Frost:

Before I built a wall I’d ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offence.
Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,
That wants it down.’
From Robert Frost, “Mending Wall.”

Bachmann:

“How do you solve it? You build a barrier, a fence, a wall — whatever you want to call it. You build it,” Bachmann said. “As president of the United States, every mile, every yard, every foot, every inch will be covered on that southern border.”
From “Michele Bachmann Plays Up Immigration, Hits Warren Buffett,” August 17, 2011.

Most of us opponents of a wall have focused on the idea that the wall is meant to “wall out” immigrants. But we just observed the 50th anniversary of the Berlin Wall, a wall that was meant to, and did, “wall in” residents. I think I remember co-blogger Bryan worrying that a wall on the border with Mexico might wall us in. I think this is a serious worry. If, 20 years ago, you had asked me if a U.S. president would try to persuade the head of a totalitarian country to reinstitute restrictions on residents leaving that country, I would have said “No way.” Yet three years later that’s exactly what President Clinton persuaded Fidel Castro to do.

HT to Steve Horwitz.