What a great post! I envy you living so close to so much history.

My kids have some history around here, too. We studied the Spanish history of California and visited missions. I learned a lot myself that I didn't know about the deep mission roots of many of the cities in this area. I live only a few blocks from the El Camino Real (The Road of Kings), which is now just a very long commercial street, but the hub of many towns here. There are still segments left of the Alamedas De Las Pulgas (Road of the Fleas), a parallel road that the poor people used traveling between missions. My daughter is learning Spanish in school as her language--an excellent idea in this neck of the woods. I took Spanish as a student, but living in Minnesota it was about as useful as Swahili and I forgot most of it.

I have never had any objection to my kids learning all they can about other cultures and nations. I just didn't like modern European and American history getting swept off the table.

Last year my son and I went on a field trip with his school to Gold Country, wandered the preserved gold rush towns, (not entirely preserved: an entire section of the town that had been dedicated to bordellos had been discreetly returned to grassy meadows many years ago.) and went down into a mine that is still being worked, with the primary products being mineral and gold specimens for rock collectors.

You make an excellent point about "sunshine patriots." Anyone flying a flag that doesn't vote is a hypocrite, to say the least. Let's see how many flags are still out a year from now, even if only just for holidays.