News and Commentary

VIVA MEXICO! Now Get To Work.

   DailyWire.com

Trump’s wall seems to have re-awoken in Mexicans a fierce patriotism that we may not have seen since the days of Poncho Villa tweaking gringo noses a century ago.

We know this movement is serious and consequential because the Mexicans have deployed theater-specific, state-of-the-art hashtags aimed directly at the American homeland: #AdiosProductosGringos is one of them, but for those who do not speak Spanish there is also #AdiosStarbucks, #AdiosMcDonalds and #AdiosCocaCola.

Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto – coming off an approval rating of twelve percent a few weeks ago – exclaimed that “Today like never before, I feel proud to be Mexican.” He may not qualify as the George Washington of his nation, but he has an excellent shot at becoming the Michelle Obama of Mexico.

Well, ain’t that grand? I’m not kidding, either. I think a surge of Mexican patriotism is exactly what Mexico needs.

I consider myself to be an American patriot. Dense, flabby, left-wing people in Starbucks or McDonald’s, drinking their Productos Gringos usually assume that being an American patriot, it must enrage me to see Mexican ones. As usual for our progressive children, that’s exactly backwards.

I am very happy to see a resurgence of Mexican patriotism because I understand patriotism. I know the power it has, for good or evil depending on whose country is doing the patriot-ing. That is why I can both despise Vladimir Putin as a ruthless dictator and at the same time admire his patriotic desire to make his country strong and respectable again. Why, there’s a hint of that in the air around these parts as well, lately.

We have a border problem with Mexico. We do not have a border problem with Canada. That’s because Canada works, and Mexico doesn’t. Canada and the United States work because we speak English; everything south of the proposed wall doesn’t work because they speak Spanish.

It’s not the language that’s the difference. Language is a handy marker, but if all Canadians and Americans were forced to speak Spanish and Mexicans forced to speak English, nothing much would change.

The Spanish / English divide is a cultural line dividing two different strategies for dealing with the unexpected gift of an entirely new world.

Spaniards came to the western hemisphere as military conquerors, whose only real reason for coming all this way was to loot and pillage and steal the gold and silver and jewels of an extant civilization, and ship it back to buy things in Europe – like a few Armadas, for example. Their soldiers colonized the regions that now speak Spanish.

In El Norte, quite the opposite happened. The primarily English, primarily protestant arrivals were not military conquerors: they were farmers. They didn’t come to steal resources; they came to develop them. And they weren’t here to sack the place and go home. America was their home. They were here to stay because their hearts were here to stay. They loved the land. That’s what patriotism means.

I hope that this wall jolts Mexico out of their self-inflicted misery. The Mexicans I have known here in Los Angeles are some of the kindest, most family-oriented and most especially hardest-working people I have ever met. Perhaps their re-discovered pride will make them take a close look at a government that steals from them the way the Conquistadors have always stolen from them. And more than anything, I hope that a love of their own land will motivate them to build it into a prosperous, free, law-abiding society where hard work pays off and laws are enforced.

Maybe this wall of Donald Trump’s will save both of our countries.

Got a tip worth investigating?

Your information could be the missing piece to an important story. Submit your tip today and make a difference.

Submit Tip
The Daily Wire   >  Read   >  VIVA MEXICO! Now Get To Work.