Texas Got It Right! - Sam Wyly

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and thriving local

      markets driven by everything from consumer tech to

      agriculture to clean energy. They also find fewer

      obstacles to building a career or a business than in

      any other big states. Andrew and I see in Texas a

      model for the other states and for Washington to

      follow. That Place on the Potomac needs to shrink

      itself and be less of a burden on Texans and the other

      folks in America who work for a living.

      Today, political, economic, and cultural influ-

      ence in this country is shifting south, away from its

      traditional seats of power in the Northeast and on

      the Left Coast. For us the reason is as clear as day:

      California, New York, and Illinois Got It Wrong.

      Texas Got It Right.

      TEXAS GOT IT RIGHT!

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      “Appomattox determined that the North would

      establish the rules for our Union ... for the next hun-

      dred years. The North would set the freight rates so

      damaging to the South. The North would determine

      the tariffs that made it so rich and kept the South so

      poor. The North would determine everything, it

      seemed, and would do so perpetually. But look at

      the situation today. Where is the power flowing?

      Always to the South. Where are the seats in Congress

      coming? To Texas and Florida. Where would you

      like to live if you were young and active and hope-

      ful? Vermont? Or the Sunbelt?”

      —James Michener, Texas, 1985

      TEXAS GOT IT RIGHT!

      18

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      As new jobs and prosperity have driven population

      growth in the state, Texas’s legislative and electoral

      oomph have grown right along with it. In fact, the

      Lone Star State is at the center of a slow, steady

      shift in the political landscape of the United States.

      Since 1940, seventy-nine congressional seats have

      drifted from the Midwest and the Northeast to the

      South and the West—and about 18 percent of those

      seats now belong to Texas, whose congressional

      delegation has grown for the past seven consecutive

      decades. The picture in the Electoral College,

      whose delegates send a candidate to the White

      House every four years, is similarly striking. The

      2010 Census awarded Texas 38 electors, four more

      than it possessed after the 2000 count, and the most

      gained by any state. Meanwhile, the electoral clout

      of Rust Belt and Northeast power centers like

      Illinois, New York, and Pennsylvania is declining,

      and California has flatlined.

      TEXAS GOT IT RIGHT!

      19

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      When the early Texans revolted against Mexican

      rule and gave birth to a new nation, the Republic of

      Texas, it was a do-it-yourself thing. It all started

      with an old cannon, a homemade flag, and a cocky

      motto that’s as resonant today as it was in October

      1835. That’s when colonists in a settlement named

      Gonzales decided to fight the one hundred troops

      that Mexico’s dictator, General Santa Anna, had

      sent to take possession of the town’s single rusting

      cannon. Oddly enough, that gun— the “It” in “Come

      and Take It”—had originally been sent from Mexico

      to help the Anglo colonists fight the Comanche

      Indians, who had wiped out San Saba and other

      Spanish missions. In fact, it was the Mexican

      regime that had invited those Anglo settlers to the

      Texas territories in the first place, as a defense

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      TEXAS GOT IT RIGHT!

      against Indian raids. But times had changed. The dic-

      tator who had overthrown Mexico’s democratic

      government now wanted to rule the “unruly” Texans.

      The defenders of Gonzales rallied under the crude

      flag above, which was hastily made from the silk of a

      local gal’s wedding dress. After a brief battle, the first

      of the Texas Revolution, the people of Gonzales kept

      their cannon. But the skirmish wasn’t really about the

      gun (the thing barely worked). It was about defending

      local self-government from distant, centralized power—

      a notion that’s as dear to Texans today as it was to the

      Gonzales guys in 1835. And just like your typical

      present-day Texan, those grassroots rebels knew the

      value of fighting words. “Come and Take It.” You

      couldn’t pay an ad agency a monster fee to come up

      with a better slogan than that.

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      The Battle of Gonzales (see opposite page) in

      October 1835 may have provided the spark for the

      Texas Revolution, but the settlers who won it proba-

      bly didn’t anticipate just how hot the flames of their

      new war would burn. By early the next year, six thou-

      sand Mexican troops had poured into Texas to put

      down the insurrection. Mexico’s dictator, General

      Santa Anna—who in early 1835 had ransacked the

      Mexican silver-mining town of Zacatecas to crush the

      rebels who were fighting to preserve their freedom

      under the Mexican Constitution of 1824—

      issued a decree to his troops to take no

      prisoners. Five months after the

      rebels

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