Anti-illegal Great Wall a Big Bust

Friday, April 25, 2008

Two months after Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff approved a $20 million virtual fence along a 28-mile stretch in Arizona, the fence was scrapped as unworkable.

Chertoff accepted the Boeing Company’s “Project 28” on Feb. 22, not long before the Government Accountability Office reported to Congress that the virtual fence project could not work and would not be used in the future.

Although the $20 million will never be recovered, Chertoff is determined to continue building real and virtual fence segments along the international border with Mexico.

The border fence idea is a fool’s errand.

The United States and coalition forces cannot seal the borders in Iraq and Afghanistan where wars are ongoing. It is foolish to think that U.S. borders can be sealed with fences and walls during peacetime.

The Great Wall of China, visible from outer space, failed to prevent foreign intruders. Walls and fences are more of a statement than an impediment. If a giant wall wouldn’t work 2,200 years ago, it won’t work today.

Rather than tackle the reason that illegal immigrants come to the United States, Congress chose to spend $1.2 billion on a border enforcement bill that called for the construction of 670 miles of real and virtual fencing along the 2,000-mile U.S.-Mexico border.

El Paso’s experience

El Paso, which is the largest city directly on the border, has years of experience with a border fence that runs along the U.S. side of the Rio Grande.

Every day Border Patrol welding teams go out to fix holes cut in the fence the night before by illegal immigrants. This is a small stretch of fence that separates El Paso, with a population of more than 600,000, from Ciudad Juarez.

The population of the Greater El Paso-Ciudad Juarez Metropolitan Area is nearly 2.5 million.

If U.S. authorities cannot prevent people from climbing over and cutting through a short stretch of fence in the middle of a downtown metropolitan area, it is completely unrealistic to think that they can stop the same activity out in remote areas of the border.

As proof, one of the new fence segments erected 10 months ago 80 miles west of El Paso in New Mexico has been easily breached by illegal immigrants using a variety of methods.

According to an April 12 news story by Associated Press writer Alicia A. Caldwell, illegal immigrants “armed with torches, hacksaws, ladders and even bungee cords are making it around a section of the border fence hailed as the most efficient way to stop them.”

It’s nearly as though illegal immigrants have used as many creative ways as possible just to mock the idea that a segment of fence, no matter how expensive, can stop them. Except for the entertainment value of going over or through the fence, people could always choose to simply walk around it.

There are areas along the shared border that are so far removed from cities or towns that they must be beyond the imagination of members of Congress and other fence advocates.

In a Feb. 21 New York Times piece by Lawrence Downes, the editorial writer told how he had lunch with CNN host Lou Dobbs at the world-famous Four Seasons restaurant.

Dobbs, who has manufactured a career boost by bashing the illegal immigration drum on cable television, had cranberry juice and seltzer with his Dover sole while emphasizing that the border must first be sealed before other immigration reforms are attempted.

Among those people in Congress who support sealing the border with fences, high-tech gadgets and law enforcement, it’s likely that few have ever visited the border in person. Of those who have actually set foot on the border, it’s likely that not one of them has visited the remote sections away from the few authorized international crossing points.

It’s in those remote areas, as the saying goes, where the rubber meets the road.

Also, a prima facie case can be made that anyone who lunches at the Four Seasons is incapable of understanding the vast remote areas along the U.S.-Mexico border.

Rowland Nethaway’s column appears Wednes- day and Friday. E-mail: RNethaway@wacotrib .com

OPS dress code opinions still clash

April 29, 2008

BY MICHAELA SAUNDERS
WORLD-HERALD STAFF WRITER

It's too early to tell if shopping for school clothes will be a drastically different experience for Omaha Public Schools students this fall. But school board members agreed Monday to keep talking about a dress code makeover.

In the meantime, the board asked for more information from district administrators as they prepare for further discussion.

If OPS required uniforms, would Nebraska law require OPS to pay for them? Do uniforms improve student behavior or achievement? What about policies for teacher dress codes?

"Are we as a district successfully enforcing the dress code?" asked board member Mark Martinez, who first suggested last month that uniforms could benefit students. "Are our students dressing the way we expect for a positive learning environment?"

No timeline for a decision was set.

The topic of school uniforms comes up periodically. The OPS board last voted on uniforms in 1996, when it allowed parents to vote on uniforms at their schools.

After board discussion last month, district officials sought input from the superintendents' Citizens Advisory Committee. About 40 parents on that committee told officials last week that they were most concerned about boys wearing sagging pants and girls wearing tank tops, low-cut tops and midriff-baring tops. Wearing pajamas to school also was highlighted as disruptive.

Many parents also said schools need to provide clear and consistent guidelines about appropriate grooming. Nearly all parents at the meeting indicated that they thought the current dress code should be better enforced and that teachers must set a clear example of appropriate attire. Discussion among board members Monday was similar.

Mona McGregor, a longtime board member who holds a college degree in fashion design, said the district would be taking away students' freedom of expression if it instituted a uniform policy. And, she said, uniforms won't erase fashion trends.

"You're not going to change that with uniforms," she said of things like sagging pants or short skirts. "It's just clothes. Pick your battles."

Dress codes have changed over time. In 1943, for example, John Hiffernan was threatened with expulsion from Omaha Central for wearing blue jeans.

"We had to wear slacks and a good shirt," Hiffernan said of his high school days. He said he knew what was expected but didn't recall ever seeing a written policy. During his senior year, the four-sport athlete and about a dozen friends decided to wear denim. As Hiffernan recalled, the principal threatened to kick all of the boys out of school for the offense. "The principal made the rules."

Hiffernan, who wasn't at the meeting, said today's students need role models who dress as the school expects them to and who send a message stronger than what students get from celebrities who "wear junk."

Board members said the same during their lengthy discussion. Dress code rules for teachers will be discussed at length at a coming meeting. The current teacher contract only says "cooperation and good judgment" help to send the right message for students and the visiting public.

McGregor said the whole dress code discussion began because of concerns over the work attire of some school staff.

"Staff needs to look professional," she said.

China's powerful weakness

Beijing's reach isn't big enough to stop local governments from abusing the rights of ordinary citizens.

By Francis Fukuyama
April 29, 2008
The fiasco of the Olympic torch relay has focused attention on human rights in China. What is the source of human rights abuses in that country today?

Many people assume the problem is that China remains a communist dictatorship and that abuses occur because a strong, centralized state ignores the rights of its citizens. With regard to Tibet and the suppression of the religious movement Falun Gong, this may be right. But the larger problem in today's China arises out of the fact that the central Chinese state is in certain ways too weak to defend the rights of its people.

The vast majority of abuses against the rights of ordinary Chinese citizens -- peasants who have their land taken away without just compensation, workers forced to labor under sweatshop conditions or villagers poisoned by illegal dumping of pollutants -- occur at a level far below that of the government in Beijing.

China's peculiar road toward modernization after 1978 was powered by "township and village enterprises" -- local government bodies given the freedom to establish businesses and enter into the emerging market economy. These entities were enormously successful, and many have become extraordinarily rich and powerful. In cahoots with private developers and companies, it is they that are producing conditions resembling the satanic mills of early industrial England.

The central government, by all accounts, would like to crack down on these local government bodies but is unable to do so. It both lacks the capacity to do this and depends on local governments and the private sector to produce jobs and revenue.

The Chinese Communist Party understands that it is riding a tiger. Each year, there are several thousand violent incidents of social protest, each one contained and suppressed by state authorities, who nevertheless cannot seem to get at the underlying source of the unrest.

Americans traditionally distrust strong central government and champion a federalism that distributes powers to state and local governments. The logic of wanting to move government closer to the people is strong, but we often forget that tyranny can be imposed by local oligarchies as much as by centralized ones. In the history of the Anglophone world, it is not the ability of local authorities to check the central government but rather a balance of power between local authorities and a strong central government that is the true cradle of liberty.

The 19th century British legal scholar Sir Henry Sumner Maine, in his book "Early Law and Custom," pointed to this very fact in a fine essay titled "France and England." He notes that the single most widespread complaint written in the cahiers produced on the eve of the French Revolution were complaints by peasants over encroachments of their property rights by seigneurial courts. According to Maine, judicial power in France was decentralized and under the control of the local aristocracy.

By contrast, from the time of the Norman conquest, the English monarchy had succeeded in establishing a strong, uniform and centralized system of justice. It was the king's courts that protected non-elite groups from depredations by the local aristocracy. The failure of the French monarchy to impose similar constraints on local elites was one of the reasons the peasants who sacked manor houses during the revolution went straight to the room containing the titres to property that they felt had been stolen from them.

State weakness can hurt the cause of liberty. The Polish and Hungarian aristocracies were able to impose their equivalents of the Magna Carta on their monarchs; those countries' central governments, unlike their English counterpart, remained far too weak in subsequent generations to protect the peasantry from the local lords, not to speak of protecting their countries as a whole from outside invasion.

The same was true in the United States. "States' rights" and federalism were the banner under which local elites in the South could oppress African Americans, both before and after the Civil War. American liberty is the product of decentralized government balanced by a strong central state -- one that is capable, when necessary, of sending the National Guard to Little Rock to protect the right of black children to attend school.

It is hard to know if and when freedom will emerge in 21st century China. It may be the first country where demand for accountable government is driven primarily by concern over a poisoned environment. But it will come about only when popular demand for some form of downward accountability on the part of local governments and businesses is supported by a central government strong enough to force local elites to obey the country's rules.

Francis Fukuyama is the author of "The End of History and the Last Man."

Demography Is King

By DAVID BROOKS
Published: April 29, 2008

Fifty-five years ago, 80 percent of American television viewers, young and old, tuned in to see Milton Berle on Tuesday nights. Tens of millions, rich and poor, worked together at Elks Lodges and Rotary Clubs. Millions more, rural and urban, read general-interest magazines like Look and Life. In those days, the owner of the local bank lived in the same town as the grocery clerk, and their boys might play on the same basketball team. Only 7 percent of adult Americans had a college degree.

But that’s all changed. In the decades since, some social divides, mostly involving ethnicity, have narrowed. But others, mostly involving education, have widened. Today there is a mass educated class. The college educated and non-college educated are likely to live in different towns. They have radically different divorce rates and starkly different ways of raising their children. The non-college educated not only earn less, they smoke more, grow more obese and die sooner.

Retailers, home builders and TV executives identify and reinforce these lifestyle clusters. There are more niche offerings and fewer common experiences.

The ensuing segmentation has reshaped politics. We’re used to the ideological divide between Red and Blue America. This year’s election has revealed a deep cultural gap within the Democratic Party, separating what Stuart Rothenberg calls the two Democratic parties.

In state after state (Wisconsin being the outlier), Barack Obama has won densely populated, well-educated areas. Hillary Clinton has won less-populated, less-educated areas. For example, Obama has won roughly 70 percent of the most-educated counties in the primary states. Clinton has won 90 percent of the least-educated counties. In state after state, Obama has won a few urban and inner-ring suburban counties. Clinton has won nearly everywhere else.

This social divide has overshadowed regional differences. Sixty-year-old, working-class Catholics vote the same, whether they live in Fresno, Scranton, Nashua or Orlando.

The divide has even overshadowed campaigning. Surely the most interesting feature of the Democratic race is how unimportant political events are. The candidates can spend tens of millions of dollars on advertising, but they are not able to sway their opponent’s voters to their side. They can win a stunning victory, but the momentum doesn’t carry over from state to state. They can make horrific gaffes, deliver brilliant speeches, turn in good or bad debate performances, but these things do not alter the race.

In Pennsylvania, Obama did everything conceivable to win over Clinton’s working-class voters. The effort was a failure. The great uniter failed to unite. In this election, persuasion isn’t important. Social identity is everything. Demography is king.

Over the years, different theories have emerged to describe the educated/less-educated divide. Conservatives have gravitated toward the culture war narrative, dividing the country between the wholesome masses and the decadent cultural elites. Some liberals believe income inequality drives everything. They wait for an uprising of economic populism. Other liberals divide the country morally, between the enlightened urbanites and the racist rednecks who will never vote for a black man.

None of these theories really fit the facts. It’s more accurate to say that the country has simply drifted apart into different subcultures. There’s no great hostility between the cultures. Americans have a fuzzy sense of where the boundaries lie. But people in different niches have developed different unconscious maps of reality. They have developed different communal understandings of what constitutes a good leader, of what sort of world they live in. They have developed different communal definitions, which they can’t even articulate, of what they mean by liberty, security and virtue. Demographic groups have begun to function like tribes or cultures.

We can all play the parlor game of trying to figure out why Obama, a Harvard Law grad, resonates with the more educated while Clinton, a Yale Law grad, resonates with the less educated. I’d throw in that Obama’s offer of a secular crusade hits a nerve among his fellow bobos, while Clinton’s talk of fighting and resilience plays well down market.

But these theories only scratch the surface. The mental maps people in different cultures form are infinitely complex and poorly understood even by those who hold them. People pick up millions of subtle signals from body language, word choice, facial expressions, policy positions and biographical details. Efforts to rebrand a candidate to appeal to down-market voters are inevitably crude and counterproductive.

The core message is that even if you take away the ideological differences between the parties, you are still left with profound social gulfs within the parties. There’s poignancy to that. The upscale liberals who revere Obama have spent their lives championing equality and opposing privilege. But they’ve smashed the old WASP social hierarchy only to create a new educational one.

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