Yet despite all the glories of California, the state is changing so rapidly and in so many ways that another mass exodus of the middle class to other states appears to be in the offing. A lot of it has to do with the tanking dot-com-based economy up north, and the results of unchecked liberalism - high taxes, high utility rates, punitive regulations on business, an excess of entitlements and social-engineering legislation.

But there's something else that is building a sense of uncertainty and unease among longtime Californians. It's an issue that cannot be discussed in polite company, lest one be called a xenophobe. That something is called immigration. There are many good things about it, especially in this land of immigrants, but there are many problems as well.

Unfortunately, a politically correct ethic has squelched a forthright discussion of the matter. There's talk about tax burdens and changing demographics and increased needs for public services. These often are euphemisms for the real issue - the aging of the wealthier Anglo population, and its replacement by new residents mainly from poor regions in Mexico, who often break the laws to get here.

If the forthrightness of that sentence takes you aback, then you'll appreciate "Mexifornia," an analysis of the immigration issue by Cal State-Fresno classicist Victor Davis Hanson. It's a fair-minded and refreshingly honest account of how California is changing in the face of the immigration influx, and draws heavily on Hanson's experiences on his family farm in a small town in the San Joaquin Valley.

Hanson laments the loss of the old assimilation ethic, which has been replaced by the multicultural, grievance-mongering, government-preferences model. The book is not an anti-immigration diatribe, but it might strike some readers that way simply because Hanson deals directly with questions that are often left unanswered in polite company.

Why do they keep coming?

"Simply put, Mexican elites rely on immigration northward as a means of avoiding domestic reform," Hanson wrote. "Market capitalism, constitutional government, the creation of a middle-class ethic or an independent judiciary will never fully come to Mexico as long as its potential critics go north instead of marching for a redress of grievances on the suited bureaucrats in Mexico City."

Do the new immigrants take "our" jobs?

"Ban our yearly contingent of tough, lean Mexican immigrants completely from California tomorrow, and I think within a year or two the state would be almost paralyzed - much of its food decaying, its hotels dirty, its dishes unwashed, its lawns and shrubs weedy and unkempt."

Aren't the new waves of mostly Mexican immigrants the same as previous waves from other nations?

Yes and no. The issue, Hanson argues, is one of assimilation. Many Central Valley towns where he lives are inhabited almost completely by Mexican nationals, who live in impoverished enclaves. This isn't much different from other waves of immigrants, who struggled for years in ghettoized communities until reaching the American middle class. Indeed, large numbers of Mexican immigrants reach the highest levels of society.

But there is a difference, born of sheer numbers from the close proximity of Mexico: "As it now stands, the constant stream of new arrivals means that for each assimilated Mexican, there are always several more who are not. Unlike Southeast Asians, who came all at once to California and from thousands of miles away following the disaster in Vietnam, Mexicans have had no opportunity to mature together and slowly evolve as a distinct cohort into Americans."

Throw in the new politically correct ethic that teaches the new immigrants that they are exploited by the white man, large percentages of immigrants who are here illegally and therefore survive in an underground economy, and an enormous welfare state available to all comers, and the divisions in California keep getting greater and more explosive.

How is this changing the state?

As new immigrants flock to our state, the aging liberal white establishment pushes hard for growth controls and other measures to keep their expensive enclaves as they always have been.

This exacerbates tensions. During my drive a week ago, I saw some of the many barrios and farm towns in the Central Valley. But I also saw the many cities and towns closer to the coast where only the outrageously affluent can live. In places like Monterey, Carmel, San Luis Obispo and especially Santa Barbara, home prices have reached unimaginable proportions (median prices approaching $1 million) due in part to development restrictions.

We all see it happening - the Third Worldization of California. The "haves" live in their multimillion-dollar enclaves with views of the coast, while enormous barrios house the "have nots."

Meanwhile, the politicians increasingly reflect the tony liberal (and guilt-ridden) views of the wealthy elites, and the disgruntled class- and race-based politics of the growing underclass. Together they increase taxes, expand racial preferences, punish businesses - even as new waves of middle-class people and retirees move to other places.

What does this mean for the future?

"Because too many unskilled Mexicans will come in numbers too great to be easily assimilated, and since their children will no longer be taught the need to accept the common protocols and heritage of American culture, the present pathology will only worsen," Hanson wrote. "Either we lower standards ... or we maintain de facto a permanent class of modern helots who do the dirty jobs for their Spartan overlords, without ever joining fully in the management of the world that their hard work has helped to create."

It's controversial, but Hanson's book is a refreshing, frank and fair-minded parley into this needed debate.

"Mexifornia: A State of Becoming," by Victor Davis Hanson. Encounter Books. 150 pp. $21.95