Vin Suprynowicz

I don’t know how it facilitates a sober, studious, academic environment to allow kids at Live Oak High School in Morgan Hill, Cal. to EITHER wear American flag gear or paint their faces and bodies in red, white, and green to celebrate Cinco de Mayo (a fun Mexican holiday but still a fairly minor one, the date of an insignificant victory over the invading French no longer even observed as a federal holiday in Mexico, instead having apparently grown popular in this country after being promoted as a marketing gimmick by the distributors of Corona beer. If Mexicans hate the French so much why do they keep playing Mariachi music?)

Though perhaps it’s my use of adjectives like “studious” and “academic” in connection with a modern government-run high school that’s really absurd.

At any rate, it surely showed the Three Stooges level to which current “multicultural” political correctness has descended when Assistant Principal Miguel Rodriguez at said youth propaganda camp on May 5 told a group of Anglo kids they had to turn their American-flag T-shirts inside-out or be sent home.

One of the boys’ mothers told NBC Bay Area, “They said we could wear it on any other day, but today is sensitive to Mexican-Americans because it’s supposed to be their holiday so we were not allowed to wear it.”

As the Review-Journal editorialized last week, “Mind you, the kids could have worn red T-shirts with a gold hammer and sickle, or shirts displaying the countenance of a mass murderer such as Mao, Lenin, or Che Guevara — that would have been fine. In fact, more than 100 students were spotted wearing the colors of the Mexican flag — red, white and green — as they left the school, including some who had those colors painted on their faces or arms.”

It’s hard to imagine any other nation on earth whose populace would be so patient, for so long, at such in-your-face outrages to their national pride and sovereignty.

Not the “Mexican colors” thing. That was fine, like wearing green on St. Patrick’s Day. I’m talking about the notion that “showing the Stars & Stripes” might offend anyone who has chosen to come to America.

Are there four people in your family? Imagine five “undocumented visitors” breaking down your front door, pitching tents in your living room, and then “voting” on how to divvy up the food in the refrigerator.

That’s illegal immigration “with a path to citizenship,” which has flooded the West with hostile and self-righteous aliens, whom even Assistant Principal Rodriguez fears could become violent at the drop of a hat.

Kind of like giving your daughter’s rapist a “path to fatherhood.” Criminals should be rewarded for violating the law by being given what they most desire (ahead of those who waited patiently in line, showed they could speak English and had in-demand job skills, etc.), so long as they “tried really hard” … right?

Yes, in a Libertarian paradise there’d be no obligation to pay taxes to fund the schooling and medical care of illegal invaders, and this pragmatic complaint would be largely voided.

But a) I don’t see the “purging of the Shire” coming to redistributionist Washington City real soon, and b) doesn’t the freedom of association mean I should be able to “vote with my feet,” moving to a community within this country where we could deny the franchise to any hater of the free market, any socialist looter — where such characters would have no opportunity to enlist the armed force of government in their cause of rectifying the “unfairness of the distribution of wealth hereabouts”? What remaining state or county is that?

If the government won’t keep its part of the bargain — ensuring us a set of sovereign state governments under an umbrella federal republic of limited powers specifically enumerated, while leaving the vast majority of non-violent human activities untaxed and unregulated — why then should the populace continue to act as though it’s under any obligation to concede, respect, or obey the supposed authority of such a government, once it’s abandoned any credible pretext that it continues to operate under any of the restraints of the “limited” grant of power issued by our duped ancestors, 200 years gone?

Meantime, goad us just a little more, “reconquista” illegals. Come on. Perhaps Assistant Principal Miguel Rodriguez would like to call a press conference, put an American flag on the ground, do a little Mexican hat dance, and then piss on it.

Surely the California teachers union would make sure he got a “step raise” for that.

# # #

Letter-writer Dan Wulz of Henderson complains the Republican primary candidates all “adhere to the Republican mantra of lower taxes and smaller government, but what they SAY is not what they DO or WANT once you penetrate past the slogan. Republicans want Big Government when it’s used to advance their ideology.”

As examples, Mr. Wulz lists GOP support for military spending, “so they can fuel the military-industrial complex and fight far-flung wars of conquest” and for continued drug prohibition, “meaning they want such persons put IN PRISON = Big Government. …

“Lastly, once they cut taxes, they never articulate what government they’re going to cut to balance the budget.”

All valid complaints. Then Mr. Wulz continues:

“Budget deficits have skyrocketed under Reagan and both Bushes (and now also with Obama, but no one can deny he inherited a catastrophe of epic proportions.) Defense (23 percent), Social Security (20 percent), Medicare/Medicaid (19 percent), other mandatory spending (17 percent), and interest (5 percent) comprise 84 percent of the FY 2009 federal budget. Only 12 percent is discretionary. (4 percent is TARP, which even Bush and every responsible economist believed was absolutely necessary to save the economy).

“Any rational voter should ask any candidate: if you’re going to cut taxes, what part of the budget are you going to cut to avoid a deficit and balance the budget?”

Now we must differ. Any “catastrophe” Mr. Obama inherited would have best been solved by slashing federal spending, allowing the nation’s excellent system of bankruptcy courts to liquidate the assets of the giant “roulette wheel” banks which Mr. Obama — like George W. Bush before him — has spent our patrimony propping up.

It’s not true that only 12 percent of current federal spending is “discretionary.” “Defense” spending could easily be cut in half, while still leaving us a Navy strong enough to patrol the sea lanes. Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, far from being “mandatory,” are in fact unconstitutional. They could and should be ended quickly.

No economist for whom I have any respect believes TARP did anything but lengthen the current depression. Far from being “necessary to save the economy,” it has helped doom it.

But Mr. Wulz is correct when he says “Any rational voter should ask any candidate: if you’re going to cut taxes, what part of the budget are you going to cut to avoid a deficit and balance the budget?”

Which party has for 40 years offered candidates who can — without lying — vow to slash federal spending AND taxes, thus balancing the federal budget at a spending level less than half of today’s?

Only the Libertarian Party. So why is it the Libertarian Party — again, as ever — will draw less than 4 percent of the vote this fall? Why is it I doubt even Mr. Wulz (and most others who pretend they’d like the GOP to stay “true to its principles”) will vote for them?

If you keep voting for lying thieves — no matter whether they call themselves Republicrats or Demopublicans — how can you expect things to change?