AS in previous years, many youth groups and labor unions used the hero Andres Bonifacio’s birth anniversary to launch protest marches and demonstrations yesterday.

Some, as usual concentrated their attack against the United States. The leader of a group interviewed, in Taglish, by a radio-TV newsman, mouthed the familiar complaints against US imperialism. But this time he also mentioned Germany, France and Britain, in that order, as partners of America in subjecting the Philippines to a regime of neo-colonialism.

The broadcast reporter must have felt he had been tele-transported back to the 60s or the Martial Law years or at least two decades ago. So he asked, how about China? It’s China that’s been taking over our seas and little islands in the West Philippine Sea, why don’t you demonstrate against China? The demonstration leader could not give a coherent answer. He just replayed his anti-American imperialism spiel, repeating that our country is not the kind that Andres Bonifacio fought and died for.

He was at least right in that last point.

For sure the vast gap between rich and poor, the massive poverty, the government policy of successive presidential administrations that leads to the diminution of our agriculture and our industries, the failure of agrarian reform, the rule of elites and dynasties, etc. are not characteristics of the nation Gat Andres Bonifacio wanted our country to be. Neither is it the country that Jose Rizal envisioned for his Patria Adorada.

Marches and demonstrations on Bonifacio Day and other patriotic events tend to become unproductive, anti-people and anti-progress. They seem to be organized to make those who listen to the speakers hate foreigners, the government and businessmen and industrialists for the fact that the Philippines is not a socialist or communist state.

They should stop being time-warped.

There’s a new USA
The United States, while still the world’s largest economy, is also the rich, industrialized, militarily superpowerful country that is most heavily indebted to China.

It is the policy of today’s America, under President Barack Obama, to be only one of the many poles of global leadership.

It does not want to be the policeman of the world because it is expensive in cash and American lives to be so.

It does not want to engage in nation-building abroad anymore, although President Obama may have made a mistake in supporting the so-called Arab Spring that brought down the dictators who were faithful to America. With that mistake, America has allowed a Muslim Brotherhood leader to become the new authoritarian leader in Egypt whose new draft of a constitution liberal Egyptians (who should be America’s allies) and Christian Egyptians reject. They hate this draft of a new constitution because it dooms them to possible extinction under severe Islamist tyranny.

President Morsi supported the Hamas leadership in Palestine. Hamas is an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood. It is one of the Hamas’ goals to make Israel disappear from the face of the earth. So President Obama’s UN delegates voted, with Israel, against the UN General Assembly’s recognition of Palestine—ruled by Hamas in Gaza and by al-Fatah in the West Bank—as a non-member state.

We do agree, however, that Palestine should be recognized as a sovereign state.

Be nationalist, aim to be rich and productive
What the time-warped anti-government and anti-American and anti-Western activists should be is nationalist—patriotic—with a goal of making the Philippines a rich and productive country. That is what China is. And that is what Vietnam aspires to be. Both are ruled by communist parties. But that is also what South Korea and Taiwan are.

And these demonstrators should also be patriotic enough to see that in our conflict with the People’s Republic of China over disputed territories in the West Philippine/South China Sea we can use to our advantage the United States’ need for a reliable ally.

Aside from that they should also be patriotic enough to see that using America’s—and in general the West’s—capital and technology is the key to reinvigorating our neglected agriculture and abandoned industrialization.

That is what Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand have done most successfully. Indonesia is doing it. Singapore is now a First World Nation.