fence dismantled might want it there indefinitely as a prop in the security theatrics that heighten the drama surrounding Congress as it fails to perform such humdrum tasks of governing as keeping outlays and revenues within hailing distance of each other. There is, however, a cost paid in diminished national dignity and prestige, when the east end of one of the world’s great urban spaces, the National Mall, resembles the seat of a banana republic’s government that is suffering a nervous breakdown because of a restive tank regiment at the edge of town. And while we are speaking of the aesthetics of Washington:
In December, Congress approved a National Museum of the American Latino and an American Women's History Museum, to be "on or near" the Mall, yet more museums based on group identity. There already are National Museum of African American History and Culture and National Museum of the American Indian. Would it not be preferable to have all such stories told by the existing National Museum of American History? These are, after all, part of the nation's mosaic.
If the fulfillment of dreams requires that they be “recognized” with buildings on or near the Mall, near will not be near enough. In the ensuing nearer-than-thou competition, the Mall, hitherto a place of magnificent vistas, will become a moral pork barrel, a plaything of identity politics, congested with buildings erected to mollify factions who insist that the United States is not “inclusive” until their groups are included in the architectural clutter there.
If such a subtraction from Washington’s beauty seems fanciful, go gaze at the Capitol through the fence.
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