ALL WALLS, NO BRIDGES

Thomas Jefferson's reference to the wall of separation between Church and State has helped canonize walls in our political discourse. But of course there are walls and there are walls. Take for instance some of the most famous: The Chinese Wall, Hadrian's Wall, and the Berlin Wall. The first two to keep them out, and the third to keep them in.

Right now Washington DC is a landscape of all walls and no bridges. And that can hardly be good.

It is a given that there will be walls (or separation of powers) among the legislative, executive and judicial branches. This represents the genius of the Founding Fathers. However, when there are walls within the walls, have we not out-built ourselves? Right now this is what we find within the Supreme Court itself. An institution built upon the premise of consensus is now a judicial battleground of 5-4 votes between warring factors waging battle from behind their receptive right/left walls.

Justice Kennedy has arguably been dubbed the "swing vote." As he goeth so goeth the court...? Not exactly what those Founding Fathers envisioned. Nor did they seek this battle-of-walls to prevail during the confirmation hearings as well. These are now some of the bloodiest most ideologically silly confrontaions in the nation.

History records that most walls eventually fall. While that can become an achievement in the affairs of men, the achievement is usually incomplete until we can replace the walls with some bridges. And that, my fellow architects, is usually the harder of the two to construct...