WHERE WERE THE POLITICALLY-CORRECT MEDIA ON WELSH ST. DAVID’S DAY, MARCH1?? By Rees Lloyd

March 3, 2010

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(Or: Porque no hay DYDD GWYL DEWI HAPUS, Homey? )
By Welshman, Rees Lloyd
March 1 was Welsh St. David’s Day. Did any media notice? Indeed, where was the politically-correct Portland media to inform the public of Welsh St. David’s Day in order that multiculturalism and diversity be served and celebrated as wonderful, as the politically-correct otherwise insist. Could it be that the devotion of the politically-correct media to diversity and multiculturalism is color coordinated?
 
After all, for some 1,500 years or so, in Wales, and all around the world where those of Welsh descent are found, including Portland, the Principality of Political Correctness, the Welsh have celebrated March 1 as St. David’s Day to honor of the priest who is credited with establishing Christianity  in Wales; who died on March 1, 589; and who was canonized as the Patron Saint of Wales in 1120 A.D.
 
In sum, St. David, is to the Welsh what St. Patrick, Patron Saint of Ireland, is to the Irish.  And the two great Celtic Saints have something else in common – they were both Welsh-born Welshmen.
 
But, while the media, and most of Americans, wear the green and a smile in annually celebrating St. Patrick’s Day, few Americans even know about St. David, or Wales, or the Welsh, or Welsh Americans, despite the enormous contribution which the Welsh made to the very creation of America.
 
Consider: Wales was a small nation at the time of the American Revolution, as it is today, but the Welsh were disproportionally represented among the Founding Fathers. The words of the Declaration of Independence, the greatest expression of freedom ever writ, rose from the heart of a Welsh American, Thomas Jefferson, who spoke and read Welsh. When Merriwether Lewis (Welsh) and Clark made their historic journey to Oregon, Lewis sent reports to President Jefferson written in Welsh on the theory they couldn’t be read if they fell into the wrong hands.
 
Some seventeen (17) of the signers of the Declaration were Welsh. The Welsh were disproportionately overrepresented in the Revolutionary Army led by George Washington, who reportedly said: “Good Welshmen make good Americans.” Four of the first six American Presidents were Welsh: John Adams, Jefferson, James Monroe, and John Quincy Adams. Perhaps America’s most revered president, Abraham Lincoln, was also Welsh.
 
Consider further that Wales, known deservedly as the “Land of Poetry and Song,” has provided America also with poets (e.g., Dylan Thomas) and music which has moved its soul, from hymns (check the composers in your church hymn books), to choral (Wales leads the world) to classic (e.g., Bryn Terfil), to pop, rock, and especially country. Indeed, scratch a major American country star, male or female, and you’ll draw Welsh blood. As to actors, two of the greatest actors of the age – Richard Burton and Anthony Hopkins, were born in the same Welsh village, one that had less than a thousand people.
 
This is rather remarkable for a nation which even today has a population not much greater than Oregon’s (a little over 3-million), with an estimated 10-million or so scattered around the world (i.e., less than the population of Los Angeles County). That figure may be deceiving, however, as many Americans of Welsh descent, unlike the Irish and Scots, don’t identify themselves as Welsh.
 
The great contribution of the Welsh to American freedom is remarkable for the further fact that Wales remains a nation but not a state. That is, Wales, despite some 4,000 years of history on the Island, remains a “Principality” of England, not a separate state. That is odd because the Welsh were so prominently involved in the fight against England for American independence, and the rebel streak among many of the Welsh is as strong as the love of words, of poetry, and song.
 
That rebel character has flashed throughout the long history of the Welsh. The Roman Empire invaded and held Wales as a colony for centuries, but they were centuries in which there was one rebellion after another, and ten per cent of the Roman Legion’s were tied down in Wales in order to restrain the rebel Welsh.
 
In 1400, the Welsh National hero Owain Glyndwer (Owen Glendower in Shakespeare) led a revolution which drove the English into the sea. Glyndwer established a Welsh-speaking, self-governing Welsh state with a Welsh parliament survived until 1417, when it was overwhelmed by the military power of the much larger England.
 
Perhaps the greatest exemplar of the Welsh rebel with a sense of humor was the rowdy, raucous, roguish Twm Sion Cati, the “Welsh Robin Hood,” who was a real rebel not a myth. Twm Sion Cati drove the English Lords bonkers by leading his merry band of rebels out of their mountain hideout to pinch the noses of the English occupying rulers and kick them in the pants, relieving them of their lucre in the process and showering it on the poor  Welsh. The wives of the English occupiers, it is said, used to frighten their recalcitrant children not with threats of the “boogie man,” but that they better behave or “Twm Sion Cati will get you.”
 
While they have been rebels with a sense of humor, like Twm Sion Cati, they were also rebels as profoundly religious people who rebelled against the imposition on them of the Church of England, and sought freedom of religion by, among other things, coming to America in search of freedom on such ships as the Mayflower  — whose captain was Welsh.
 
I suggest it is not by accident  but because of the experience of so many Welsh among the Founding Fathers of America that the first freedom guaranteed in the First Amendment was freedom of religion, an absolute prohibition on imposition of a national government religion, enshrined in the first ten words: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion; nor prohibiting the the free exercise thereof.”
 
Perhaps the greatest exemplar of the rebel Welsh spirit in America is Thomas Jefferson, whose personal motto was “Rebellion Against Tyrants Is Obedience To God.” He was American to the core; but also Welsh to the core, the son and grandson of Welsh rebels. He exemplified as a revolutionary American the best of the rebellious Welsh – a love of learning, words, poetry, song, humor, and, most of all, freedom. His was a heritage of a line of rebels from St. David to Owain Glydwer to Twm Sion Cati in Wales to Tom Jefferson, himself, and the other Welsh Founding Fathers of America.
 
The free press that the politically correct media enjoys today would not exist without those Welsh American rebels. Yet, once again, the media, which otherwise genuflects before political correctness, multiculturalism, and diversity, deigns not even to mention the existence of Welsh St. David’s Day, in recognition of the contributions of the Welsh.
 
Thus, the question naturally arise: Could the love of multiculturalism and diversity of the politically-correct media be color coordinated, and thus naught by hypocrisy? Put another way: Porque no have DYDD GWYL DEWI HAPUS, Homey?
 
I’ll leave that for the reader to decide (or the media to admit) and ask my fellow Americans who do not genuflect before political-correctness, multiculturalism, or diversity, to do what the Grand Poopahs of the Politically Correct media do not, i.e., when March 1 rolls around, remember Tom Jefferson and the other Welsh American Founding Fathers, and  sing out the the greeting, Dydd Gwyl Dewi Hapus – Happy St. David’s Day! the media notwithstanding, and join the patriotic Welsh in saying also: “Cymru am byth, America am byth” (Wales Forever, America Forever.)
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[Rees Lloyd is a longtime civil rights attorney and founder of Twm Sion Cati Welsh-American Legal Defense & Education Fund. Among other things, Twm Sion Cati, named after the “Welsh Robin Hood,” sued major American media for continuing to routinely use the English-invented slur “to welsh,” and derivatives, e.g., “welsher,” “welshing,” while the politically-correct media eschewed all other such slurs, e.g., “n—-r,” “to jew.” The suit resulted in settlements in which media style-books were changed and national apologies were issued to Welsh Americans and the people of Wales. The slurs of the Welsh are now rare in journalistic discourse. Except, of course, when the otherwise politically-correct journalists slip and use it on occasion, like alcoholics falling off the wagon.]

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