First, follow this country’s laws

“Born in other countries, yet believing you could be happy in this, our laws acknowledge, as they should do, your right to join us in society, conforming, as I doubt not you will do, to our established rules. That these rules shall be as equal as prudential considerations will admit will certainly be the aim of our legislatures, general and particular.”
—Thomas Jefferson to Hugh Lawson White, 1801

Doubtless readers have heard of the recent atrocities that have been visited upon our fair metropolis by the federal government agency that is the Immigration and Custom Enforcement Agency (ICE). It seems said agency has been busy, amazingly enough, doing its job. That appears to be, among other things, identifying illegal aliens who are in the nation in contravention of United States immigration laws and deporting them through a string of raids on some 11 area McDonald’s restaurants. Predictably enough, that precipitated a series of “protests” by the local rabble that is under the mistaken impression that the denial of United States citizenship to the uninvited masses—or even a path to it—is somehow a human rights violation.

In the immortal words of Ricky Ricardo, allow me to ‘splain some things. First, if I were to find a person in my house without my permission, then he or she is a criminal, and I must assume that he or she is there to do me and mine harm. I have every right to defend my home and family with every means at my disposal. By extension, if someone is in this country without its express permission, he or she should expect similar treatment.

Second, recognize that I don’t care if that person walked uphill 600 miles in 110-degree heat across the Sonoran Desert or floated across the Pacific to get here. We have a system for those who seek entry into the country, and it’s consistent with our Founding Fathers’ intentions. However, if those who wish to live here can’t be bothered to follow those laws, why should I expect they’d follow any of the other ones that exist? (And the next time someone refers to all those “tax-paying, undocumented workers,” perhaps they would produce a few IRS Form 1040s from said individuals to prove it.)

The point here is that those protests presumably sparked or at least included this one: A Fourth Street business—apparently in support of the aforementioned—ended up flying a Mexican flag over a United States flag.

KRNV News Channel 4 broadcast a story which is making the Internet rounds (http://www.breitbart.tv/?p=6314 or http://www.ktvn.com) of a self-identified veteran cutting down the U.S. flag and walking away in protest of the illegal display of the U.S. flag leaving the Mexican flag on the ground.

“I took this flag down in honor of my country with a knife from the U.S. Army,” Jim Broussard said in the report.

Point of fact, disrespecting our flag is a favorite pastime of liberal malcontents with too much time on their hands, much like “protesting” is of people who’d be better served upgrading their job skills or by, like, ah, actually going to work.

Although in truth, the open borders crowd might get more traction if they stopped trying to turn this country into another version of the banana boat republic they left. I mean, if those countries are so muy bueno, then why do people leave them? Otherwise, go back and try leaving this one alone.

Although that perhaps brings us back to Jefferson.