The following excerpt is in response to an anonymous advocate of closed borders. Pat Brock writes in response:

I would not support closing borders. I advocate eliminating them.

Isolation will not fix this problem.

The people of the middle east are not genetically significantly different from anyone else. Most significantly they differ by culture & experience. This is because they have been historically isolated by vast deserts. In the age of jet travel & the internet, this isolation is no longer necessary.

The peoples of the Soviet Union were once artificially isolated. Once the Soviets learned about all the wonderful things that were going on in the rest of the world, they wanted to be part of it & the ‘iron curtain’ came down.

The ‘terrorism’ problem will never go away. There will always be deranged, disgruntled, & alienated people in the world who will resort to violence as a remedy for their perceived frustrations. The alienation part is a thing we can do something about. People with these frustrations can be created anywhere. We have seen them in Norway, China, & Oklahoma City.

What would be the next step? Should America close state borders? Should we set up check points on the highways between cities?

We have to get over this fear of others. It is not only a colossal waste resources, it degrades the joy we might feel in our all-to-brief lives.

You have a statistically greater chance of dying from slipping in the bathtub than dying from a terrorist attack, not to mention the profound risk you accept in just driving a car to the market.

As I previously stated, there will always be destructive individuals, but they are diminishing as a percentage of the population. Many studies have substantiated that we now live in the safest period in human history, with a smaller portion of the people dying violent deaths than ever before.

At some point we will have to learn to live together on this planet in relative harmony, or humanity is doomed. Artificial borders only serve to forestall the inevitable by keeping us separated & unaware of one another’s humanity.

Opening Cuba to Americans is one of the few things Obama has done that I agree with. I have been advocating it for years. I have long failed to understand how the “land of the free” could justify curtailing its citizens’ freedom to fraternize & do business with the Cuban people. Just look at what it has done. The Cuban culture has hardly changed in more than a half a century. The isolation only served to freeze, in time, the Castros’ control of the island nation.

Closed borders only serve to empower the demagogues who impose them.