Victor Davis Hanson: Are Remittances As Bad As Oil? [Mexico's addictions]

There is no question Mexico is largely run by an elite which prides itself on being more purely Spanish or at least European in origin than the mestizos of mixed Spanish and Indian blood or the almost pure Indian peasants in the countryside.

And, Mexico's corruption has been endemic since it was run by Spain. The thoroughgoing corruption long predated any American policy and is largely the reason the country has remained a third world hell hole outside of a few major cities, despite great natural resources. American demand for drugs may currently reinforce the corruption, but it has always been there. Read some history.

The huge disparity between the life of the elite and that of the peasantry, without a truly significant middle class (although there is a little more of one than there used to be), is the legacy of the continuation by the local grandees of the social and economic system of the Spanish, that has been similarly unsuccessful in all of Latin America.

The best thing we could do is to seal our border with Mexico. Other than the oil we buy - which we could very well do without if we were serious - there is absolutely nothing we get from Mexico worth the trouble Mexico causes for the US. The little buggers still haven't gotten over their incompetence that led to Texas independence, and their subsequent incompetence (combined overweening arrogance and vainglory) in the Mexican War. I'm a 5th generation Californian, and I've spent significant amounts of time in Mexico and around Mexicans. The values of the average Mexican, not to mention their education, is wholly incompatible with our classical liberal representative government based on the rule of law.

Many more bastards both here and there -- not just gangland stars on the crown -- and damn them, too! Damn the gangs members, that is. For the bastards have a pity for damned they be by circumstance of their birth. Yet being thousands of miles from home and split from one's wife and family gives rise in a high percentage of men to the fathering-by-brief-sexual-interlude of out-of-wedlock children and to half-wifes (live in women at the home away from home) in similar number. How many? I'd guess more than 5%, and thats hundreds of thousands.

That is all tinder, highly inflamable, for social stress, and family strife, poverty, crime, etc. etc.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.