I thought the worst place in the world was Pakistan, but it’s actually Mexico — ten miles across the border from San Diego.

Mexico can’t even purify its water. Even in resorts like Cabo San Lucas.

The cops are on the take because it’s considered part of their salary.

The roads are a joke: dirt paths plowed smooth once to show how much the government cares for the people, only to become, after the rains, deep impassible gullies.

Americans treat their dogs better than Mexicans treat their children.

And they treat their dogs…well, you don’t want to know.

100% with you there, Phil. Mexicans are family centered, Christian, and have a work ethic when it is not discouraged by cronyism and paternalism.

Plus they have kids, and will make it unnecessary to be like Europe, where the native European population turns anti-life, and from abortion, “alternate” lifestyles, materialism, and selfism, misdirected ecological concerns, ETC. refuse to have kids, they have import massive workers from Islamic countries, and pretend that it is not destroying their entire foundations of liberal democracy.

““Grab your guns and start praying when your desperate neighbors will try to dispossess you.” – (posted under “Is Mexico Really Dysfunctional?”) “vivo” spreading the Socialist revolution one post at a time.”

Looks like my post responding to you was deleted.
Very constitutional . . .

Regardless, I’d rather have people immigrate who want to become Americans, because they share our ideals. I don’t want people who are just looking for a job, or to partake of our lavish freebies. I’d also like to keep them from sending their $50B/yr out of the country.

Yes, it’s all pretty impressive, and creates a sense of purpose, hope, and progress — walk down the street here, and you see many indications of “development”: well-dressed people, lots of shiny new cars, skyscrapers, people buying and selling, buildings going up. Great, huh?

And some wear T-shirts with English on them. That led me to conceive of the concept of the “T-shirt fallacy.” Ask those trendy folks what those words mean, and you will almost never get anything even remotely like a correct translation. Sometimes the shirts are emblazoned with vulgarisms and the most putrid profanity. The T-shirt is a misleading facade, and a symbol of how easy it is to misunderstand what this place is.

Underneath, the values of the culture prevail, and will for centuries to come. This nation, which never went through an Enlightenment, Reformation, Counter-Reformation or truly revolutionary revolution (war is one thing, a revolution another), is mired in ideas that stifle true development. Foreign-educated locals here absorb almost nothing of the values of the nation in which they study; it’s all shrugged off as alien and incomprehensible. The result is a showy, unintentional hoax, not at all what it seems to observant but naive visitors.

Take Singapore. Please. It’s a near-dictatorship, devoid of the freedoms that Western Civilization considers fundamental. Clean, modern, efficient and impressive, Singapore is the model for nations like N. Korea and Burma — proof that one can have economic progress without Liberty. Singapore is a horrible example because it encourages the dictators who believe they can improve their nations if only everybody will get in line and follow orders.

You have to look beneath the surface and spend years dealing with the locals before you can grasp the fact that many nations present superficial evidence of “progress” even as they have self-imposed and very severe limitations on their development. Corruption, the venality of the jurisprudential system, the anti-Liberty mindset of the population are not so easy to see while you travel around and take in the glitzy sights. Nearly 20 years on, I’m still learning, and still being surprised and disappointed by the huge gap between reality and favorable, impressive, admirable appearances.

(Addendum on the T-shirt fallacy: on TV here, a starlet appeared wearing a bright black-on-yellow T-shirt that read, “F**K the DJ.” No ** on that shirt! Che Guevara T-shirts are common, and ask a local who that guy was, and you get a blank stare. Quote from a movie, The Recruit: “NOTHING is what it seems.”)