Fox News currently has an article [Veteran Crime Reporter Shot Dead in Mexico Border City, November 13, 2008] that includes, almost as an afterthought, these final two paragraphs:

On Wednesday, an anonymous banner appeared at the door of a public Juarez kindergarten, threatening to attack the school's children if the teachers don't hand over their Christmas bonuses.

Classes were immediately suspended as police decided what security measures to take.

(Hat tips to Gene Cafarelli of Arizona's Minuteman Civil Defense Corps and to Glenn Spencer's omnipresent American Patrol Report.)

It's actually an Associated Press article, and USA Today printed a fuller version that also describes violence aimed at the U.S. consulate in the northern city of Monterrey:

In separate incidents last month, an unexploded grenade was tossed at the consulate and gunshots were fired, prompting officials to suspend visa services.

(Whom could we bribe in the U.S. government to shut down such visa services for good??)

As Mexicans' behavior in Mexico becomes ever more egregious, articles such as Christopher Manion's 2001 classic Cultural Suicide become ever more salient for American citizens who recognize the fragility of our national future, given that we abut a neighbor like Mexico.

But, in an important sense, we Americans have driven Mexico's descent into chaos by making recreational drugs illegal, thereby making their illicit supply highly lucrative. As detailed in the 2000 book Drug Crazy:How We Got into This Mess and How We Can Get Out by Mike Gray, Americans used to live with such drug use. Certainly there were private tragedies from drug abuse, but that regime didn't lead to society-wrecking crime.

(The same is true with alcohol today: Some people destroy themselves, but they don't need to lead lives of crime to do so. The tragedies are personal and limited, not societal.)