It’s been bizarre to see film footage of someone as mindless and consumed with bloodlust as Ted Nugent on a stage in front of the Alamo with Glenn Beck–a TV pundit or entertainer or whatever he’s calling himself today (“I’m just a rodeo clown”) railing against the decline of American civilization.
Give them their due, these, uh, voices of reason aren’t shackled by any sense of irony.
And then there’s the governor who whips up the long dormant secession movement of Texas. He speaks from one side of his mouth about how Texans are the trueblood Americans, then speaks out of the other side about seceding from America.
Then his defenders come out and claim he was just “revved up” (Texas Congressman John Culberson’s words) and speaking in the heat of the moment, and never mind that there’s film showing evidence to the contrary.
He wasn’t all that revved up when he spoke on CNBC and in other interviews.
Personally, I have direct Texas ancestors dating to the Revolutionary War (remember when we found those gravesites Cpl. Adam McKay?) who are buried on a hillside in Washington County, Texas, very close to where the Texas Declaration of Independence was signed at Washington on the Brazos.
My kids will tell you that Washington County, Texas, is sacred ground to old dad. They’ve all suffered enough poison ivy tramping around old graveyards to deter them from anymore historical cemetery tramping.
The supreme irony of all this secession weirdness is that the greatest of all great Texans, General Sam Houston, was more often than not resisting and opposing mobs that shared none of his cleared-headed thinking. He was an incredible fighter and warrior, yes, but also an intellectual and visionary and man of peace in the best sense.
If you want to know his very lonely and courageous position on secession from the Union in the pre-Civil War debates, start with John F. Kennedy’s Pulitzer prize winning Profiles in Courage. That great book doesn’t even begin to capture all of General Sam’s unpopular but vindicated positions against the pitchforks.
Houston was despised and detested by the very war veterans and other Texans who had loved him, for more than any reason, because of his brave and lonely stand on secession and attempts to prevent the Civil War.
We all know the rest of the story.
I don’t think anyone, even our governor, is serious about secession. But it’s just unbelievable that there’s even a mention of it. I like to think the governor got caught up in the heated rhetoric of the moment–and boy, did he get heated up in Austin amid the cries of “Secede! Secede!”
Being a Texan is embarrassing some days.
It is so sad…and embarrassing…when national coverage about our state involves such craziness!!!
Viva Sam Houston!
Graveyard hunting – ah, the joys of weekends with dad! 🙂