MICKEY KAUS has more on Cruz Bustamante’s latest proposal — a permanent rolling amnesty for illegal immigrants?

UPDATE: Meanwhile Brian Linse is still defending MEChA — it turns out, he says, that the slogan was inspired by Castro! Well, then.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader Luis Alegria emails:

I am also a native Spanish speaker, and if you note the message from Professor Diaz quoted by Mr. Linse, he also agrees that “For the Race…” is a better literal translation than “United we stand”.

As for context, the rest of the “Plan Espiritual de Atzlan” provides plenty to support the idea of ethnic separatism as embodied in this slogan.

“La Raza” is not a strictly racial concept, but it is a very specific ethnic one – i.e., Mexican mestizos.

Mr. Linse is pretty much torturing the translation.

The whole thing does sound like what your typical radical would have dreamed up in 1969.

Yes, Linse is working this one pretty hard, but that’s half the fun of a blog. And it does sound curiously dated, which makes Bustamante’s unwillingness to renounce it, as so many other Latino politicians have done, seem odd.

YET ANOTHER UPDATE: Michael Moynihan emails:

MEChA may have stolen its motto from Mussolini, not Castro. According to Joshua Muravchik’s book Heaven on Earth, Il Duce “put forth the motto “Everything inside the state, nothing outside the state.” (p. 157).

Hmm. Well, if nothing else, we’ve certainly established a style.