That astonishing claim by Mexican President Felipe Calderon, in his state of the nation address at the National Palace Sunday, brought his audience wildly cheering to its feet.

Were the United States a serious nation, Calderon’s claim that Mexico extends into the United States would have produced an instant demand from the U.S. ambassador for clarification. Failing to receive it, he would have packed his bags, and the United States would be on the verge of severing diplomatic relations.

In an earlier time, U.S. troops would be rolling to the border.

For this is not the first time an arrogant Mexican ruler has made a claim to extra-territorial rights inside the United States and, indeed, to U.S. territory. Mexico’s presidents have gotten into a habit of suborning treason against the United States.

In 1995, President Ernesto Zedillo told a Dallas audience of U.S. citizens of Mexican descent, “You are Mexicans, Mexicans who live north of the border” – i.e., you owe loyalty to Mexico, not Uncle Sam.

In 1997, Zedillo brought a Chicago gathering of La Raza to its feet by exclaiming, “I have proudly affirmed that the Mexican nation extends beyond the territory enclosed by its borders.”

In 1998, Mexico changed its constitution to restore citizenship to Mexican-Americans who have taken an oath of allegiance to the United States and renounced loyalty to any other country.

Purpose: loosen their ties of loyalty to the United States, re-knit their ties of loyalty to Mexico, and persuade Mexican-Americans to vote Mexico’s interests in the USA. Put Mexico first, even if you have taken an oath of allegiance to the United States.

In June 2004, President Vicente Fox took the Zedillo road to the Mexican-American community in Chicago. There, he, too, declared: “We are Mexicans that live in our territories, and we are Mexicans that live in other territories. In reality, there are 120 million that live together and are working together to construct a nation.”

President Fox was saying that the construction of his nation is taking place – inside our nation. Is that not sedition?

In 2005, the head of the Institute of Mexicans Abroad, Carlos Gutierrez, asserted, “The Mexican nation goes beyond the borders that contain Mexico.”

What these Mexicans politicians are saying is that Mexico extends into the United States, and the first loyalty of all men and women of Mexican ancestry is, no matter where they live, to Mexico.

Mexico’s rulers believe in a nation of history, blood and soil that pre-existed, and supersedes, any pledge of allegiance any Mexican may make to another country, especially to the United States.

Is George W. Bush vaguely aware of any of this?

At the Quebec summit, Bush mocked the idea of a merger of a North American Union as a fantasy of conspiracy theorists. “It’s quite comical actually, to realize the difference between reality and what some people on TV are talking about.”

Calderon laughed it off, too. “I’d be happy with one foot in Mexicali and one in Tijuana.” But in his state of the nation, Felipe is talking about one foot in Mexico and one in Los Angeles.

Is Bush oblivious to what his friend Vicente Fox laid down in Madrid in 2002 as the long-term strategy of Mexico?

“Eventually, our long-range objective is to establish with the United States … an ensemble of connections and institutions similar to those created by the European Union, with the goal of attending to future themes as important as … the freedom of movement of capital, goods, services and persons. The new framework we wish to construct is inspired in the example of the European Union.”

Fox is talking about the erasure of borders.

Whether Bush is aware of this really makes no difference. For the real issue is not what the Mexican regime has in mind, but whether we can stop it, or whether we have passed a point of no return.

Today, already, there are 45 million Hispanics in the United States, perhaps half from Mexico, and 37 million immigrants.

Now, Steve Camarota of the Center for Immigration Studies projects – using official Census Bureau figures of 1.25 million legal and illegal immigrants entering and staying in the United States every year – a U.S. population of 468 million by 2060.

We will add as many people – 167 million – in the next half-century as the entire population of the United States when JFK was elected.

Some 105 million of these folks will be immigrants and their children. That 105 million is equal to the entire population of Mexico, whence most of these folks will be coming.

No wonder Mexican presidents are coming out of the closet about what is up. They know the gringos can’t stop it, for they have the American establishment on their side.

Buenas noches, America.

www.buchanan.org