Mexifornia : A State of a Becoming
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List Price:
$16.95
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Manufacturer: Encounter Books
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Average Customer Rating:  
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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 305.868
EAN: 9781594030567
ISBN: 1594030561
Label: Encounter Books
Manufacturer: Encounter Books
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 150
Publication Date: 2004-09-25
Publisher: Encounter Books
Studio: Encounter Books
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Editorial Reviews:
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This book is part history, part political analysis and part memoir. It is an intensely personal book about what has changed in California over the last quarter century.
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: Balanced, honest and NOT "fearmongering"
Comment: VDH is a professor who is a registered Democrat that votes for Democrats at local levels, but has conservative-leanings on the national level, especially since 9-11. With the movement left of the national Democrats and their lack of ideas and interest in our most pertinent matters, many of us, including myself, are similar. He's also more qualified to write a short book such as this than perhaps anyone in America -- and surely more so than your local, agenda-driven hypocritical Chicano Studies "professor."
Hanson has lived in Selma (CA) his entire life, as have his ancestors. He has seen the changes but, understanding history better than any of us, keeps a very open mind. He's also traveled the world, guided tours in the middle east and Eurabia, as well as spoken in many major US cities on a bevy of topics. Most of those castigating him in reviews or comments likely know little about him, so they call names and make absurd declarations and emotional assumptions. I have read many of his books and probably 90-95% of his columns and blogs for the past five years. This man has credibility. So enough with claims of "fearmongering." This is priceless coming from those who FEAR "global warming" but not Al Qaeda, the economic catastrophes here and abroad, or how their lives will be affected (financially, educationally, politically etc.) by millions of ILLEGAL immigrants, no matter if they live in California, Massachusetts or the midwest as I do.
I read this book, coincidentally, on a flight back from visiting my wife's avuncular family in South America. ALL of them fear what is occurring in Mexico in terms of their disingenuous media bashing America or academics abusing immigrants for political profits/exploits. Most do. You just don't hear about it on Katie Couric and Anderson Cooper.
As my Jewish ancestors know, as do any of yours who emigrated to our "salad bowl," America is, for better or worse, the MOST diverse, accepting, multi-cultural place on earth. We are more tolerant and less racist than ANY nation, especially many left-leaning elite's beloved Europe, which due to secularism, racism, selfishness and media lies, is falling into decay at the hands of angry, bellicose Muslims. America's history proves we are, THANKFULLY, NOT Europe. Our accepting of immigrants departing heinous places like Mexico is legendary and a source of pride. But any reader of history know that this is done when immigrants come to America and become Americans, renouncing and leaving behind the land they wisely fled. They take pride in being Americans as pre-1960 "Chicanos" did before the revisionist business took hold of academia.
VDH explains that, due to proximity and no thanks to the hypocritical elite academics with their Cal PHDs and SUVs via our educational system, Mexicans cannot and will not do this. And again, with a ridiculos curriculum full of 62 "Mexican Pride classes" (only ONE on the Civil War and NONE of the heroes of WW2) we allow them to with our white guilt, "progressive" (really, they're REgressive as they look back and revise history/events for their benefit) academic/media cheerleaders and a myriad of idiotic policies (affirmative action not for skin color but by virtue of success and grievances -- my wife's family received none) that keep places like California looking more like Mexico than the US.
VDH points out how we somehow allow wealthy & successful Mexicans here to tell their brainwashed students about the glory of a country (Mexico) that they'd never want to live in and that their parents rightly fled so that their offspring could live lavishly here. My former colleagues in LA were the same. And then there's the lies about the Mexican-American War, land, etc. It's all rubbish that VDH wisely clarifies about midway through the book, while being adept at also blaming the "right" in the business sense of exploitation of workers. It's quite a craft to be so non partisan --- yet some leftists separatists, seldom thinking and always calling names, refuse to read or have a debate. They are the true enemy of freedom.
Fearmongering? Please. These charged words don't work among any but the most ignorant. No one's living in fear, but rather they're dealing with reality. John Stewart and Bill Maher are not the ones leading the discourse in these matters either. {You can go fight carbon emmissions with al-Gore from his 30k sq foot mansion and private jets if you'd like while deeming sketpical/truthful folks like meterologists/climatologists and the founder of the Weather Channel akin to Holocaust deniers, while we tell our grandchildren we saved the world from Islamic-fascism.}
A great book, easily read in a few hours, and though an erstwhile Californian like me is glad he's no longer residing in that wasteland (imagine if resourceful midwesterners lived in CA how different the topography and politics would be with religion and hard work and without the PC balderdash), we do need to protect our most populous state from becoming "Mexifornia." Those working hard and becoming citizens should be proud Americans as our ancestors rightly were, and though many are, more could be if we release them from the nefarious agendas of the elite of SF, LA, etc.
Name calling is unaaceptable to folks speaking the truth, ok? It proves we're right and makes you look like the silly leftists you are. You're NOT liberal as "liberal" means open-minded and tolerant.
Dr. Hanson, as always, so well done and articulate. Thank you for this contribution. Too bad schools like yours will stick to Howard Zinn anti-American texts and not this honest and valuable assessment.
In the end, it's our children who lose out, but university "activists" and middle class teachers could care less so far as their agenda is pushed and they get large paychecks. Racial division is a huge business.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Straight talk from a native Californian
Comment: "... this book is part melancholy remembrance of a world gone by, part detached analysis by a historian who knows well the treacherous sirens of romance and nostalgia, and part advocacy by a teacher who always wanted his students to be second to no one." - Author Victor Davis Hanson
Born in Fowler, CA and raised in the San Joaquin Valley town of Selma (2000 census 19,444), author Hanson is a raisin grape farmer and former classics professor at California State University, Fresno. He grew up in the early sixties in an environment incorporating a large Hispanic element. Friends and members of his extended family, including his twin brother, have married Hispanics. From this perspective, he's written MEXIFORNIA, a cogent and unsparing view of the current influx of (predominantly illegal) Mexican immigrants into California and the social stresses this population shift has caused.
Since Hanson's pointed opinions pierce the miasma of political correctness that exudes from the mainstream media and local and state political hacks, I shall be quoting him extensively. Please bear with me; if I can convince you with a sampling of his prose that MEXIFORNIA is worth purchasing and reading, then my approach to the review and my award of five stars are justified.
First off, let's lay one thing on the table. Hanson refers to those who've crossed over from our southern neighbor by routes not established by law as ILLEGALS. Nowhere in this book does the term UNDOCUMENTED appear. If this offends the politically correct, then such should not read this book as they may well wring their hands and rend their garments. Personally, I love his refreshing candor.
On the dream of those who come:
"The dream of the young worker ... is that he might earn money as a Mexican in America and then go home to live like an American in Mexico."
On the ultimate realizations of those who come:
"You can have ten times what you had in Mexico, but still be miserable that you have one-tenth what others in America do ... How soon one metamorphoses from being a guest grateful for the privilege of having plentiful, clean food to being churlish because his house lacks central air conditioning cannot be calculated exactly; but the divide between appreciation and resentment is not wide ... most aliens from Mexico, despite their hard work, will never in their lifetimes enjoy the lifestyle that most of us Americans have ... they will still pick and scrub while we do not, and for them that makes all the difference in the world."
On the relativity of prosperity for those who come:
"A man alone may be wealthy at even $10 an hour; he is an utter pauper at the same wage with a pregnant wife, two children in diapers, and a three-bedroom apartment with a clunky car in the stall and one in worse condition on blocks ...The greatest hazard to the illegal immigrant is a large family - the truth that is never mentioned, much less discussed."
Touching on the American's perception of the unfairness of the incoming exodus:
"One of the most fascinating aspects of the entire immigration fiasco is the unspoken logic of creating an alternate universe for the illegal alien, in which our long-honored rules and statutes do not apply - a separate code of frontier jurisprudence for millions who, ipso facto, have broken the old law by their unlawful entry into America."
On the assimilation-promoting education that he and his Hispanic classmates received in the 1960s:
"If the purpose of such an education system as the one that formed us was to turn out true Americans of every hue, and to instill in them a love of their country and a sense of personal possibility, then the evidence forty years later would say that it was an unquestionable success."
Conversely, on the pro-separatist ideologies and teaching philosophies of today:
"If 'white' California is to be blamed for anything, it is for creating fiefdoms for hundreds of professors in the race business to fabricate classes and methods of instruction that impart almost none of the useful cultural information desperately needed by an alien seeking to prosper in America. If there is a truly lingering racism in California, then one need go no further than the state universities, where so much money and power has been handed over to an elite class of racialists who in turn have created a curriculum designed to guarantee failure for the children of immigrants ... Thus, each time a university president, a small-time politician on the make, or a bien pensant liberal journalist chooses the easy path of separatism, he does a little part in turning us toward Rwanda or Yugoslavia."
And, on the Hispanic "race-hustlers" who seek to capitalize on perceived victimhood:
"In some sense, he is related to the Irish ward boss, the Polish precinct worker and the Italian borough master of former times ... he shares a nineteenth-century vision of enormous ethnic blocks, entire unassimilated, with tough burly capos like himself riding to prominence at their head ... The chief fear of the race manipulator? That unchecked immigration may cease; that his minions may learn to read and write English with ease; that his brother or sister may marry 'the other'; that a Mexican middle class might flourish in private enterprise apart from government service or entitlements ..."
What Hanson has accomplished in his 150-page MEXIFORNIA is to express what so many with power and influence dare not say for fear of being branded politically incorrect or, at worst, racist. Whether you agree with the author's conclusions or not, the book, if read, has the potential to stimulate useful discussion on an incredibly thorny and intractable issue.
Customer Rating:
Summary: A Must Read About Illegal Immigrants
Comment: Victor Davis Hanson presents a compelling story of what is happening in California as huge numbers of illegal immigrants flood the state bringing changes that are truly disturbing.
Customer Rating: 
Summary: tired...
Comment: the first 50 pages were OK but downhill from there.
these are the tired rantings of a liberal who now realizes the failings of that mindset... but now it's too late. the author seems to think that picking grapes is some sort of noble undertaking and that manual labor is superior to his real job--- college professor.
now that the predictable chickens have come home to roost (mexican invasion, more welfare for illegal immigrants and overloaded hospitals full of thirld-worlders, he is SHOCKED!!SHOCKED!! that there is gambling going on at Ricks in Casablanca...
mediocre bathroom reading at best.
Customer Rating:
Summary: A personal and factual analysis
Comment: Hanson's well-written book demonstrates that complex and controversial topics can be discussed with passion, compassion, and respect. He writes about how legal and illegal immigrants have changed and are changing California into Mexifornia, a blend of two nations and peoples. I ordered extra copies to circulate among friends.
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