A Muslim by the name of Amina Ahra is facing criminal charges after she converted a flag pole — one hoisting Old Glory, no less — into a weapon in an effort to harm a Lawrenceville, Georgia, family. According to FOX 5 Atlanta, here’s how one of the victims, Dami Arno, explained the incident: “A lady walked out of our woods in a full Burka, full attire, stares at us for a minute, then grabs my American flag off of my mailbox and charges towards us with it, just swinging it with all her might.”

Thankfully, no injuries were reported, and Ahra eventually was taken into custody and presumably will now spend time behind bars. The episode was unnerving for the Arnos, to say the least, but this situation is particularly gut-wrenching given the circumstances. As Arno put it, “I have friends who have fought and died for the red, white and blue. When she took it down, it was not disrespect, it was not a slap in the face, it was a punch to the gut.” It was, to put it another way, demonstrable hate for Western culture. And it gets to the crux of the problems we face with open borders and when foreigners refuse to assimilate.

In a new column, “Walls and Immigration — Ancient and Modern,” historian Victor Davis Hanson sets the rhetoric aside and reflects on the effectiveness of border walls. He writes, “We moderns often laugh at walls and fortified boundaries, dismissing them as hopelessly retrograde, ineffective or unnecessary. Yet they still seem to fulfill their mission on the Israeli border, the 38th parallel in Korea and the Saudi-Iraqi boundary, separating disparate states.”

He adds: “Today, the European Union has few problems with members that do not enforce their interior borders. But European nations are desperate to keep the continent from being overwhelmed by migrants from North Africa and the Middle East. Like the Romans, some individual EU nations are building fences and walls to keep out thousands of non-European migrants, both for economic and national security reasons. Many Middle Easterners want to relocate to Europe for its material and civilizational advantages over their homes in Algeria, Iraq, Libya, Morocco or Syria. Yet many new arrivals are highly critical of Western popular culture, permissiveness and religion — to the extent of not wanting to assimilate into the very culture into which they rushed.”

Hanson concludes, “Historically … walls are needed only when neighboring societies are opposites — and when large numbers of migrants cross borders without necessarily wishing to become part of what they are fleeing to. These are harsh and ancient lessons about human nature, but they are largely true and timeless.”