Reading about “immigration reform” after my recent drive through the Southwest has me pondering the history of that region. From 1769 to 1821, the modern U.S. states of California, Nevada, Arizona, Utah, western Colorado and southwestern Wyoming were all under Spanish rule. After Mexico established independence from Spain, Alta California as it was called was part of Independent Mexico until around 1846.
Conquest is a fact of life, but it’s a fact that most Americans choose to ignore if they were even aware of it. When Fitzgerald writes in The Great Gatsby about the “fresh, green breast of the new world” that offered “the last and greatest of all human dreams,” he doesn’t mention that this world was not so new and that any dreams fulfilled would prove nightmarish for those already here.
There is nothing moral about conflict, and wars are not won by the righteous but by the most powerful. If you’ve driven down California’s Highway 1, you can appreciate why the U.S. would want to claim the area. However, could we be more gracious about it? Why deny the past and act as if the ancestors of people who saw the Pacific before we did are planning some insidious invasion when they cross our artificial borders?
The next time you’re in the parts of the U.S. that were once Spain and Mexico, take a long look. Notice how many people of Hispanic descendent are mowing lawns, laboring in fields, cleaning hotel rooms, or preparing your Starbucks mocha. Could any American comprehend such a scenario for themselves? Will we one day see Canada claim Washington, Montana, Minnesota, and Michigan? And the great-great-grandchildren of Portland hipsters crossing the Oregon border to seek their fortune in a Canadian Washington? How would Canadians handle the immigration issue? Probably better than Jan Brewer in Arizona who wants to deny immigrants driver’s licenses.
When on Highway 395, I drove past a store that sold “guns, ammo, and liquor” (an ingeniously self-destructive combination) — most likely to further the subconscious desire to preserve what is only tenuously ours. Flying outside in the store’s parking lot was a U.S. flag and a Confederate flag… although eastern California was never part of the Confederacy. However, there was no Mexican or Spanish flag in sight.
So much for heritage.
serhasacomplaint 
Tool of the Day…
Peter Heck, a social studies teacher at Eastern High School in Indiana, said the following during the commencement speech he delivered:
I challenge you to devote yourself to your families and your children. If you choose to have a career, God’s blessings upon you. But I challenge you to recognize what the world scoffs at, that your greatest role in your life will be that of wife and mother. The greatest impact you could ever contribute to our world is a loving investment in the lives of your precious children. To solve the problems plaguing our society, we don’t need more women CEOs. We need more women as invested mothers.
He singles out female students, as male students can’t “choose to have a career,” unless they are independently wealthy. He also seems to imply — in the sense that he outright says as much — that a working mother cannot be an invested mother.
I think mothers are swell. I even had one for 34 years. However, young men are steered toward dreams that they can achieve through their own force of will. When young women are steered toward motherhood as their greatest achievement, they lose a degree of agency over their goals. There are obvious physical limitations (some women can’t bear children), but they also need a partner. This results in otherwise successful women in their mid-to-late 30s who feel as if they’ve failed because they haven’t met the father of their future children. That’s nonsense. And yes, I understand that women can have children without a significant other, but something tells me that Mr. Heck does not think much of such arrangements. He’s also the one who somehow linked the Aurora shooting to feminism:
In a blog post from July 2012 in the wake of the Aurora shooting, Heck described the present day as “an age where we too often yield to the idiotic sniveling of modern feminism that suggests there is no place in our enlightened society for men to act as ‘protectors’ of women — – indeed, they suggest that it is insulting and demeaning for [men] to do so.”
By the way, there are fewer than two dozen female CEOs running America’s largest companies (4% of the overall total), so Heck might want to relax and focus on a more looming issues, such as the recent explosion in the unicorn population. Maybe next year, Eastern High School should just hire a comedian to give its commencement address… well, at least someone who’s trying to be funny.
Posted by Stephen Robinson on June 5, 2013 in Social Commentary
Tags: Eastern High School, feminism, Peter Heck