Do Americans really want to live with walls and armed guards?

In reply to Wayne Allyn Root’s Sunday column (“Walls, voter ID and Anthem Country Club”), I would like to say that I do not want to live in a nation where one lives in communities with walls, armed guards and thick iron gates and everyone entering this fortress must have “government-issued IDs.” This is not the America that I was raised and grew up in or wish to spend the rest of my life in. Cities surrounded with walls and armed guards are representative of the “Old World” that people came to America in order to escape from.

If Mr. Root would venture out from the bubble in which he lives to engage with people of various ethnic, racial and religious backgrounds, he might not feel so paranoid about the outside world. Maybe he can begin with sitting down with his new neighbor, Harry Reid, and talking about the issues that seem to divide them