Burning the Mexican Flag=Arson

From Heidi at Euphoric Reality has a round-up of news on the Arizona Flag Burning incident. For those who haven’t here’s the mainstream media story:

This week’s tensions over immigration reform literally caught fire in the East Valley on Thursday when students raised a Mexican flag over Apache Junction High School — and then other students yanked it down and burned it.

Well Heidi has gathered some news from Talk Radio and there’s more to this story:

Apparently, his kid was arrested by AJ [Apache Junction] Police and was held in detention in Florence all day yesterday. Charged with Arson. It took all of their savings to get a retainer for an atty.

It gets better. The family is now getting death threats. They were informed by police that there are those trying to find out where the family lives, and are going after them. AJ police stated to the father, there is nothing they can do about it, until someone actually shows up on their property.

I heard that same radio show and there are more details. This happened before school started. The Mexican kids had brought a Mexican flag to work and ran it up the ROTC flagpole. Some ROTC students went over and asked them to take it down but they wouldn’t. So the ROTC guys ran it down, removed it, and gave it back to the Mexicans. As soon as they left, the Mexicans ran it back up the flagpole again. That’s when the ROTC kids took it down and burned it, and the scuffling started.

The dad said that his son has been in ROTC for 3 years and is proud of it, planning to be a military officer. Said that the AJ PD decided to make an example of him so charged him with two felony counts – arson and something like interfering with an educational institution.

Now, Heidi lauds the kid as heroic, I don’t. I think that burning the flag of any country is offensive. We’re a nation of people with different backgrounds and there are many good Americans of Mexican heritage.

But, a felony? As Heidi points out, its absurd that burning the US flag is free speech and by God, the Senate is infringing on that if they propose to ban flag burning.

In addition, who were the aggressors here? Wasn’t it the Mexican Students who lowered our national banner to proclaim the school the property of Mexico? What has disturbed me day after day is the amount of Mexican flags being waved by protestors, Mexican flags flying above US flags, its absurd.

I think the actions of the High Schooler were rash and foolish, however they were understandable in light of the blatant disrespect shown for our nation and its symbols by these protestors.

We now have reports that a Colorado High School has banned the waving of the American Flag. I’m sorry, what country do these people think we live in? This is America and the idea that in Longmont, Colorado, a high school student can face suspension for waving it is absurd.

It illustrates the greater failure of American public schools, who are perhaps the biggest villain in this story. They’ve not kids patriotism. And yes, if we have public schools that’s certainly their job. That we would have a government-run school that doesn’t try to instill in kids how great America is, how lucky they are to live here is absurd. Celebrating heritage is great, but somehow kids have lost sight of the fact that they’re all Americans. There’s undo racial tension and you can lay that at a feet of a public school system that’s spent years tearing down the country.

The Daily Spork reminds us that we would be fools to assume that all Hispanics are unpatriotic or hate America. Hat Tip: Right Wing Nation:

There’s a man named Francisco in my Speech class. He barely speaks English, he’s about 5’7’‘, and around 50 years old. Francisco came here from Mexico 3 years ago and sits exactly two seats behind me to my right.

A few weeks ago, our speech instructor asked each of us to stand and deliver a 60-second speech on a topic that meant the most to us.

I chose to talk about my dog; the lady in front of me talked about her daughter, and the guy across the room talked about beer. Francisco talked about America.

With his plaid shirt tucked into his worn jeans and scuffed loafers peering from beneath tattered hems, Francisco’s first words were:

“I talk to you about important. America is important and why I love it.”

Francisco came here legally and is working hard to learn the language. That’s great, its what America’s all about. Francisco loved our country so much that he chose to obey its laws in immigrating. The difference between traditional immigrants like Francisco and the people marching in the streets is that there’s a contempt for American law and society in their actions. They enter our country by breaking our laws and stay here in violation of our laws. They displace American flags with Mexican ones. Sorry, but a distinction must be made and those who have broken our laws have got to go.

Now, some wonder how the country will survive with the removal of millions of illegals. Who will water our lawns? Who will pick our onions? Might I make a humble suggestion. Let in all the people who have respected our country enough to wait years and years post haste and send the law breakers back on the truck they rode in on. We need more Franciscos and less people who can’t even show proper respect for our flag.

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