ANALYSIS/OPINION:

To understand why Ms. Ingraham has a point, let’s take a trip to San Diego, California, where you can catch Los Tucanes de Tijuana playing the San Diego County Fair in summer.

Los Tucanes are billed as “global ambassadors of Nortena music and corridos and ballads,” and if you miss them in California, you can probably see one of their shows in Central Park, Dodger Stadium or the Astrodome. They also have a massive following in Texas.

“Somos gente de el cartel de el diablo,” sings frontman Mario Quintero Lara, “les decan a los federales, de inmediato les abran el paso, era mas que se activa la clave, saben bien que si no hacan caso, sus cabezas volaran al aire.” In English, it goes something like this: We are the people of the devil’s cartel, they tell the federales and they let us through, they know what happens if they don’t obey, their heads will fly through the air.

Charming.

Although they enjoy tremendous popularity in the United States, Los Tucanes are banned from performing in their namesake Tijuana — the consequence of a 2008 concert in which the band’s members gave a shout out to Tijuana’s most wanted men, “El Teo and his compadre, El Muletas.”

Raydel Lopez Uriarte, alias “El Muletas,” ran a drug-trafficking cell known for murdering police officers, kidnappings and beheadings. Garcia Simental, or “El Teo,” helped turn Baja into a place where “soldiers patrolled in convoys and manned bunkers flanking highways. Torture victims’ bodies hung from overpasses, and once-crowded beaches became playgrounds for mob bosses and their entourages.”

Needless to say, as I am sure comparisons will be made, gangster rap doesn’t hold a candle to the very real violence glorified by Los Tucanes.

With that in mind, it makes perfect sense that Ms. Ingraham, like a great many Americans, should worry that “[i]n some parts of the country, it does seem like the America that we know and love doesn’t exist anymore.” Such fears are undeniably valid. Failure to act on the part of the state leaves politicians living in gated communities no worse for wear, for the average American, however, it means blood and tears.

But the ugly truth does not stop paper saints like Rep. Ted Lieu, California Democrat, from virtue signaling. “Dear Laura Ingraham,” Mr. Lieu wrote on Twitter, “I served on active duty to defend your right to make racist statements.”

It might shock Mr. Lieu to know that in 2006, experts estimated that gang membership in the U.S. military became disproportionately represented compared to the U.S. population; an estimated 1 percent to 2 percent of the U.S. military are gang members, compared with just 0.02 percent of the total U.S. population believed to be gang members.

Would Mr. Lieu like to guess which demographic is over-represented in terms of gangs with members in the U.S. military? Here is a hint: Of the 53 “gangs with members who have served in the U.S. military” listed by the FBI, more than 18 are Latino gangs — including MS-13.

If the military is a reflection of the society it serves, as one gang expert says, then Ms. Ingraham is right: Americans should be worried about the “massive demographic shift.” As America imports the culture of Latin America, the sort that has reduced Mexico to lawlessness and Venezuela to a socialist nightmare, then America will continue to increasingly resemble the sending countries of immigrants.

Laura Ingraham is right, a massive demographic shift is cause for concern in a country where so many of the elite class actively work to undermine a unifying American identity and our laws. Her courage is admirable and proves that Americans still have the right stuff necessary to defend this nation. America needs this sort of courage now more than ever to say what is right, and so it is my hope that patriots will rise to their feet to speak the truth the way she has.

• Pedro Gonzalez is an assistant editor of American Greatness.

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