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I went to HS in Bakersfield in the mid 70s...I was a transplant from Texas due to the oil industry. While Kern county seemed pretty conservative, I saw my fair share of hippie types and bean bag chairs. I will say at that time the gun laws seemed pretty open and I had some of the finest hunting and fishing trips of my life there. But, with that being said, I was on a plane back to Texas the day after my graduation..

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Instead of trying to blame race you will find that the link is actually lack of education and Mexico is pretty much a oligarchy were the Spaniards still run things, appear on TV in media, etc... I understand that their own culture can be racist and xenophobic but its better not to stoop to that level.

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The hippie culture of the 60s led to a lot "Free Spirits," i.e. people who were jobless and homeless by choice.  Since it sucks ass being homeless in places that snow, they wound up in CA, and embedded themselves deeper than a wood tick. Then, they infected the school system and churned out more of their air-headed kind, and put them into government...

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This thread makes me want to see a poll here  (Palin vs. Obama for POTUS in 12) just to see how the middle left Libertarians & Democrats here at ar15.com will vote ...  

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Water cut to the central valley.

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"They" you mean "Mexicans"?

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Who freaking cares! How do we stop them from moving to Colorado?

How do we get them to succeed from the union? We are always succeeding

How do we get the state to break off and fall into the ocean? I am not impressed

Those are the questions we should be asking.

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You are the only one here trying to make it about race.



You are also wrong about the underlying issues. It isn't a lack of education, it is a failed culture. The white Mexicans are just as socialist as the others.

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Who freaking cares! How do we stop them from moving to Colorado?

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So now according to you all Mexicans are socialist?  

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You better hope the old guy doesn't see that one.

 

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So now according to you all Mexicans are socialist?  

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Instead of trying to blame race you will find that the link is actually lack of education and Mexico is pretty much a oligarchy were the Spaniards still run things, appear on TV in media, etc... I understand that their own culture can be racist and xenophobic but its better not to stoop to that level.

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[And how exactly do you propose we do that?  Invade them and impose 30 years of political correctness on the country?  Make the small white minority feel guilty for oppressing Mestizos and Mestizos feel guilty for oppressing Amerindians?

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So now according to you all Mexicans are socialist?  

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Hollywood

Lots of big cities, for some reason the more people that get together, the stupider and feel goody liberal they get

this comes from someone in a big city

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I am no political genius nor do I profess to be. These maps are part of the problem with the Electoral College though IMO. They should be weighted by states. If a candidate wins a certain party in California by 60% for example, that state puts all of its 55 Electoral votes towards him, even though a great many in the state feel differently. This by default makes the candidates focus on the larger population centers that do not always reflect the sentimant on other parts of the state. Illinois and New York are two that come to my mind.

I can OTOH understand how certain states carry more votes due to their population, i.e.South Dakota vs. California. All I am trying to say is the Electoral votes within the states should be weighted by their populations wishes overall, rather than an all or noneapproach they currently have. JMHO, don't rag me too hard.

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Instead of trying to blame race you will find that the link is actually lack of education and Mexico is pretty much a oligarchy were the Spaniards still run things, appear on TV in media, etc... I understand that their own culture can be racist and xenophobic but its better not to stoop to that level.

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When you get down to it all of their "undesirable behaviors" come from a system that encourages ignorance. This needs to be changed, the higher someones education level the less likely they are to go to jail, have illegitimate children etc.


If you want to keep looking at race then go ahead and live in your 1950's utopia.

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When we invaded Mexico during the Mexican-American War, there were elements of their elite who wanted the US to stay and rule Mexico.

Now most Mexicans seem to be voting with their feet for American rule. Polls have shown that most would rather live here, including those in the upper class. Of course when they get here, they end up voting for bad policies.

I recall a conversation in my Latino mother-in-laws house (between her and her niece). Her niece was from South America, was living with my MIL, and attending high school here. She like Arnold, and told my mother-in-law she should vote for him. MIL said no, she was voting Bustamante. Niece asked why. Answer: he's a Democrat and part of la cultura.

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So now according to you all Mexicans are socialist?  

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Latin America In Perspective

The Freeman • April 1968 • Volume: 18 • Issue: 4

Dr. Kuehnelt-Leddihn is a European scholar, linguist, world traveler, and lecturer. Of his many published works, the best known in America is his book Liberty or Equality?

The average citizen of the United States knows only too well that something is seriously wrong in Latin America. But what is it? If somebody has the measles, we notice the rash, but this is only a surface reaction on the skin pointing to a disease which actually infests the organism profoundly. The military dictator- ships in Latin America also are reactions to an unhealthy situation. Usually people will mention the glaring differences of wealth and insist that "social reforms" would do the trick. Some claim that there is no "genuine faith" in Latin America and that the Church, by "allying herself with the rich" and failing to "fight illiteracy," has "betrayed the masses." Others will blame the Spaniards for not having raised he educational level of the Indians, and so forth. Yet, in the prey-dent views on Latin America, untruths are pitted against half- truths, results are taken for causes, and stark ignorance is nixed with stubborn prejudices.

As with a human being in a state of general decline, it is necessary to investigate the "case history" of Latin America. What this part of the world like? What does it represent? First of ill, let us face the fact that apart from the Caribbean area Latin America consists of three major regions:

(a) the countries (from Mexico to Paraguay) with many Indians, a large mixed population and a small, sometimes exceedingly small, white top layer,

(b) predominantly white nations (Chile, Argentina, Uruguay) and

(c) Brazil, a "sub-continent" larger than the United States, which is of Portuguese, not of Spanish origin and has a strong African admixture.

In spite of great varieties these three regions have a surprising number of common problems.

Now let us say a few words about the Indians. Some (but by no means all) of the Indian tribes had a relatively high civilization prior to the arrival of the Europeans. Still, they knew neither the wheel nor genuine writing. Those who were civilized lived in highly autocratic and totalitarian societies in which hard work, as far as it existed, was carried out under the whip of overseers. State and religion had tyrannic aspects; human sacrifices were the rule. When the Spaniards moved in, efforts were made to assimilate and amalgamate the native nobilities (in Mexico they were made equals of the grandees); but, by and large, the upper crust became Spanish. Once the adventurers who had brutally subjugated the country were eliminated, harnessed, or disciplined, the Crown took over.

The Spanish administration worked miracles. In no time, a new Christian civilization was established: churches, chapels, cathedrals, palaces, city halls, printing shops, universities, monasteries, convents, and comfortable, spacious living quarters sprang up almost over night.

A Different Race

It was the Crown that tried to protect the Indians and later the Mestizos. The new aristocracy of Latin America, however — not at all social, political, or religious refugees as in North America, but largely members of Spain’s lower nobility — resented the Crown’s "protectionist" policy. "You in Madrid or Seville do not realize what we are up against!" they indignantly protested. And they were right — in a way. The Indian (unlike the African) has a most difficult personality, is racially easily assimilable but culturally quite inflexible. He has another logic, he is suspicious, has a closed mind, is not interested in private property and indifferent to pain, humorless (by our standards), unreliable, lazy — if we take Western notions as a measuring rod. "The lucky Yanquis!" was once told in Peru, "If only we had Negroes instead of Indians!"

Yet the Crown was also right. The Indians with their different wave length were certainly difficult to handle. They proved highly uncooperative and, more than their local Spanish masters, showed a profound distaste for systematic, hard work. We must bear in mind that the work ethics we know today in the Western world developed only after the Reformation. Our medieval ancestors worked infinitely less than we do. The average city or town in Europe 500 years ago celebrated between 90 and 140 holidays a year in addition to the 52 Sundays. Before the Spanish conquest, the Indians were used to either a bucolic life on the lowest level or to forced labor under their monarchs and caciques. Without stern discipline, the colonies could not have existed. This, Madrid did not understand. Hence, the resistance of the local "whites" against the distant capital and also against the Church which preached benevolence, leniency, and tolerance.

The War of Liberation

As a result the Latin American upper crust, egged on by Britain and the United States (both eager to trade in that huge area) and imbued with the ideas of the French Revolution, rose against Spanish domination. We had the amazing spectacle of a wealthy, landowning Creole aristocracy fighting the Crown because it protected the lower classes. (The Indians, needless to say, supported the Crown which, however, was soon defeated on battlefields thousands of miles from the motherland.) The intellectual fatherhood of the French Revolution in this struggle also hurt the Church. The majority of the priests and friars, born in Spain and loyal to the king, packed up and went home.

This "war of liberation" left the Disunited States of Latin America laboring under insoluble problems right from the start. Never had a republican and democratic form of government been adopted by countries less qualified to make it work. (In our generation, only Africa has made the same mistake.) In 1822 the two great liberators of Latin America met in Guayaquil: the Venezuelan liberator of the North, General Simon Bolivar, and the Argentine liberator of the South, General Jose San Martin. The latter implored Bolivar to establish a monarchy in South America, to look for a European prince who might accept the crown! He was convinced that republican democracy was bound to fail in the Latin part of the Western Hemisphere. Bolivar replied that he could see San Martin’s reasons but that he had to oppose his views; he was pledged to republicanism and democracy; to advocate monarchy would be a betrayal of everything he stood for.

San Martin returned to Argentina a broken man, packed his belongings and went into voluntary exile in Europe. He died in poverty in a small French town 30 years later. Bolivar, however, came to regret his reply. He, too, died in despair. "There is no faith in Latin America," he wrote, "neither in men nor in nations. The Constitutions are mere books, the treaties scraps of paper, the elections battles, liberty is anarchy and life a torment." He foresaw the rise of small local dictators and a decay so general that the European powers would not even bother to reconquer a bankrupt continent. "I have plowed the sea," was his cry of anguish.

Arizona, Borderlands and U.S.-Mexican Relations


By George Friedman

Arizona’s new law on illegal immigration went into effect last week, albeit severely limited by a federal court ruling. The U.S. Supreme Court undoubtedly will settle the matter, which may also trigger federal regulations. However that turns out, the entire issue cannot simply be seen as an internal American legal matter. More broadly, it forms part of the relations between the United States and Mexico, two sovereign nation-states whose internal dynamics and interests are leading them into an era of increasing tension. Arizona and the entire immigration issue have to be viewed in this broader context.

Until the Mexican-American War, it was not clear whether the dominant power in North America would have its capital in Washington or Mexico City. Mexico was the older society with a substantially larger military. The United States, having been founded east of the Appalachian Mountains, had been a weak and vulnerable country. At its founding, it lacked strategic depth and adequate north-south transportation routes. The ability of one colony to support another in the event of war was limited. More important, the United States had the most vulnerable of economies: It was heavily dependent on maritime exports and lacked a navy able to protect its sea-lanes against more powerful European powers like England and Spain. The War of 1812 showed the deep weakness of the United States. By contrast, Mexico had greater strategic depth and less dependence on exports.

The Centrality of New Orleans

The American solution to this strategic weakness was to expand the United States west of the Appalachians, first into the Northwest Territory ceded to the United States by the United Kingdom and then into the Louisiana Purchase, which Thomas Jefferson ordered bought from France. These two territories gave the United States both strategic depth and a new economic foundation. The regions could support agriculture that produced more than the farmers could consume. Using the Ohio-Missouri-Mississippi river system, products could be shipped south to New Orleans. New Orleans was the farthest point south to which flat-bottomed barges from the north could go, and the farthest inland that oceangoing ships could travel. New Orleans became the single most strategic point in North America. Whoever controlled it controlled the agricultural system developing between the Appalachians and the Rockies. During the War of 1812, the British tried to seize New Orleans, but forces led by Andrew Jackson defeated them in a battle fought after the war itself was completed.

Jackson understood the importance of New Orleans to the United States. He also understood that the main threat to New Orleans came from Mexico. The U.S.-Mexican border then stood on the Sabine River, which divides today’s Texas from Louisiana. It was about 200 miles from that border to New Orleans and, at its narrowest point, a little more than 100 miles from the Sabine to the Mississippi.

Mexico therefore represented a fundamental threat to the United States. In response, Jackson authorized a covert operation under Sam Houston to foment an uprising among American settlers in the Mexican department of Texas with the aim of pushing Mexico farther west. With its larger army, a Mexican thrust to the Mississippi was not impossible — nor something the Mexicans would necessarily avoid, as the rising United States threatened Mexican national security.

Mexico’s strategic problem was the geography south of the Rio Grande (known in Mexico as the Rio Bravo). This territory consisted of desert and mountains. Settling this area with large populations was impossible. Moving through it was difficult. As a result, Texas was very lightly settled with Mexicans, prompting Mexico initially to encourage Americans to settle there. Once a rising was fomented among the Americans, it took time and enormous effort to send a Mexican army into Texas. When it arrived, it was weary from the journey and short of supplies. The insurgents were defeated at the Alamo and Goliad, but as the Mexicans pushed their line east toward the Mississippi, they were defeated at San Jacinto, near present-day Houston.

The creation of an independent Texas served American interests, relieving the threat to New Orleans and weakening Mexico. The final blow was delivered under President James K. Polk during the Mexican-American War, which (after the Gadsden Purchase) resulted in the modern U.S.-Mexican border. That war severely weakened both the Mexican army and Mexico City, which spent roughly the rest of the century stabilizing Mexico’s original political order.

A Temporary Resolution

The U.S. defeat of Mexico settled the issue of the relative power of Mexico and the United States but did not permanently resolve the region’s status; that remained a matter of national power and will. The United States had the same problem with much of the Southwest (aside from California) that Mexico had: It was a relatively unattractive place economically, given that so much of it was inhospitable. The region experienced chronic labor shortages, relatively minor at first but accelerating over time. The acquisition of relatively low-cost labor became one of the drivers of the region’s economy, and the nearest available labor pool was Mexico. An accelerating population movement out of Mexico and into the territory the United States seized from Mexico paralleled the region’s accelerating economic growth.

The United States and Mexico both saw this as mutually beneficial. From the American point of view, there was a perpetual shortage of low-cost, low-end labor in the region. From the Mexican point of view, Mexico had a population surplus that the Mexican economy could not readily metabolize. The inclination of the United States to pull labor north was thus matched by the inclination of Mexico to push that labor north.

The Mexican government built its social policy around the idea of exporting surplus labor — and as important, using remittances from immigrants to stabilize the Mexican economy. The U.S. government, however, wanted an outcome that was illegal under U.S. law. At times, the federal government made exceptions to the law. When it lacked the political ability to change the law, the United States put limits on the resources needed to enforce the law. The rest of the country didn’t notice this process while the former Mexican borderlands benefited from it economically. There were costs to the United States in this immigrant movement, in health care, education and other areas, but business interests saw these as minor costs while Washington saw them as costs to be borne by the states.

Three fault lines emerged in United States on the topic. One was between the business classes, which benefited directly from the flow of immigrants and could shift the cost of immigration to other social sectors, and those who did not enjoy those benefits. The second lay between the federal government, which saw the costs as trivial, and the states, which saw them as intensifying over time. And third, there were tensions between Mexican-American citizens and other American citizens over the question of illegal migrants. This inherently divisive, potentially explosive mix intensified as the process continued.

Borderlands and the Geopolitics of Immigration

Underlying this political process was a geopolitical one. Immigration in any country is destabilizing. Immigrants have destabilized the United States ever since the Scots-Irish changed American culture, taking political power and frightening prior settlers. The same immigrants were indispensible to economic growth. Social and cultural instability proved a low price to pay for the acquisition of new labor.

That equation ultimately also works in the case of Mexican migrants, but there is a fundamental difference. When the Irish or the Poles or the South Asians came to the United States, they were physically isolated from their homelands. The Irish might have wanted Roman Catholic schools, but in the end, they had no choice but to assimilate into the dominant culture. The retention of cultural hangovers did not retard basic cultural assimilation, given that they were far from home and surrounded by other, very different, groups.

This is the case for Mexican-Americans in Chicago or Alaska, whether citizens, permanent residents or illegal immigrants. In such locales, they form a substantial but ultimately isolated group, surrounded by other, larger groups and generally integrated into the society and economy. Success requires that subsequent generations follow the path of prior immigrants and integrate. This is not the case, however, for Mexicans moving into the borderlands conquered by the United States just as it is not the case in other borderlands around the world. Immigrant populations in this region are not physically separated from their homeland, but rather can be seen as culturally extending their homeland northward — in this case not into alien territory, but into historically Mexican lands.

This is no different from what takes place in borderlands the world over. The political border moves because of war. Members of an alien population suddenly become citizens of a new country. Sometimes, massive waves of immigrants from the group that originally controlled the territory politically move there, undertaking new citizenship or refusing to do so. The cultural status of the borderland shifts between waves of ethnic cleansing and population movement. Politics and economics mix, sometimes peacefully and sometimes explosively.

The Mexican-American War established the political boundary between the two countries. Economic forces on both sides of the border have encouraged both legal and illegal immigration north into the borderland — the area occupied by the United States. The cultural character of the borderland is shifting as the economic and demographic process accelerates. The political border stays where it is while the cultural border moves northward.

The underlying fear of those opposing this process is not economic (although it is frequently expressed that way), but much deeper: It is the fear that the massive population movement will ultimately reverse the military outcome of the 1830s and 1840s, returning the region to Mexico culturally or even politically. Such borderland conflicts rage throughout the world. The fear is that it will rage here.

The problem is that Mexicans are not seen in the traditional context of immigration to the United States. As I have said, some see them as extending their homeland into the United States, rather than as leaving their homeland and coming to the United States. Moreover, by treating illegal immigration as an acceptable mode of immigration, a sense of helplessness is created, a feeling that the prior order of society was being profoundly and illegally changed. And finally, when those who express these concerns are demonized, they become radicalized. The tension between Washington and Arizona — between those who benefit from the migration and those who don’t — and the tension between Mexican-Americans who are legal residents and citizens of the United States and support illegal immigration and non-Mexicans who oppose illegal immigration creates a potentially explosive situation.

Centuries ago, Scots moved to Northern Ireland after the English conquered it. The question of Northern Ireland, a borderland, was never quite settled. Similarly, Albanians moved to now-independent Kosovo, where tensions remain high. The world is filled with borderlands where political and cultural borders don’t coincide and where one group wants to change the political border that another group sees as sacred.

Migration to the United States is a normal process. Migration into the borderlands from Mexico is not. The land was seized from Mexico by force, territory now experiencing a massive national movement — legal and illegal — changing the cultural character of the region. It should come as no surprise that this is destabilizing the region, as instability naturally flows from such forces.

Jewish migration to modern-day Israel represents a worst-case scenario for borderlands. An absence of stable political agreements undergirding this movement characterized this process. One of the characteristics of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is mutual demonization. In the case of Arizona, demonization between the two sides also runs deep. The portrayal of supporters of Arizona’s new law as racist and the characterization of critics of that law as un-American is neither new nor promising. It is the way things would sound in a situation likely to get out of hand.

Ultimately, this is not about the Arizona question. It is about the relationship between Mexico and the United States on a range of issues, immigration merely being one of them. The problem as I see it is that the immigration issue is being treated as an internal debate among Americans when it is really about reaching an understanding with Mexico. Immigration has been treated as a subnational issue involving individuals. It is in fact a geopolitical issue between two nation-states. Over the past decades, Washington has tried to avoid turning immigration into an international matter, portraying it rather as an American law enforcement issue. In my view, it cannot be contained in that box any longer.

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And how exactly do you propose we do that?  Invade them and impose 30 years of political correctness on the country?  Make the small white minority feel guilty for oppressing Mestizos and Mestizos feel guilty for oppressing Amerindians?

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We educate them with higher learning.

 

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Mexico is not Latin America, it is Mexico. Honduras,Guatemala,El Salvador,Nicaragua, are Considered Latin America.

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California has more Republican Conservatives than 5 other "Smaller less populated " free states combined

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I really like the cut of your jib my good man.

 

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Wow you guys figured out "undesirable" political leaning based on where someone comes from and their genetic heritage. Heinrich Himmler would be proud.

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Then why is California always so overwhelmed with Democratic politicians in office?

Plus, after "Arnold", my guess is, Californians have a somewhat different definition of what a conservative is.

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My Mayor ,both my State Reps & my State Senator & US Congressman are all conservative GOP.

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What in the Hell are you smoking? Military super-power? Please!  

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San Diego
Navy RTC/NTC closed

San Fran (forgive me if you were counting these in San Fran)
Mare Island Naval Shipyard and school commands closed
Treasure Island closed

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Wow you guys figured out "undesirable" political leaning based on where someone comes from and their genetic heritage. Heinrich Himmler would be proud.

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Wow you guys figured out "undesirable" political leaning based on where someone comes from and their genetic heritage and voting habits. Heinrich Himmler would be proud.

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if canadians were coming here by the millions increasing socialism and dragging down our states we would be bitching about them.  

The question is would you be calling all the white people racists for wanting to stop the white canadians from fucking up our country?  


Are Mexicans racists for denying their central american neighbors?

Sometimes I think you are someone elses troll account because not too many people on this earth have such a lack of comprehension and reasoning in discussions.
 

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The libel "racist" is over used, trite, and the  last primary vestige of a liberal leftist losing an arguement.

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What is so liberal about California?  The state alone is in the top ten world's economy.  If it wasn't for the big city thinkers from California the US as a whole wouldn't be a military or economic superpower it is today.  San Francisco is very nice and would be an awesome place to live.  The standards that are in place is what keeps that city nice.

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Wow you guys figured out "undesirable" political leaning based on where someone comes from and their genetic heritage. Heinrich Himmler would be proud.

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That's a cheap shot, laughingly off the mark, and right out of the Alinsky playbook.  As someone who actually lost family members in the holocaust, your cheap shot is rather disgusting.

I've yet to see anyone complaining about LEGAL immigrants, regardless of race.
The socialist, something for nothing philosophy is a problem with those from Mexico, especially those who broke the law to get here.

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Randomhero, are you EXP's fluffer?

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I think EXP forgot to log off of his troll account.

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That's a cheap shot, laughingly off the mark, and right out of the Alinsky playbook.  As someone who actually lost family members in the holocaust, your cheap shot is rather disgusting.



I've yet to see anyone complaining about LEGAL immigrants, regardless of race.

The socialist, something for nothing philosophy is a problem with those from Mexico, especially those who broke the law to get here.

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Oh no, did you read the last few replies people were actually arguing that ALL Mexicans are socialists.