Some Yankee mothers do have 'em...

It was inevitable that some dumb-bunny would emerge to share their bigotry with us.

Step forward Karen H, aka "Gem of the Ocean".

She has bought the whole, received, Yankee history of "How the West was won" - hook, line and sinker.

And she does not scruple to spew forth racism despite her supposedly being a Catholic.

I'd like to have shared her post with you...

...but it was so crass that I wanted to spare your blushes and her the ignominy.

I suppose one must make allowances for the apparent fact that, according to US government surveys, 58% of people leaving High School in the USA never again read a book.

Karen's blog describes her as a "Right minded woman on the left coast. Catholic. Conservative. All American. Who could ask for anything more?"

Well, Karen, one could ask for quite a lot more, actually.

Racism does not become a Catholic, let alone a Conservative Catholic. Neither does ignorance and neither does crass rudeness and bigotry.

Let's check out the ignorance.

Dear Karen indignantly thinks that I have never heard of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo and, in high dudgeon, claims that this is how the West was won: the Mexicans ceded all of alta California.

Passing over the fact that my post nowhere denies the existence of the treaty, let us just remember a thing or two about this "great" treaty.

I set it all out in my next post.

Karen's next claim is even more laughable. She claims - again indignantly - that President Abraham Lincoln returned the Catholic missions to the Catholic Church after they had been - so she claims - plundered by the Mexicans.

Here are the facts.

Mexico, constantly infiltrated by pro-Yankee agitators and fifth columnists but also by its own home-grown Freemasons or Spanish ones imported from Europe, suffered numerous revolutions which, despite the Catholicism of the ordinary people, eventually succeeded in eradicating Catholic government from Mexico. The US government constantly supported the anti-Catholic forces with money and arms - hence their repeated success.

The wars and revolutions that Mexico endured cost the country dear. This, and the anti-clericalism of the government, led to the decline of the Spanish missions and they fell into ruin, anti-Catholic Yankees being well content to let the Papist missions fall into disuse.

This was in the 1840s.

By the 1860s most of the missions were in ruins or nearly so. There was thus but little to give back to the Catholic Church and Lincoln's supposed generosity in so doing was very small beer - a cheap gesture indeed.

Catholics must be very careful not to put the myths about their own country above truth, faith and charity.

But Karen seems to think it was all down to some innate defect in the Mexican race.

Not quite, Karen, I'm afraid.

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