Signs demanding “L.A. belongs to Mexico” and “This city was once Mexico and it belongs to us” have been prominent among raging Latino protesters opposing enforcement of U.S. immigration laws at L.A. riots in that sanctuary city where illegal aliens abound.

My response to those sign-wielding protesters would be, “Really? Let’s see your proof of title.” I reject the euphemistic weasel words “undocumented immigrants” used by those who favor open borders and defend illegal aliens. It’s like calling someone who operates a motor vehicle without a license an “undocumented driver.” The term “illegal aliens” is used in Title 8 of the U.S. Code.

Yes, Mexico “once” owned L.A. but only for a brief interval. The original inhabitants were Native American tribes that lived in that area for thousands of years. The Aztec empire controlled the area for 300 years until Spanish Conquistadors defeated it in 1769 who established missions and forts in the area.

In 1781, Spanish Gov. Felipe de Neve founded Los Angeles as a colony of New Spain. After Mexico’s independence from Spain in 1821, L.A. became a Mexican province until 1848 when Mexico lost the Mexican-American War, and California was ceded to the United States under the Treaty of Guadalupe.

If the revolutionaries waving Mexican flags and burning American ones in L.A. believe they can secede from the union or overthrow the U.S. government and its armed forces in an insurrection, they’re loco.

War is a constant of human history, with control and national borders ever changing as established by “right of conquest.” It always has been and always will be. It’s human nature.

From the Egyptian empire 5,000 years ago to the ancient Chinese empires, Persian empires, the first Roman Empire and the Holy Roman Empire, Mongol Empire, Ottoman Empire, Spanish Empire, British Empire, Napoleon’s empire, Hitler’s Third Reich, and dozens more. The map of Europe has changed repeatedly forever, including the present, with Putin’s aggression in Ukraine.

“Anti-colonialism” is an irrelevant obsession of the academic left that contrives every issue to be about oppressors vs. the oppressed in its campaign to fundamentally transform America into a socialist totalitarian state by undermining Western civilization and capitalism.

It was inevitable that advanced civilizations that mastered navigation would explore the world’s oceans in search of adventure, treasure, and trade, and plant their flags on foreign soil.

Yes, many plundered, committed atrocities and unwittingly spread disease due to different native immunities. But colonization also brought wonders to places hundreds of years behind the times.

It brought knowledge, science, medicine, philosophy and Christianity. British rule in India could be brutal but it also planted the seeds for common law, independent courts and what has now become the world’s most populous democracy.

England’s colonization of America led to a revolution that birthed the USA. Today’s Americans should be thankful for that. And it’s measured by the billions of foreigners who would love to come here, even illegally.

Colonization was a mixed bag. Its history should be studied and understood, but no nation or any person alive today is to blame or liable for sins of the distant past. That was then, this is now. History can’t be undone.

Reparations to today’s inhabitants of any lands centuries removed from historic injustices would be undeserved, impossible to calculate and a waste of time and money.

Another recent contrivance of the academic left to divide Americans and undermine their love of country was the infamous “1619 Project,” a cesspool of lies and misrepresentations that our country was “founded on slavery,” which was a worldwide abomination for millennia long before America was born. Ultimately, the U.S. fought a Civil War to abolish it and along with Britain set an example for other nations.

Sadly, the academic left has succeeded in its indoctrination of a great many impressionable and gullible young students, turning them against their country. President Donald Trump has shined a spotlight on radical left-wing faculty and administrators that dominate higher education, especially in elite Ivy League schools that have been the breeding ground for Marxist critical theory in law, economics, history and other disciplines.

It’s spawned political correctness, multiculturalism, the cancel culture, identity politics, intersectionality, socialism and anti-capitalism.

This divisive anti-American ideology trickles down to teachers’ colleges and into K-12 public school curricula and is amplified in social media, entertainment, the culture and the liberal news media. Fortunately, public awareness and opposition is growing as demonstrated by the 2024 election. If this momentum continues, we might yet be able to fundamentally restore America.

Mike Rosen is a Denver-based American radio personality and political commentator.