The Patriot Post® · May Day! May Day!

Cinco de Mayo has come and gone for another year, but the stench of political correctness lingers on.

By this time, every liberal airhead from San Francisco’s Mayor Gavin Newsome to New York’s Mayor Michael Bloomberg has piled on Arizona’s Governor Brewer. And, although I may have misunderstood them, I’m pretty sure I heard President Obama and Attorney General Holder agree that a large fence should finally be built. Not at our southern border, however, but around Arizona.

On the other hand, it’s nice to know that there is at least one state that Obama is prepared to get tough with, even if it’s not Iran, Syria or North Korea.

As for those kids in Morgan Hill, California, who thought Cinco de Mayo was a good time to wear clothes decorated with Old Glory to school, I can only say they should have known better. These days, the only country we Americans are discouraged from honoring is our own. In today’s climate, the five kids were probably lucky they were merely sent home by the vice-principal and not horse-whipped during lunch.

In California, things have reached such a sorry state, that textbooks, no doubt taking their lead from Obama, pay tribute to Islam, but not Christianity or Judaism. Students are even told to come to school one day during the semester dressed as a Muslim. Suicide bombs, I believe, are optional.

One Latina student at Live Oak High School said it was disrespectful of Daniel Galli and his four friends to wear their flags on a day meant to honor Mexicans. She compared Cinco de Mayo to the 4th of July. This tells me something about the way that history is taught in Morgan Hill. July 4th, after all, celebrates the birth of the United States, and is a date that should be celebrated in every freedom-loving nation on the face of the earth. Cinco de Mayo, on the other hand, commemorates a day in 1862 when the Mexicans defeated the French at the Battle of Puebla.

Just for the record, it was about 40 years ago that I drove down to Tijuana in order to write a piece about the way the occasion was celebrated south of the border. The answer, I discovered, is that it wasn’t. When I asked Tijuanans if there was a parade or a festival on the schedule, they said “Que?” a lot, and gave me even funnier looks than I was accustomed to getting. In short, it is of such minor importance that even Mexicans don’t know about it.

Now, even though I think the Hispanic kids and the vice-principal at Live Oak High over-reacted, I must confess that I am all in favor of reminding people of any event in which the French are embarrassed.

Still, the fact that they actually fought a battle, even one that took place 148 years ago, is newsworthy in itself. How the event happened to take place at Puebla is open to conjecture. For my part, I can only assume that the French soldier in charge of carrying the white flag either overslept or dawdled over his morning espresso.

(Don’t miss Burt’s book, “Liberals: America’s Termites” – signed copies are available at the Patriot Shop.)