The American Standard Bearer

The national debate over immigration reminds me of Jed Clampett, who while “shootin’ for some food,” inadvertently created a gusher.  What started off as the relatively innocuous Minute Man Project grew into a national debate and is now quickly growing out of control. And the Mexican flag is at the center of the storm.

Even a high school principal has stupidly jumped into the fray by raising the Mexican flag along with the American flag and the Texas flag on the high school flagpole. Houston school officials thankfully had the sense to order Reagan High School Principal Robert Pambello to take the Mexican flag down, but the damage was done. The message that Pambello and others, including millions of illegal Mexicans, are sending is clear – contempt for the United States and the rule of law.

University of Houston professor Raul Ramos in defending the overt use of the Mexican flag said, “Most students at Reagan High School have relatives or ancestors from Mexico. The flag represents Mexican heritage as much if not more than citizenship.” But this begs the question, then why are they here and not in Mexico? Ramos’ statement exposes the problem – they are here to take advantage of American generosity with no accompanying sense of obligation.

America is full of people from every different heritage imaginable, yet, we’re not all clambering to run our own flags up the high school flagpole.

You may have heard the theory that President Bush is a member in good standing of the Illuminati, that mythical organization affiliated with the Free Masons whose goal is to hasten a One World Government. I personally don’t buy into conspiracy theories, but there may be something to this.

The open borders crowd, which includes prominent individuals on both the left and the right, likes to continually remind us less-informed creatures that immigration is good for America. The problem is, in the context of the current debate, they confuse immigration with the all-out assault we are experiencing on our southern border. Many of the open borders crowd are highly suspect but many are intelligent, knowledgeable and level-headed and I find it hard to believe that the confusion they are creating is an accident.

Rather, I think they believe that the noble goal to which they aspire requires some pain, much like childbirth. Of course, they also believe that the Mexicans swarming past our meager border patrols are here to taste the American dream and all of that. But the facts tell a different story.

What we saw this past week were scenes of thousands of marchers in the streets and thousands of Mexican flags waving but what the cowardly, or should I say complicit media failed to show us were Mexicans attacking other Mexicans for carrying American flags, Mexicans burning American flags, and the signs that said things like, “We Didn’t Cross The Border – The Border Crossed Us!”

If Congress fails to act, and lets face it, that’s what Congress does best, look for the unrest and violence to escalate. The solutions that various Senators and Representatives are huffing and puffing about this week are not solutions at all, they are smoke and mirrors and they know it. Mexicans here illegally are not about to turn themselves in knowing they will be rewarded with a fine and eventual deportation.

As I see it, the only real solution is to criminalize the employment of illegals. Make it a felony to hire or in any way employ an illegal and the job market for illegal immigrants will dry up. This will never happen, of course, because powerful lobbies like the National Restaurant Association will never let it happen, so let the fireworks begin.

The left wing media (that’s 90% of all media, folks) has either downplayed, ignored or flat-out challenged the stories of the terrific abundance of Mexican flags at immigration protest rallies around the country. But thanks to some intrepid reporting by the likes of Michelle Malkin, some shocking photos, including these showing Mexicans at a California high school raising the Mexican flag above an upside-down American flag, are surfacing that put the debate to rest.

Amid all the noise surrounding the immigration reform bills bouncing around Congress, what is getting lost is the dawning realization that we are seeing the first glimpses of a new war to be fought on U.S. soil. The enemy are the rafts of illegal immigrants, mostly from Mexico, who are not the least bit interested in U.S. citizenship. They are here to scoop up as much as they can for themselves with no regard for the Americans who have enabled them to improve their lives.

The legions of immigrants pouring over our borders daily are being enabled by employers who selfishly see the immigrant labor pool as a tool to gain advantage over competition. However, as with any competitive advantage that is easy to aquire, the competition catches on and then what was once an advantage becomes a neccessity.

But contrary to what the open borders folks preach, the illegal immigrant work force is a severe drain on the economy for a number of reasons. For starters, employers don’t pay into Social Security and illegals don’t pay income tax, so the rest of us are forced to foot the bill. Then there are hot-button issues like health care. Illegals generally do not have coverage of any kind, so what is not being covered by private funding ends up being funded by us in the form of huge insurance premiums.

But by far, the most damage is being done to the paychecks of blue-collar Americans. Businesses that play by the rules and hire only legal citizens are being forced to compete with the businesses who hire illegals, hence Walmart and many, many other legitimate companies are faced with mounting pressure to keep the payroll as trim as possible.

It’s doubtful that the vast majority of Americans are going to stand by much longer and watch as their personal economic situations deteriorate while Mexican immigrants deliberately disgrace the American flag while hoisting the Mexican flag as a symbol of defiance.

If I had to guess, I’d say the average American knows it’s OK to burn an American flag, at least in the legal sense. But Australians are apparently woefully ignorant of their own laws on the subject.

Australia currently has no prohibitions against desecrating the flag, but a bill has been introduced in Parlaiment that, if passed, would impose a hefty six-month jail term. The bill was brought to Parlaiment by Bronwyn Bishop who noted, “The general public, when it finds out that it is not against the law to destroy our flag, are quite shocked, and my bill is very targeted.”

The bill, which is still a long shot, simply states that it will be a crime “to wilfully destroy or otherwise mutilate the flag in circumstances where a reasonable person would infer that the destruction or mutilation is intended publicly to express contempt or disrespect of the flag or the Australian nation.”

Now that the general public has found out that it’s not a crime to burn the Australian flag, don’t be surprised if the perpetually discontented segment of the population gets some flag burning in while it’s still legal.

The American flag is the powerful symbol of an ideal that thousands upon thousands of Americans have fought and died to preserve. That ideal, loosely expressed, is that as an American citizen, no single individual has the authority to deny you the freedoms guaranteed you by the Constitution. Instead, American citizens are guaranteed fair and equal treatment under the laws that exist within the framework of the Constitution.

The question of whether the rights of U.S. citizens extend to the inmates at Guantanamo will come before the Supreme Court this week. Regardless of what the over-heated commies at the ACLU would like us to believe, our constitutional rights are a privilege of citizenship and do not extend to non-citizens. Period.

The thought that captured enemies of the United States, otherwise known as people who would like to kill us, would be afforded the privileges of citizenship in a U.S. court of law,  is thoroughly repulsive. And the people who support that view are despicable.

The legal lizards who hide under that rock called the ACLU and the smug denizens of the liberal media who consider themselves too sophisticated for the likes of you and I are beating the drum for the release of the Gitmo “detainees.” Perhaps knowing that they will fail in their attempts to have our enemies tried in U.S. civil courts, they cite the Geneva Convention, but they won’t be able to make that stick either.

The Geneva Convention clearly applies only to enemy soldiers captured in battle and not to terrorists that wish to attack civilians within our borders. Let’s get real here – no prisoners of war have ever, in the long history of mankind, been treated as well as the Gitmo “detainees.”

The hyperventilating left is falling all over themselves in a rush to provide aid and comfort to the enemy while condemning the victims of 9/11 as somehow deserving of their fate. While they have the right to spout venemous hatred for America and to burn stolen American flags, they don’t have the right to usurp the U.S. Constitution in order to force a dangerously twisted agenda on the rest of us.

Downtown Phoenix was a sea of marchers yesterday, but in place of American flags, many in the crowd waved the flag of Mexico. Like foxes protesting the farmer’s desire to keep them out of the henhouse, a large percentage of the crowd were illegal immigrants from Mexico incensed by the fact that the U.S. government may take steps to identify them and extricate them from U.S. soil.

What is at stake is nothing less than the ability of the United States to remain a sovereign nation. The profusion of Mexican flags and the lack of American flags plainly reveals the motives of the Hispanic participants. Numerous radical Hispanic groups maintain that most of the southwestern U.S. was stolen from Mexico 150 years ago and they’re taking it back. And they’re doing it with a massive amount of assistance of non-Hispanic Americans.

There are a significant number of Americans, raised in an atmosphere of peace and safety, who cling to a notion of a world without borders. One confused 29-year-old non-Hispanic in the crowd, Malissa Greer, expressed that sentiment in this absurd way, “God created all of us. He’s not a God of the United States, he’s a God of the world.”

While I agree wholeheartedly with Greer’s statement, it has absolutely nothing to do with the current situation. Thousands upon thousands of Mexicans as well as a significant number of people from other countries are streaming across our border with Mexico carrying with them utter contempt for U.S. law. It’s true that the majority of the illegals are working for a living, but they are also reaping the benefits of free education, free health care and a lot of other assistance that most Americans can’t obtain but are forced to pay for through taxes.

The fact that Mexicans are coming here illegally and taking as much as we will give them while waving the Mexican flag in our face should serve as a warning to the American people. If we fail to control our borders soon, the decades of peace and safety we’ve enjoyed will be over.

In the modern lexicon, “Old Glory” has become a colorful way of referring to the American flag. But there is one original Old Glory and it’s still in existence today. The giant 10′x 17′ American flag currently resides at the Tennessee State Museum, on loan from the Smithsonian.

It was originally made for William Driver, a young sea captain from Massachusetts who was so overcome with the beauty of his new flag that he dubbed it “Old Glory,” and continued to refer to it by that name for the remainder of his life.

After his wife died in 1837, he moved to Nashville wher he flew the flag on national holidays and his birthday until the Civil War forced him to hide it. According to legend, Driver sewed the flag into a quilt where it remained until Union troops eventually marched into Nashville.

“Old Glory” today has 33 stars, the number of stars on the American flag at the outbreak of the Civil War, but it originally had just 24. The flag was last updated in 1860 and features a ship’s anchor in the corner of the canton.

Here’s proof that Ruth Marcus of the Washington Post was dead wrong in her assessment that President Bush suffers from a heaping helping of “Manliness.”

In response to the revelation that an Afghan court will quite possibly sentence a man to death for converting to Christianity, Bush said that he is “deeply troubled.” Deeply troubled? “Deeply troubled” may be a lot of things, but in no way is it a manly response. The impression I get is that Bush read the Marcus column and is trying to show a little restraint and introspection and a dash of self-doubt.

A better response would have been to come on national television and tell the American people that he will not let this trial continue, then get on the horn to Afghan President Hamid Karzai, “Look here Karzai, If it weren’t for us, you’d still be holed up in some closet or cave somewhere, so I’m gonna tell you what I want you to do. Put an end to this circus of a trial and tell your people that starting now, Afghanistan is joining the rest of the civilized world. We’re not spilling more American blood while you invite the butchers back in. No more two-bit Muslim clerics peddling barbarism. And if that doesn’t work for you – fine. We’ll just pack up our American flags and head home and you can high-tail it back to your cave.”

While the above Bush monologue is only the product of my fertile and slightly twisted imagination, something similar may have actually played out. The prosecution in the case has indicated that Abdul Rahman may be mentally unfit to stand trial and a spokesman for President Karzai has said that if Rahman is in fact mentally unfit, the charges will be dropped. The notion that Rahman is mentally unfit is entirely bogus and is an obvious ploy  that allows the Karzai government to squelch the matter while saving face with his people.

But Bush still has a problem in that as Commander-in-Chief of the U.S. forces, he showed ambivalence towards our reason for being in Afghanistan. He had an opportunity to demonstrate to the American people that we won’t allow the thugs of the Muslim world to ply their sadistic programs of fear and violence in Afghanistan, and he blew it.

American flag-waving patriots beware. Harvard professor Harvey C. Mansfield has just written a book entitled “Manliness” and Ruth Marcus of the Washington Post has cleverly and wrongly applied Mansfield’s principles to the Bush administration. If the Marcus editorial is a harbinger of a new tactic of the Dump Bush Squad, it is to our peril.

Where Mansfield sees a dearth of Manliness in action, Marcus sees too much of it,  particularly in the person of George Bush, and she thinks other qualities to guide our leadership may just be in order. Marcus asserts, “What this country could use is a little less manliness — and a little more of what you would describe as womanly qualities: restraint, introspection, a desire for consensus, maybe even a touch of self-doubt.”

That sounds all nice and rosy, in a sensitive kind of way, but where would that leave us? The harsh reality of the world, and I wish it were not the case, is that there are vast chunks of the world population who believe that violence is the natural and proper way to settle differences. These nasty folks would look at the “womanly qualities” that Murcus lists in only one way – as weakness.

And as there is very little difference between a wild animal and a man who would execute another man for becoming a Christian, the wild animal is predisposed to attack percieved weakness. An American President who openly displays self-doubt will be leading the American people to slaughter.

There is a reason why so many attempts to change our National Anthem have failed. The song recounts the actual experience of Francis Scott Key when, after witnessing an attack on the American mainland, sees that the giant American flag flying over Fort McHenry is still intact. War is not glorified but rather, the fortitude of Americans to withstand attack and prevail.

If we listed the qualities that were displayed by the Americans who endured that 24-hour bombardment, you can bet that “restraint, introspection, a desire for consensus” or “self doubt” would not make the list.

President Bush’s observation that Islam is a “religion of peace” will someday return to haunt his legacy. A little more than four years since the American flag was raised in the Afghan capitol of Kabul, the Islamic leaders that took over from the Taliban are proving that they are no better.

In a country where American blood was spilled to free the Afghan people from the sadistic clutches of Islamic extremists, it turns out that the sadism wasn’t the invention of the Taliban but rather, simply the canons of Islamic law.

Abdul Rahman, an Afghan citizen, has been arrested and accused of a crime against Islam. He is currently on trial in Kabul and his crime is so heinous that if convicted, he will most likely face execution. And what exactly did Rahman do to deserve such a harsh sentence? Why, he converted to Christianity.

Here in America, I suspect that the news has created a party atmosphere in ACLU offices across the land. And I also suspect that more sober observers will rationalize Mr. Rahman’s quandry by noting that Afghanistan is, after all, an Islamic country. When in Rome, do as the Romans do.

American soldiers fought and died so that the American flag could be raised in Afghanistan as a symbol of freedom and justice, so where’s the freedom and justice? The judge excuses his barbarism with this nonchalant comment, “We are not against any particular religion in the world. But in Afghanistan, this sort of thing is against the law. It is an attack on Islam.”

Obviously, the Muslims in Afghanistan aren’t afraid to admit that Islamic law is both intolerant and barbarous, at least in the eyes of civilized humanity. Islamic apologists in the West however, including seeming enemies like Cindy Sheehan and President Bush, go out of the way to put lipstick on this pig.

This seemingly insignificant trial halfway around the world points directly to the truth of what we in the civilized world are facing. The enemy is clearly not “extremism” or “radical Islam” but Islam itself. Under the noses of the U.S. military and in plain sight of Congress and the White House, Muslims in an official capacity are calmly commiting horrific acts of inhumanity. Consider how Abdul Wasi, the prosecuting attorney in the case, sums it up, “We are Muslims, and becoming a Christian is against our laws. He must get the death penalty.”

South Park, that raunchy cartoon and equal opportunity lampooner for children over the age of 18, satirizes just about everything including the American flag. In fact, I just completed some brief research and I was able to find a half dozen examples where the American flag is mocked, which in the context of the show is really no big deal.

A more egregious example and a favorite target for creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker is Jesus, who lives in South Park and has a radio program. That Christians (or even non-Christians who aren’t predisposed to find the F word repeated over and over again particularly funny) might find this show offensive, has never been an issue.

South Park airs on cable, not a broadcast network, and is therefore not subject to FCC rules and besides, this is America. Free speech is the law of the land. The self-righteous and self-appointed defenders of American freedom who also happen to be those slippery members of the Screen Actors Guild will defend the right of South Park to trash the American flag and Christians till the cows come home.

But in the land of Hollywood, where throwing Christians to the lions in the figurative sense is a popular pastime, tolerance and free speech cannot be tolerated when it comes to poking fun at Scientology. For those of you who are unfamiliar with Scientology, it is the invention of L. Ron Hubbard, a science fiction novelist. Hubbard had some difficulty hitting the big-time with his novels, primarliy because they weren’t any good, so he hit on the idea of starting his own religion that he could charge people money to join. The rest is a very lucrative history.

Scientology has gained quite a following in Hollywood, including actors Tom Cruise and John Travolta, presumably because people with a lot of excess cash don’t mind spending it on initiation fees to join a religion, as long as that religion isn’t Christian. And now the Hollywood Scientologists, led by Cruise have come down hard on South Park.

Comedy Central this week pulled a South Park episode from the line-up because it apparently takes some swipes at Scientology. Comedy Central parent Viacom is also the outfit that will be soon be releasing Mission Impossible 3 starring Cruise and it’s obvious that he’s behind the censor although he officially denies it.

The South Park episode reportedly features Cruise and Travolta in the typical unflattering way that the show depicts everyone else. Also offended is singer Issac Hayes who does the voice of one of the South Park characters. Hayes has tendered his resignation from the show after expressing disgust with the show’s insensitivity towards religion in general.

South Park’s Stone however, disagrees with that assesment, saying of Hayes, “This is 100 percent having to do with his faith in Scientology…He has no problem and he’s cashed plenty of checks with our show making fun of Christians.”

The moral of the story is this: Portraying Christians in the most offensive ways imaginable will make you a hero with the Hollywood left. Stray off the reservation, particularly with Scientology or Islam, and you could end up the target of a Hollywood Jihad.