by REES LLOYD
Victoria Taft has reported on her show that September 16th is going to be officially celebrated as Mexican Independence Day by both Beaverton, which touched off a strong backlash, Sandy and Portland, which more recently announced its plan by flying the Mexican flag over City Hall. The cities have announced they will fly the Mexican Flag on September 16th, over their respective city halls, i.e., governmental buildings supported by taxpayers.
If they do fly the Mexican Flag over city hall, and thus over the American Flag, it will not only be a despicable pandering to potential voters from the failed Mexican state, but it will likely be a violation of the U.S. Flag Code which mandates that no foreign flag shall be flown higher than the American Flag. (4 U.S.Code Section 7(c).)
Apparently, the politicians of Beaverton have decided not to limit recognition to only Mexican Independence Day on September 16th, due to the backlash to their stated intent to spend $6,000 taxpayer dollars to recognize Mexican Independence Day and to raise the Mexican Flag over city hall.
This is gratifying to me, as an American of Welsh descent, as September 16th is not only Mexican Independence Day but also “Owain Glyndwr Day” in which the Welsh in Wales and around the world annually honor the great Welsh hero Owain Glyndwer who drove the dreaded English invaders out of Wales and into the sea, and established a free, independent, Welsh-speaking nation under a Welsh-speaking Parliament in 1400, until the English re-invaded and occupied Wales under Edward II, plunderer of Wales and thereafter Scotland. (Americans may know of this English despot from the academy award winning movie “Brave Heart.)
It seems to me that, if Portland and Beaverton are going to start recognizing the independence days of foreign nations, and fly foreign flags instead of the American Flag (or over it),t it would be perfectly appropriate for Portland and Beaverton to recognize September 16th as Welsh “Owain Glyndwer Day” as well as “Mexican Independence Day.”
One reason, perhaps unknown to most Americans, since the Welsh are not an oppressed but an invisible minority, is that so many of the Founding Fathers of the United State were Welsh. These Founding Father Welsh American descendants of Owain Glyndwr include, among others, the author of the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson, and at least at least half of the signers of that Declaration; a similar percentage of the signers of the Consttution; four of the first six presidents of the United States — John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, James Monroe, and John Quincy Adams — and, among other, perhaps America’s most revered president, Abraham Lincoln, whose mother was Welsh.
In contrast, alas, diligent research has not revealed a single Mexican, or person of Latino or Hispanic descent, among the Founding Fathers, or among the signers of the Declaration of Independence, or among the signers of the Constitution. Odd, then, that Portland and Beaverton politicians would be so anxious to celebrate Mexican Independence Day, and not Welsh Owain Glyndwr Day, the Welsh having given America so many of its Founding Fathers.
Oregon, of course, has a special Welsh connection in the person of Merriwhether Lewis. It was Lewis, principal aide to President Thomas Jefferson and like him a Welsh American, hero who along with Clark found the Northwest Passage across America walked the “Oregon Trail” at the end of their long journey. Interesting, Lewis wrote his dispatches on the journey to President Jefferson in the White House in Welsh, since Jefferson, like Lewis, read, spoke, and wrote Welsh. They did this on the theory that if the dispatches were intercepted, no one could read them. Their correspondence in Welsh presaged the use of “Indian Code Talkers in WWII,” whose “code” the Japanese were unable to break, becaue it wasn’t a code by a language.
Therefore, with all respect to Americans of Mexican descent — and the 10.8 to 20-million illegal aliens that Mexico has exported to the U.S., as well as to the politically correct petty politicians of Portland and Bearverton spending public funds pandering to Mexico and its exported citizens for votes, I must respectfully request, that Portland and Beaverton rescind their announced policy of celebrating the independence day of a foreign nation, i.e., the failed state of Mexico, or that the politicians of Portland and Beaverton recognize and fly the flags of all the nations from which Americans are descended, and each of them, including without limitation Welsh Owain Glyndwr Day honoring the liberator warrior hero of Wales, so many other native sons of which became Founding Fathers of the United States of America.
Let me say, then, bi-lingually, and with a nod to the secular gods of liberal so-called progressives, i.e., “political correctness,” “diversity,” and “multiculturalism”– “Cymru am byth! America am byth!” (Wales Forever! America Forever, as Thomas Jefferson occasionally wrote in closing his letters.)
[Rees Lloyd, is an American of Welsh descent;j a veteran; and a longtime civil rights lawyer who served as one of the late Cesar Chavez’ attorneys for some twenty years.]
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