Memo From Mexico, By Allan Wall
In A Double Whammy, McCain Sticks It To The Base On Cinco De Mayo

Last week, on May 5th , Cinco de Mayo, Senator John McCain once again showed his contempt for the Republican base by hitting it with a double whammy.

In the same statement (see here) McCain announced that 1) he was opening a Spanish language website, and 2) he was going to the convention of the Hispanic chauvinist agitator group the National Council of La Raza [NCLR].

Why did McCain choose Cinco de Mayo to announce his double whammy? As I pointed out recently , Cinco de Mayo is not even a big deal in Mexico. It’s hardly celebrated. My school didn’t even suspend classes for it.

But in the U.S., Cinco de Mayo has become a big Mexican-American drinking fest and de rigueur occasion for pandering by U.S. politicians—chief among them being Panderer-in-Chief George W. Bush.

John McCain’s Spanish-language website is called Estamos Unidos (We are united). If you only changed one letter, the "m" to a "d", then is would be Estados Unidos (United States). Clever, eh? You can see the website here.

The website so far has links to articles. Some of the articles are in Spanish, but some are in English. As time goes by, we can expect the McCain camp to hispanify more of the website.

There are also plenty of videos, including one with McCain talking (in English with Spanish subtitles) to Latino entrepreneurs. There are also promotional videos featuring Mel Martinez, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, Lincoln Diaz-Balart and Mario Diaz-Balart plugging for McCain. All four of them are Cuban-Americans. In fact, all but Mario were born in Cuba. Cuban-Americans and Mexican-Americans do not always cooperate, but all the big league Mexican-Americans are already going for the Democrats, so I guess McCain had to settle for the Cubans.

Of course, McCain is not the only candidate with a Spanish website. Barack Obama has one also, which features a blog by Conchita Cruz of South Carolina. Conchita says she’s registered to vote, although judging from her photograph, she barely looks old enough.

The Obama website reports Obama gushing on about Cinco de Mayo too. Apparently, he said that "As Americans celebrate Cinco de Mayo, it reminds us that, although the Mexican cultural traditions are an important part of who we are as Americans, the American dream is still out of reach of many Latinos." [My emphasis…!]

Hillary has what’s called a "bilingual" website, with articles in both Spanish and English and it includes her "Hispanic Agenda". (Hmmm, how about an American agenda?)

So why is it bad for any of these candidates to have Spanish-language website? Aren’t they just reaching out to voters?

Yes they are—but in the wrong way, taking us down the slippery slope of linguistic, cultural and political balkanization.

A common civic language is a great advantage, one we shouldn’t toss on the junk heap so easily. English is our national language. It’s our language of public discourse. It’s the language of the Constitution and our legal system. How can you really understand American politics without knowing English?

Bilingual campaigning is still in its infancy. But is it already leading to the encouragement of a divided electorate. In 2002, I wrote a VDARE.COM column about a Texas election in which gubernatorial candidate Tony Sanchez ran a bilingual campaign. But the image Sanchez presented in English was radically different from the image he presented in Spanish. That’s the way these things inevitably work.

Besides, American citizens are supposed to know English. It’s one of the requirements to get citizenship: "Applicants for naturalization must be able to read, write, speak, and understand words in ordinary usage in the English language." (There are exceptions—the elderly and the physically and mentally impaired are not required to learn English).

As for individuals born in the U.S., it used to be understood that they’d learn English by the time they got to school—though you can’t always count on that these days.

Linguistic balkanization is a threat to American national unity—and these three candidates are irresponsibly contributing to it. Shame on all three of them.

This campaign has even seen Univision-sponsored bilingual debates, held for the Democrats and the Republican . Shame (again) on all those who participated—which was just about everybody, with the honorable exception of Tom Tancredo.

But John McCain’s encouragement of balkanization is not really a surprise. In the past, he has expressed his contempt for American culture, saying

"a nation conceived in an idea, in liberty, will prove stronger, more enduring, and better than any nation ordered to exalt the few at the expense of the many or made from a common race or culture or to preserve traditions that have no greater attribute than longevity."

In other words, who cares about a common American culture (or race)?

But when speaking to Hispanic leaders, McCain waxed eloquent about the growth of their culture in the United States :

"This [is] one of the defining moments in American history that really does define what kind of nation we are. If there was ever such a thing as a noble cause, it is the one we are embarked on now. Anyone who is afraid that somehow our culture will be anything but enriched by fresh blood and culture, in my view, has a distorted view of history and has a pessimistic view of our future."

So when John McCain promotes mass immigration, it’s more than desire for votes or big money. The man actually wants his country to be Hispanicized.

Nor is it surprising that McCain, in his Cinco de Mayo Double Whammy, announced a speech to be delivered to La Raza July 14th.

In case you’re not familiar with the National Council of La Raza [“the Raceâ€