Walls never work
Re “The right way to secure the border,” Opinion, April 23
How many walls have been built to secure a country from invasion? How many have failed?
The most renowned is the Great Wall of China, which did not keep the Mongols out. A more recent border fortification was the Maginot Line, which was built in the 1930s by France primarily along its border with Germany.
It was believed when the expected German invasion would start, the Germans would not go through Belgium to invade France, so the line was not as strong there. But in its southern section along the border with Germany, the line was heavily fortified with air-conditioned underground rooms and a network of tunnels, supply stores and underground rail.
But the Germans came through Belgium after all, rendering the whole line useless. It did not keep Germany from invading France, and the Maginot Line is now known as nothing more than a tourist attraction and an expensive effort to provide a false sense of security.
Will President Trump’s multibillion-dollar border wall also become a cautionary tale? June Bailey Thousand Oaks
As human rights workers in Honduras, we were most struck reading Sonia Nazario’s op-ed article by what it omitted.
Nazario is certainly correct that a militarized approach to border security and the Central American refugee crisis is counterproductive and inhumane. But she neglects to mention that U.S. security aid to Honduras feeds into the same counterproductive and inhumane push factors that she insists they help alleviate.
It was reported just this week that two police officers receiving funding from the U.S. State Department are under investigation for accepting bribes in the form of guns and money — scarcely a sterling example of violence prevention. And these same security forces have been implicated in the killings of Honduran human rights defenders, journalists and activists, including in the emblematic case of Bertha Caceres.
We are in agreement with Nazario about President Trump and his wall. But funding a corrupt, human rights-abusing police force is hardly the solution. Bryan Rogers Ryan Morgan
El Progreso, Honduras
How refreshing to read Nazario’s piece that looks beyond the symptom of illegal immigration to one of the fundamental problems: deadly violence in Central America.
Her call for affordable programs to “keep more families safe in their home countries” is intuitively sound, and it passes my “love thy neighbor” sniff test with flying colors.
That her analysis and recommendations are backed up by solid data, visits to the affected cities and even riding on top of the trains that migrants ride north to the U.S., makes them all the more compelling. Andrew Shaddock
Manhattan Beach get violent.
It is time that we taxpayers demanded that public colleges such as UC Berkeley become places suitable for the free exchange of ideas. Irving Leemon
Northridge
Coulter — whose speech at UC Berkeley was canceled and then rescheduled, only to be canceled eventually by Coulter herself — has the right to speak wherever she wants and continue to throw verbal bombs, enabling her to make headlines and remain relevant.
Her worthless ideas, though, are best suited for right-wing media outlets, where she is apparently doing quite well.
Free speech is a noble idea, but it’s never free. California taxpayers should not foot the bill for her worthless and inflammatory rants. Allowing her to speak at UC Berkeley would shore up her weak legitimacy but would at the same time diminish the prestige of our venerable university. Domenico Maceri
San Luis Obispo
Your editorial misses an obvious point: People right of center are, in general, more committed to free speech than are those on the left. I can’t think of a recent incident where a leftist was prevented from speaking by a right-wing mob.
The conservative students at UC Berkeley and other campuses are in an environment where the faculty in the social sciences and humanities probably have more Marxists than conservatives. Yet those students blithely attend classes without a peep of protest.
We know what would happen if the tables were turned. Bob Wiegand
Anaheim campaigns to sow doubt and discredit scientific consensus when it conflicts with the interests of the wealthy and powerful. Tobacco companies long denied a link between cigarettes and cancer; now it’s the oil companies that ridicule and denigrate climate science. They do it to protect their financial stake in fossil fuels.
With deniers in power in Washington, scientists took to the streets in an act of desperation. They told us we must address climate change now. We should listen. Ann Rushton
Sherman Oaks ::
On first reading, Du Sautoy’s eloquent piece aroused my hopes. Why not try to win over science doubters with explanations of how scientists arrived at their conclusions?
But then reality intruded: Most such doubters are devout souls intent on believing what they want to believe. Far too much of their psyche (and treasure) is invested in abiding their faiths’ tenets to accept contrary truths.
So we suffer an unhinged president who panders to religious zealots susceptible to piously packaged promises and slogans that reject demonstrable facts. Plus, we have a vice president who touts himself as a Christian first and foremost and has advocated teaching creationism in public schools.
As support for the fact-challenged Trump administration fades, perhaps more and more doubters will become open to scientific truths. Devra Mindell
Santa Monica