Arizona Centennial

There is nothing the MSM likes better than to rag on Arizona.  In the MSM’s view, Arizona is inhabited by a bunch of barely civilized, knuckle dragging mavericks of questionable lineage.

Liberals don’t like mavericks, a maverick being anyone who departs from the liberal line.

Arizonans believe it is the federal government’s job to police the nation’s borders and they refuse to shut up about it.  Arizona passes laws that uphold the distinction between legal and illegal immigrants.  Arizona may have the best Charter School law in the nation, despite the opposition of the educational establishment and the teacher unions.  Parents are not shy about exercising the choices it provides.  Just ask the school districts as they watch students and money flow out the doors.

Early Arizonans were stubborn, too.  In 1912, when Arizona was trying to become a state, the Arizona constitution included initiative, referendum, and recall.  President Taft vetoed Arizona statehood because the state’s constitution included recall of judges. The offending language was removed until statehood was achieved.  Then the provision was replaced.

Arizonan history is full of tough, independent-minded men and women who came to an unwelcoming environment and made homes out of it.  What was a sparsely populated state now holds the 6^th largest city in the nation.  More people now who know nothing about what it was like before air conditioning; before there was an EPA to discover that when the wind blows across the desert the air fills with sand and dust.

Those who love Arizona like to believe that, in spite of everything, the state’s essential nature hasn’t changed.  If that is true, the nation is better for it.

Happy Birthday Arizona.