Mexifornia: A State of Becoming

A classics professor at CSU Fresno, Victor Davis Hanson has written on current events and the loss of California’s agrarian roots. Now he takes on the ever-growing Mexican and Mexican-American presence in California. If you accept his main argument—that assimilation to a culture derived from Western Europe is and always has been the only sensible goal for immigrants to the United States—then it’s possible to think his argument is reasonable. However, if you don’t buy that sort of privilege for one culture, or if you refuse to oversimplify the effects of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, or if you just think Mexican immigration to California isn’t necessarily a bad thing, his argument will be unconvincing. Still, he’s a civil voice in a debate that all too often descends into nativist jingoism.