US: I know what he means - and not just because, without the huge head start they get from California's electoral strength, Democrats would be unlikely to retake Congress or the presidency in my lifetime, writes Mark Steyn
You can make an economic case for dumping California. Without California, most of the European resentment at American cultural imperialism would be transformed into resentment at Californian cultural imperialism - the movies, TV shows and pop music produced by Hollywood. The famous statement of the former French Defence Minister, Mr Jean-Pierre Chevenement, that America is dedicated to "the organised cretinisation of our people" would have to be amended: it would now be California that's dedicated to the organised cretinisation of his people, and those of us in the remaining 49 states could go "You know, Monsieur, you might have a point there".
At a stroke, a good 80 per cent of anti-Americanism would be rebranded as anti-Californianism.
A lot of us have learned more about California's political circus than we ever wanted to from the last few weeks.
By "circus", I don't mean the movie actors and pornographers and billboard models currently running for Governor.
God bless 'em all for finding honest employment in their various business ventures. No, I mean what passes for the professional political class in California.
Desperate to stave off the end of his political career, Governor Gray Davis appeared before the various big chiefs of Indian tax-free casino operations and basically offered, in exchange for campaign contributions, to let them nominate guys from their tribes to the state gaming commission - in other words, let's auction off the regulatory authority to the fellows it's supposed to regulate.
Yet even that's just business as usual compared to Davis's other big idea. On September 5th, the Governor signed a law that allows illegal immigrants - or, in the preferred euphemism, the "undocumented" - to acquire California driver's licences. A driver's licence is not just a licence to drive: it's the principal form of ID in North America; it allows you, among a thousand and one other useful functions, to board planes, cross the US/Canadian frontier, buy firearms, and register to vote. The last of which, in theory, only citizens are meant to do.
California's not the first state to regard illegal aliens as just another minority group in need of government largesse, like African-Americans and Hispanic-Americans.
Several already shower the blessings of the state on fine upstanding non-citizens from the undocumented American community.
In the summer of 2001, for example, a couple of fellows showed up in Falls Church, Virginia, in the parking lot of a 7-Eleven where undocumented Hispanics congregate in search of casual labour. They were looking for ID, and it pretty much fell into their lap. Luis Martinez-Flores, an illegal from El Salvador who's been in America since 1994, offered his services, accompanied them to the nearest Department of Motor Vehicles office, supplied the guys with fake addresses for the residency forms and certified that they lived there. The ID was processed on the spot.
Newly certified as lawful residents of the Commonwealth of Virginia, the pair returned to the DMV the very next day to walk two of their friends through the same process.
A month later, on the morning of September 11th, all four of these young Middle Eastern men used their newly acquired Virginia documents to board Flight 77, and fly it into the Pentagon.
There are lots of reasons why the al-Qaeda killers managed to pull off their audacious feat, but one of them is very clear: they took advantage of the vast networks that exist to ease the transition of illegal immigrants into American life.
In other words, the law Gray Davis has signed is a threat to national security. If you're a terrorist and you can get across the US border, Davis will give you the paperwork to ensure you can stay there. It's two years since thousands of Americans were murdered because terrorists were able to take advantage of the blurring of the line between legal and illegal residents.
You'd think no politician who wished to remain electorally viable would be able to get away with blurring the line still further. But an alliance of immigration advocacy groups, state bureaucracies, local school boards, law enforcement, the Democratic Party and a substantial proportion of the Republican Party (including the President) is wedded to the notion that the best way to deal with the country's vast army of the "undocumented" is to turn a blind eye when they come to the DMV wicket - and that way they'll all gradually acquire their documents, and be eligible for welfare, education, health care and ultimately to vote for the Democrats in large numbers and (so Bush dreams) for the Republicans in small but significant numbers.
While one can respect those who are pro-immigration or anti-immigration, to be pro-illegal immigration is to collude in the corrosion of civic infrastructure. Yet enlightened opinion is as insouciant as ever on this issue. Indeed, it's regarded as boorish to be hung up on pernickety things like sovereignty.
Cruz Bustamante, the Democrat with the best chance of succeeding Davis, has refused to disavow his affiliation with MEChA, a group that favours the establishment of a new Hispanic state in the American south-west. In most democratic societies, secessionists tend to belong to explicitly secessionist parties; Gerry Adams, for example, is a member of Sinn Féin; Bernard Landry, latterly Quebec's separatist premier, is head of the separatist Parti Quebecois. But Bustamante seems to feel there's nothing incompatible between his membership of a racial separatist movement and the Democratic Party: Hey, it's no big deal. And he has a point. After all, MEChA simply wants to undermine one big chunk of the country. By contrast, the law Bustamante and Davis support is a threat to all 50 states.
Arnold Schwarzenegger, who filled in all the forms, paid all the fees, waited for hours in the crummy Immigration Service lines, is the ideal candidate to point out that subverting the credentials of American citizenship is an insult to all legal immigrants. But the issue is too hot for this very tentative last action hero, and all he's offered is instead a somewhat narrow objection to the Davis law. Arnie has been a disappointing candidate: like Terminator 3, he had a boffo opening weekend and declined steeply within days. But this is no time to quibble about campaign defects.
In next week's election, what matters is that Davis and Bustamante are defeated. That way, at least a few of the political class might understand that there's a price to be paid for turning the government bureaucracy into a counterfeit ID racket.
If you destroy the integrity of a nation's citizenship, pretty soon you won't have a nation to be a citizen of.