I liked this article, it's a pretty good slap in the face for Mexico and Mexicans.

http://www.newsmax.com/archives/article ... 3635.shtml

Barry Farber
Thursday, March 30, 2006

I'm capable of writing. Put a gun against my head and threaten me convincingly, and I can do better. It's merely the most politically incorrect column that comes naturally at this time.

Newspaper mogul Horace Greeley achieved immortal fame merely by saying at just the right time in American history, "Go west, young man. Go west!" Let's see how far I can get by saying, "Look north, everybody. Look north!"

We'll start calmly. Can you go back to the 1990s when Americans were just beginning to learn about a place in southern Serbia called Kosovo, where 90 percent of the population was not Serb but Albanian. The slaughter was massive and mutual. The question flung itself out there: "How can you expect a 90 percent majority to live peacefully under a flag of a 10 percent minority?" and virtually 100 percent of Americans clucked agreement.

I had no quarrel with Albanian independence – just American ignorance.

So I played the following mind game on my radio audience.

"There's a place," I told them, "where not just 90 percent, but a full 97 PERCENT of the population lives under another nation's flag and nobody could be happier. Can you guess where it is?"

Nobody had a clue. Even when I told them it was in EUROPE, nobody had a clue. I teased around for a nice long while and finally I told them. "Look north! In the Baltic Sea between Sweden and Finland you have the Aaland Islands. They belong to Finland. The inhabitants are 97 PERCENT Swedish. Their ethnicity is Swedish. Their language is Swedish. Their traditions are Swedish.

And guess what. Nobody gives a herring's tail. Finland, like Sweden, is a democracy and absolutely nobody cares. When you have democracy, when you have prosperity, when you have decent, civilized people, the "wrong" flag overhead waves merrily in the wind, causing not a ripple down below.

We come now to the degrading, disgraceful and disgusting spectacle of uncounted Mexicans surging across America's southern border looking for a better life.

Where is Mexico's pride? If I were president of a country whose underclasses had to leave to find life-sustaining work, I'd be too ashamed to beg a neighboring country's leadership to "Let My People In." I'd be too warped with humiliation to print little "matricula" cards to spray some kind of "status" over my fleeing hordes and run ads in the host country's newspapers pleading for wider and safer holes in their border and their policies.

If I were President Vicente Fox, I'd address my Mexican countrymen and remind them of their Latino value of "macho," which, contrary to widespread misinterpretation, does NOT mean being rough with women and wearing gold chains over hairy chests. Macho is a multifaceted set of virtues, among which is the determination to suck it up and thrust your nose right into adversity's face.

I'd tell them, "What's so different north of the Rio Grande from here in Mexico? Is the United States of America kissed by tongues of Godly flame that make crops grow better and children learn better and the economy perform better and politicians behave better? Of course not! We can abandon our slovenly habits and embrace better ones. Just as America is waging a War on Terror, we Mexicans can wage a war on bribery, corruption, drug trafficking, human smuggling, illiteracy, poverty and all our other blights that make Mexico a failure.

We can turn Mexico into a place no Mexican will ever want to leave. Eventually, our Mexico can become a place others would like to sneak into! (Hundreds of poor people from Guatemala and Belize do try to sneak across Mexico's southern border for a better life. They're treated harshly and sent back. Among Mexico's new wars might therefore be a war against Mexican hypocrisy.)

"Don't INVADE America," I'd urge my Mexican brothers. "COPY America!"

Isn't humiliation supposed to be a big deal? It is whenever America can be accused of visiting humiliation upon others. Maybe if you voluntarily choose a humiliating solution to your problems, it's OK.

Must the Mexican message remain "Sorry, America, but you're a success and Mexico is a shame and since we're so close we feel it's OK for us to come on in and make ourselves at home"?

If I were Vicente Fox, I'd climax my exhortation by saying, "Look, nobody leaves, OK? Nobody abandons us in our war for a better Mexico. Whosoever heads for America is a deserter of our people in time of war. You will not be stopped by our police. You will not be stopped by any Mexican iron curtain.

"You will be stopped by a force much more powerful – MEXICAN PRIDE!"

Dream world, you say. Look north!

Sweden succeeded in remaining neutral in World War II by giving the Nazis everything they wanted. (I, unlike the young Swedes of today, think Sweden did the right thing. Had Sweden not knuckled under to Hitler's demands for ball bearings and unbombable oil refineries and free rail transportation across Swedish territory for German troops headed for the Russian front, the Germans would have taken Sweden in one day the way they took neighboring Denmark and the main part of Norway. Swedish neutrality alleviated the suffering of so many British and American airmen shot down in Baltic waters, Norwegian refugees and resistance forces, and Jewish and non-Jewish refugees who found a safe haven in Sweden throughout the war. Sweden did not hand over one single Jew to the Germans during the entire war. Equally neutral Switzerland handed over many!)

The point is, at the war's end in 1945 Sweden was peaceful, intact and very rich. Their eastern neighbor Finland was not so fortunate. Finland got caught up on the wrong side of the war. (Finland made it clear to the world they were NOT a Nazi ally, like Japan, Italy, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria and Albania. Finland made common cause with the Germans for the sole purpose of recapturing the territory the Soviet Union had taken from them in 1939.)

Finland, a country with a population about half the size of Chicago's, was totally drained by the war and was afterward clobbered with a reparations bill of THREE HUNDRED AND FIFTY MILLION DOLLARS owed to the victorious Soviet Union. Finland had three and a half million people. Do the math!

Finland was a very poor country right after the war. Sweden, next door, was very rich. And it was even easier for a Finn to sneak into Sweden than it is for a Mexican to sneak into the United States.

There were some few Finns who crossed over into Sweden for the better life. But the overwhelming majority of the Finnish population STAYED WHERE THEY WERE AND SET ABOUT REBUILDING A PROSPEROUS FINLAND. And on that, there was a rather swift Mission Accomplished.

The Finnish word is not "macho." It's "sisu"!

Ten days after Castro conquered Cuba, America's love for the bearded guerrilla hero deteriorated in consternation and confusion as Castro firing squads cut down unknowable numbers of Cubans of unknowable guilt or innocence after "trials" lasting ten minutes or less.

An American reporter sympathetic to the Castro cause approached Raul Castro, brother of Fidel, in Havana and made a plea to call off the firing squads.

"There was a country in World War II, Norway (north again, folks!), that suffered under a dictator worse than your Batista for about the same period of time, five years," said the American. After liberation, Norway staged long and boring trials and thereupon executed only the main traitor, Vidkun Quisling, whose very name came to mean "traitor," and a handful of close Nazi cohorts. That was it.

"And here," concluded the well-meaning American, "you're continuing to shoot people down against the wall day and night from one end of Cuba to the other."

Raul Castro looked at that reporter as though he'd like nothing better than a chance to shoot him personally at that moment.

"All you've done," said Raul, "is prove that Cubans are bad Norwegians."

Maybe Mexicans should be better Finns.