What Makes Texas Texas?

[Colleen Kennedy]

This New York Times essay was posted over the weekend:

This new ultra-Texas started in 2009, shortly after President Obama took office — replacing a Texan, George W. Bush. Since then the lines between being pro-Texas, anti-Obama and anti-American blurred, and there has been no going back. So while other red-state governors gripe about federal overreach, Mr. Abbott is the only one to propose, in a 92-page document called the Texas Plan, a convention of states to amend the Constitution to allow states to override Supreme Court decisions and federal regulations.

Before he was elected in 2014, Sid Miller, the Texas agriculture commissioner, traveled the state using an unofficial campaign slogan supplied to him by his campaign treasurer, the rocker and conservative provocateur Ted Nugent: Keep Texas “the last best place.”

The notion of Texas as the best place, the exceptional place, is an old one. In his 1961 book about Texas, John Bainbridge described the state as “a mirror in which Americans see themselves reflected, not life-size but, as in a distorting mirror, bigger than life.” He called the book “The Super-Americans.”

So, the author is a new transplant, and I don't know if I agree with him. I learned its apparently pretty unique to have an entire year of middle school history classes dedicated to just the history of Texas, and I personally remember a proud Texas kind of childhood. He also doesn't ask any other Texans, transplants or natives, about what they think, he just grabs a bunch of ballyhoo from politicians. 

What do you think? 

[Christina Frasier]

Well, it's definitely underplaying all 2,000 of us liberals. Haha :sobs:

[Brittney Cox]

I mean, I took a bunch of Oregon history in elementary school, but I'm pretty sure I only remember most of it because I'm a HUGE NERD and I also (sort of) knew the relatives of Joseph Meek so it felt real!  

I feel like a big thing about Texas is just how freakin' proud of Texas everyone is- from the jewelry to the flag to the Texas on Everything! It's unusual to see more Texas flags than US flags (you rarely see the OR flag in OR, unless you're at a school or a state building), where here the car dealerships fly the Lonestar more than they fly the stars'n'stripes! 

IMO there's also a little bit of entitlement here ("We're the BEST so we deserve X") but I don't know if that's just due to my involvement in higher education and dealing with the University of Texas at Austin + the top 10% law and freshman who are 'owed' admission to a college. 

[Stephanie Folse]

IMO there's also a little bit of entitlement here ("We're the BEST so we deserve X") but I don't know if that's just due to my involvement in higher education and dealing with the University of Texas at Austin + the top 10% law and freshman who are 'owed' admission to a college.

I work at TCU. The entitlement just drips off of everything here.