"Here is not merely a nation

but a teeming nation of nations."

--Walt Whitman

Christopher Hansen, chairman of Nevada's Independent American Party, is not known for treading lightly on the hot-button issues of the day.

His latest crusade goes like this: Illegal immigrants from Mexico are trying to take over the United States. Hansen is frustrated that the federal government is not responding, so he has called on Gov. Kenny Guinn to declare war on Mexico and order the state's well-regulated militia to thwart the "latter-day conquistadors."

Guinn, who surely did not realize that being elected governor gave him the authority to declare war on a sovereign nation, politely declined to comment on the question.

Hansen may sound like a crackpot to some (at least I hope so), but he's not alone. For one thing, the Independent American Party is Nevada's third-largest, with 32,000 members. For another, the gist of Hansen's position has been featured regularly in the Review-Journal letters section over the past several weeks.

The far right's Paul Revere-like alarms about illegal immigration are overwrought, and its proposed responses are wrongheaded. But before you proud liberals and pragmatic moderates get too excited, you should know that Hansen's wild rhetoric is, in fact, based in reality. Or at least some version of it.

You see, reports have surfaced that radical elements of the Hispanic movement want to return the southwestern United States to its rightful Spanish-speaking owners. You might recall that the United States, under the aggressive leadership of President James Polk, basically seized the American Southwest back in the 1840s. (Manifest Destiny was all the rage in those days.)

While Polk's naked aggression and the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo are mere footnotes in most American classrooms, where nary a cross word is uttered about our nation's history of misadventures, they remain well-remembered sore points south of the border. The grumblings of a few Mexico City professors, however, are not what worries the likes of Hansen.

MEChA, a Spanish acronym for Chicano Student Movement of Aztlan, is the far right's primary target. The Hispanic student rights organization, founded in California in the late 1960s, is said to hold irredentist views. I had to look up what irredentist means, and thanks to Google, I quickly tracked down this definition: "One who advocates the recovery of territory culturally or historically related to one's nation but now subject to a foreign government."

Apparently, some hard-core MEChA members have, in years past, expressed this view. Maria Hsia Chang, a political science professor at the University of Nevada, Reno, writes that these irredentists are motivated by "the dream of Aztlan."

"According to legend, Aztlan was the ancestral homeland of the Aztecs, which they left in journeying southward to found Tenochtitlan, the center of their new civilization, which is today's Mexico City," Chang explains. "Today, the 'Nation of Aztlan' refers to the American southwestern states of California, Arizona, Texas, New Mexico, portions of Nevada, Utah, Colorado, which Chicano nationalists claim were stolen by the United States and must be reconquered (reconquista) and reclaimed for Mexico."

To support her case, Chang mainly cites statements and documents from Chicano activists in the 1960s.

But MEChA, with more than 400 chapters across the country, including one at UNLV, says the claims are nonsense.

"This is probably ... the biggest untruth put out by the racist anti-immigration groups," MEChA insists on its Web site, www.azteca.net/aztec/mecha/faq.html. "No MEChA group wants to overthrow the U.S. or put the Southwest under Mexico. In fact, most Chicanos and Mexicans know that Mexico is a country suffering from serious political and economic problems. Why do you think Mexicans are leaving their country? The U.S. has its problems but it is still the country that has a very fair political system and does a fairly good job in respecting human rights."

The MEChA Web site explains that its members are too busy going to college "to overthrow the U.S." And besides, it's a "peaceful and law-abiding organization."

Racism, the Mechistas contend, is driving the attacks.

"There are forces in the U.S., especially in the Southwest, that do not like the fact that the Latino population is increasing. ... They have dug out historical documents from the '60s to smear MEChA, Chicanos and Latinos. They want the U.S. general population to think that Latinos are not loyal Americans."

Here's the thing: An overwhelming majority of Hispanics living in the United States, including the illegal immigrants, are not irredentists. They are here to pursue the American dream, the promise of a better future that obviously is more difficult to attain in Mexico. Their presence in our country is motivated primarily by economics, not obscure political tracts circulated in Berkeley in 1969.

Second, the notion of reclaiming the American Southwest by force is just absurd. It's the equivalent of brooding teenagers with Che Guevara posters on their bedroom walls. The United States may have trouble managing the peace in foreign countries, but it's still the world's undisputed heavyweight champ on the field of combat.

The Washington Post published an excellent article last week explaining that the same criticisms of immigrants today can be found throughout our history.

Citing examples from New York City, reporter Michael Powell writes: "The Germans refused for decades to give up their native tongue and raucous beer gardens. The Irish of Hell's Kitchen brawled and clung to political sinecures. The Jews crowded into the Lower East Side, speaking Yiddish, fomenting socialism and resisting forced assimilation. And by their sheer numbers, the immigrants depressed wages in the city."

As Powell explains, concerns about the effects of immigrants on America in those days proved unfounded, at least in the long run. "The descendants of those Italians, Jews, Irish and Germans have assimilated," he says.

Hispanic immigrants, too, will assimilate. The kids attending public schools and learning English today will be far more assimilated than their parents. If pockets of separatism remain, they will suffer rather than flourish. The United States was founded on an idea stronger than any ethnic identity. The recent peaceful marches for immigration reform strongly suggest that many immigrants understand what this country is all about -- and that Christopher Hansen and his ilk do not.

Geoff Schumacher (gschumacher @reviewjournal.com) is the Stephens Media Group's director of community publications, which includes oversight of El Tiempo, a Spanish-language weekly. His column appears Sunday.