The Border Between the U.S. and Mexico is More than Just a Line on the Map

The Border Between the U.S. and Mexico is More than Just a Line on the Map.

It is one of the few places on earth where nothing but a line on a map separates the third world from the first...

But it is more than a line separating two countries. It is a boundary separating two philosophies that can trace their origins back to the Roman Empire and the Germanic tribes that resisted their autocratic rule...

By the time Columbus set sail for the New World, Spain had revived the Roman political system.  The government was very centralized and the state, in the form of the king, was above all. Her kings had the same authority over his subjects as that of the most powerful Caesar... The duty of the common man was to obey his king and pay his taxes. He had no rights, not even to life itself. The state dominated, if not controlled all economic activity, which would result in Spain having a peasantry until the 1970s.

The Saxon tribes that resisted Roman subjugation had a very different political culture. Their leader was often elected and his authority was limited by a body of elders. The king was considered the first among equals and he served his people rather that the other way around...

Most importantly, freemen owned property in their own right and the government had very little influence on the economic activity of his people. This form of government would make its way to England and by the time of Columbus would make the values of the English people very distinct to that of continental Europe. England would develop a classical liberal style of government based principles of limited government, individual rights, private property, and free-market economics.

While Romanized Spain was conducting its Inquisition, enslaving the native populations of the New World, and exploiting its people, England was waging a war, both internally and externally, against arbitrary rule. This struggle for individual freedom would result in documents such as the Magna Carta and the Declaration of Rights of 1689...

This was no surprise to Alexis de Tocqueville, who observed nearly two centuries ago that colonies inherited their political culture from their colonial masters. And while North America inherited liberty from their English masters, the Spanish colonies were bequeathed Roman authoritarianism...

This is why there is so much disparity between the Saxonized United States and Canada and their Romanized neighbors to the south. One side unleashes the potential of the individual, creating freedom and prosperity for the society as a whole. The other sees the common man as nothing more than a subject, there to serve the needs of the elite controlled state. One becomes a flourishing modern democracy with a vibrant financial system, while the other remains stagnant with a peasant-style economy...