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Why take down a fence? Because, as farmers and ranchers understand better than most, economies are fluid: much of the barbed wire that once served to keep out livestock grows obsolete in an era when cash crops, not cattle, rule. Fences may feel permanent, but economies and cultures exist in perpetual flux. And in a volatile global economy ruled by volatile leaders, the fences we erect today to protect our assets are sometimes those that limit our potential tomorrow.

I grew up on a seventh-generation farm where Robert Frosts line good fences make good neighbors enjoyed the weight of papal decree. And yet, even for dont-fence-me-in types like me, Trumps $1.6 million budget for a brick-and-mortar wall along Americas southern border demands a common-sense reply.

In over 20 years of fence-building from Iowa to New Mexico, Ive learned that fences come with a built-in paradox. While they make it difficult to get in, they make it proportionally difficult to get out. On Western ranches, Ive put up hundreds of feet of fence in ruggedly beautiful country. And with each post sunk, Ive experienced a sinking feeling at the logic of willingly sacrificing the long view for the myopic and often mythic protections of a wall.

Consider, too, this inconvenient truth: fences require perpetual maintenance. Like the fraught decision to apply a first coat of paint to a home, the building of a fence commits the fencer, or in this case the fencing nation, to years of upkeep. Shouldnt risk-adverse, dont-tread-on-me types like me those of us predisposed to the fencers mentality in the first place be naturally wary of the no-horizon clause and no easy out commitment of a national wall? Even the urbanite putting up store-bought fence panel from a big box store knows the frustration at having to go around where once they exited freely at their own convenience. Its a straight-up paradox: in fencing others out, we often unwittingly box ourselves in.

Dont get me wrong, years of fence-building and mending have shown me that walls do serve a purpose, though they are far from the cure-all our current fencer-in-chief would have us believe. Used strategically and with care, they sometimes solve persistent problems between neighbors locked in territorial disputes or culture wars.

In the end, however, we should be cautious where our impulse to cordon off is concerned. We should weigh carefully our own motives, the alleged benefits and, most urgently, the literal and figurative cost of building walls the angels of our better natures might soon tear down.

Zachary Michael Jack is the author of many books on rural and agrarian culture, most recently Wish You Were Here: Love and Longing in an American Heartland (2017).

The rest is here:
Fences may keep others out, but they keep us in, too - Albuquerque Journal

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July 12, 2017 at 5:03 pm by Mr HomeBuilder
Category: Fences