Replies

"But simply annexing the area leaves some other matters that we would need to address."

Ever read Thomas Sowell's "Race and Culture," "Migrations and Culture," and "Conquests and Culture?"

One thing Mexico doesn't have, and this could make your plan unworkable, is what Sowell calls "human capital."

I'm not talking only about educational standards, but about worldview.

As Michener points out, not just Mexico, but every former Spanish colony suffers from political corruption. This is a way of life introduced because the Spanish colonial governors were corrupt. Even the Philippines, which had a century of American supervision and a half century of "democracy," still practices corruption as a way of life.

For them, corruption is a part of the nature of things, not an evil to be eradicated. To say that government is corrupt is like saying that the sky is blue or water is wet. That's the way things are and ever shall be, in saecula saeculorum.

The rejection of corruption in government as an absolute moral evil was one of the things that were so special about the American Revolution, and part of our legacy from George Washington. Mexico has never had that. Ever.

I doubt if you could find two people in all of Mexico who both (a) are capable of holding a high-level government position, and (b) would not practice corruption in office.

Three of the things that you absolutely must have to build an America-like state are:

Freedom (which would be possible for Mexico);
Private property rights (ditto); and
Government of laws and not men (which means that corruption must be minimized as it only can be when there is a broad consensus that it is anathema).

That last one is a deal-killer, I think.

To bring Mexico into the United States, the high government officials in the former Mexican areas would have to be Mexicans. The Mexican people would not accept the wholesale import of gringos to rule them, nor puppet governments with gringos pulling the strings.

That means that government in those areas would be corrupt to a degree that would make Tammany Hall look like a nunnery. That, in turn, means that instead of things getting better in the former Mexican areas, things would get worse in the original United States.

In addition, the new states would have to have representation in the legislature along the same lines as the original states. That would mean an influx of congenitally corrupt third-worlders into congress and the senate.

A tyrant with absolute power *might* be able to pull it off, but it would require thousands or tens of thousands of executions, the suppression of the leftist press and the permanent internment of large numbers of leftists under conditions we would consider sub-par, and the machine-gunning of demonstrators in the streets.

Your reply is very well thought out and written. Thank you.

One reason, actually the primary reason I believe we would be successful is due to the large percentage of Mexican citizens we now have residing within our borders. Another reason is that the PAN Party, that which Mexican President Fox belongs to, has held as a political plank for the northern Mexican states to join the USA.

The seeds for change are there, and a very large percentage of Mexican citizens that seek such a change, are within our borders where we can prepare them. They are within our sphere of influence. Using this to our advantage would prove most beneficial.

I fully agree with you that a puppet, or gringo government would fail. With our federal constitution firmly in place there, corruption at any level could be dealt with by federal prosecutors.