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The Wall on the Highway – A Parable

By Brian | November 28, 2009 | Share on Facebook

One afternoon, two men were walking alongside a highway. As they came over a small hill, they were surprised to see that someone had built a brick wall right in the middle of the road. The wall was perpendicular to the road, and went from shoulder to shoulder, making it impossible for anyone or anything to pass. As the two men discussed how impractical the wall was, a car came driving over the hill. Failing to see the wall in time, the car crashed into the wall head-on, killing everyone inside. The men were outraged.

Topics: Political Rantings | 10 Comments »

10 Responses to “The Wall on the Highway – A Parable”

  1. Jason says at November 28th, 2009 at 7:32 pm :
    Can I be neither and just stay home and be lazy?

  2. Brian says at November 29th, 2009 at 12:10 am :
    In real life? Yes. In the parable, no. In the parable, you must choose a side… ;-)

  3. Jason says at November 29th, 2009 at 12:19 am :
    ok what about if I just forget the detours and forget the politicians and just destroy the wall? (or pay someone to do it)

  4. Brian says at November 29th, 2009 at 12:26 am :
    Ladies and gentlemen, the third man! Yet another approach to solving the same problem. Let us all roundly criticize him for eschewing the other two men.

    And let us do so on Fox News and MSNBC….

  5. Jeff Porten says at December 1st, 2009 at 12:33 pm :
    Brian — that’s very cute, but that’s not a parable which reflects any political reality I’m aware of. If the two men are the political parties, then it’s more accurate to postulate:

    * Both men privately spend hours determining which of their existing supporters built the wall and profit by it, how many of them mix mortar, and whether they’ve received any donations from the local adobe industry.

    * Both men go off and give speeches to garner public support. One man advocates tearing down the wall, and ensuring that walls are heavily regulated. The other states that walls are a social problem which cannot be solved by either man, but the proper way to solve the problem is to give money to people who either tear down walls, or to pay people not to build walls. A third man (probably carrying a MacBook, smoking a cigarette, and carrying a vent coffee) will note that it’s a public frickin’ road and why is anyone building walls on it, and will go off to blog about it.

    * There’s a fourth man with an armful of detour signs. He’s likely to be related to someone who died at the wall, and he gets the job done with grim and cheap efficiency. When the first two men hear about the fourth man, one extols him but does little to actually help, while the other makes fun of community organizing.

    But your essential problem is that walls are easy. In this case, it’s easy to understand the motivations of both men and try to come to some agreement. I can’t think of a way to analogize this to Afghanistan or health care–except to point out the bankruptcy of “damn, sledgehammers are expensive” as a counter to “people are dying here”. More to the point, when both men see their primary purpose as beating the hell out of each other, and cementing their own power, the analogy falls flat until you state that the road is lined with other men for a distance of ten miles, each handing the first two men money.

    I rarely have a problem putting myself in the shoes of my ideological opponents–but only when they have logical, comprehensible arguments. There’s no way, by way of example, I could understand the logic of someone arguing that Palin would be a good president. The Republicans have reduced themselves to shrill demagoguery across the board, making them incomprehensible. The Democrats are not much better–but the better they do achieve should not be dismissed, as your analogy does.

  6. Brian says at December 1st, 2009 at 5:50 pm :
    I rarely have a problem putting myself in the shoes of my ideological opponents…

    There

  7. Jeff Porten says at December 3rd, 2009 at 9:05 pm :
    The way I see it, you are the quintessential first man.

    That’s amusing, as while I tend to support political proposals of the first man variety, in my own activism I’m usually the guy organizing signs.

    You simply cannot account for the possibility that the second man

  8. Brian says at December 4th, 2009 at 12:10 pm :
    But some divisions don

  9. Jeff Porten says at December 6th, 2009 at 7:17 pm :
    I

  10. Brian says at December 6th, 2009 at 11:01 pm :
    The other way I remember it is that absolutely no one listened to anyone arguing the same points. I