America First

I don't care what flags you like to fly. If you want to fly a Mexican, Swiss, British, Saudi, or Chinese flag, I'm fine. Fly your flag in the U.S. Whatever.

But when you fly the U.S. flag upside down, below the Mexican flag, in front of a U.S.-financed public school, that many of you are illegally attending: yeah, I take offense. Seriously, just leave.

I know that story is several days old now, but I saw today that some students are now being suspended for bringing American flags to school. The reasoning goes that the flag might be "offensive" to some, so the U.S. and Mexican flags are banned. A flag should not, as one administrator in California said, be used as a rhetorical "weapon."

There's something to be said for that notion. He called such use of the flag "desecration," and I can dig that. But in the United States, if the U.S. flag is offensive to you, then you are the problem. No one should rub it in your face just to tick you off, but they would not be able to if you weren't the problem.

Who would be in the U.S., attending public schools, and be offended by the American flag? Who would consider it a "weapon" against them? Only people who hate the U.S., or want to subjugate the U.S. to Mexico, or are simply not in their right minds. And I don't really care about not offending any of those three groups of people.

I'm very tolerant. Live and let live. Don't hurt anyone else, and do as you please. But a serious line is crossed when you are in my country and want to subjugate my country for yours. My tolerance does not extend toward you wanting to take away my country from me, which is, of course, the real goal of many of the people here: to claim California for Mexico.

Obviously, that's not the goal of everyone. Some immigrants -- most, I hope -- do love America and simply want to become Americans, or at least, respect our country while they are our guests (not that I don't recognize the cognitive dissonance required of them to respect our country while willfully violating our immigration laws). But the people who turned the U.S. flag upside down and under the Mexican flag are not among them. These people do not want to be Americans, nor do they have a minimum of respect for America. And they should therefore leave.

Then there's the ANSWER coalition, which is organizing the economic boycott on May 1: everyone stop working for a day to prove that workers are the backbone of the economy. Or something. They don't want to return California to Mexico, they just want worldwide communism, with open borders between all countries, until no countries are left, only workers.

They tried this boycott already in California. Far from hurting the economy, it only hurt the public schools: L.A. schools lost $5 million because of all the students who didn't attend school that day. So I guess I have no real reason to oppose the boycott, since it's likely doomed to failure.

To the extent the immigration debate is about immigrants becoming Americans, I think most Americans can get behind our immigrants, even if they believe we still need to reduce immigration and secure the borders toward that end, and for security purposes. But the ugly truth is that this is not the whole story. And if by some incredible circumstances the ANSWER boycott is successful, then we will know that far more of our immigrants have ulterior motives than we thought.