Apparently “Don’t Mess with Texas” will have to be retired as a slogan. The Houston soccer team, newly christened the “Houston 1836,” after the year of the city’s founding, will now be renamed because it’s “offensive to Mexican-Americans.” Why?, you might ask:
“Although 1836 was meant to symbolize the year Houston was founded, it also has links to other significant events some Mexican-Americans might find offensive. Those include Texas’ independence from Mexico, the Battle of the Alamo and the defeat of Gen. Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna’s Mexican army at the hands of Gen. Sam Houston in the Battle of San Jacinto during the Texas Revolution.”
If the Alamo offends you, maybe you’re living in the wrong country. This is precisely what Sam Huntington meant in Who Are We? when he wrote that Mexican immigration is unlike that from any other country because, among other reasons, of the historical baggage immigrants bring: “Quite understandably, they feel that they have special rights in these territories.”
Of course, though, guests can only impose their preferences on us if we let them; as Hillel famously asked, “If I am not for myself, who is for me?” And while the name of a soccer team is a triviality, it is animated by the same pusillanimous self-loathing that is leading Europe to dhimmitude, the latest example being a village which has banned the centuries-old tradition of burning Mohammed in effigy in celebration of Spain’s victory in the 700-year war of liberation against the Moors.
The good news is that we’re not as badly off as the Europeans–patriots constitute a much larger share of our population, and the foreign cultural chauvinists whose assertions we’re surrendering to are a dime-store version of the ones assailing Europe. But surrendering we are.