Thank God for Texas!!

When we moved to Arizona in 1993, it was the first time in my life that I lived outside of Texas.  When we were renting our house, the lady we were renting from told us where all the county offices were in Prescott.  She said we should get an Arizona license plate as soon as possible.  She said if we did not, expect to get stopped a lot by the local police.  They don't like people from out of state, but especially not those from Texas.  We kind of laughed it off, but did get new plates fairly quickly.  Didn't want to tempt fate or the local police department.  We were in Arizona for a few years before moving back to Texas - Amarillo.  No one recommended that we change our Arizona plates quickly.  We moved back to Arizona in 2005.  I started work on Monday.  Thursday afternoon when I went outside for a break, I found a note on my windshield from the local sheriff's department.  It detailed the local requirements for updating your vehicle registration within 30 days after moving and told the fines possible if you did not.  I did not see it as an anti-Texas practice, just a revenue enhancer for the county.  My belief was justified when another new hire came on from Oklahoma and received the same note within a week.  And no one resents Okies.

Then I moved to Colorado and what a difference!  I heard the usual jokes and good-naturedly took them.  It's easy to take the jokes about your perceived natural superiority when you know that you really are superior!  The first comment that was not good-natured joking came from a local hunter when I was selling him a hunting license.  A license for the first elk hunting season came to about $175 and he started complaining about those *@! Texans making the price of licenses go up.  Well, the same license for a non-resident cost almost $500!  And the state is using money from out of state hunters to actually keep the cost down for in-state hunters.  Not to mention the sales tax I collected from them on the ammo, sleeping bags, tents, firewood, propane, gasoline, coats, orange hunting vests, gloves - what exactly did they bring with them???  I probably threw a little fuel on his fire when I mentioned that our little town was actually part of Texas at one time.  Along with Denver and Cheyenne and everything in between.  He just lived in the part of the country that original Texans decided they had no use for.

Next came negative comments from Raelynn's 5th grade teacher about Texans in front of her class.  Raelynn was upset, so Cathy let the teacher know that Raelynn lived in Texas and still has a lot of family in Texas and she should be careful who she is ridiculing in front of the class.  The comments stopped, but so did any other conversation or interaction with the teacher.

We moved to Gunnison, which is a friendlier area.  It has to be, since it gets a huge chunk of revenue from out of state skiers, summer vacationers, and students at Western State.  Like most prejudices, they are softened with exposure to people from a different background.

I started seeing news stories a couple of weeks ago about conservative views being re-introduced into school curriculums in Texas.  Since Texas is the largest non-California market, what is taught in Texas is rolled out to the rest of the country since publishers go for the biggest market.  And California is so far off the chart that no one will follow them.  According to the news stories, the conservatives were successful in rolling back almost all the progressive changes, especially to history, that occurred beginning in the early 1970's.  So the media and progressive educators started sniping.  An editorial cartoon in this Sunday's Denver Post (yes, I am one of the 156 people that still read the newspaper) showed a copy of the Constitution with sticky notes saying things like "mention the 2nd amendment here," "can't we work Reagan in here somewhere," "talk about capitalism here," etc.  Like requiring students to memorize and recite the preamble to the Constitution is a bad thing!  And the 2nd amendment is in there!  And Reagan was a president!  And Texas and United States has actually featured English-speaking white men!  It's Texas history!  We won the Texas revolution.  Don't really care why Santa Ana decided it was necessary to kill everyone at the Alamo.  Just that he did and he got his butt kicked at San Jacinto.  And Sam Houston did not have all his gun-toting rednecks kill all the Mexicans.  He let them live and go back home to Mexico.  He didn't even decide to go conquer more territory.  Same with the American revolution, WWI and II, the Cold War, capitalism vs. communism/socialism/fascism.  We won.  Get over it.  America is blessed and exceptional.  Our kids need to be taught about the good things their country has done and is doing.  It is not necessary to go around bowing to foreign despots and apologizing for our success.

Years ago when I had the book store, I noticed a paperbook published in the early 1970's or maybe even the late 1960's, called The Super-Americans.  Its premise was that the reason other Americans dislike Texans is the same reason that people in other countries don't like Americans.  We know we are right, and don't really care to hear what you think about it.  As Emmitt Smith told Kevin Greene of the Pittsburgh Steelers in Super Bowl XXX, "look at the scoreboard."  That's all that matters.  Deal with it.  

First the education reforms, then being one of the first states to say they will challenge the health care takeover in court, to being one of the few states whose economy is not in complete freefall.  Now, take a look at this nightmare of a news story from Washington.  It's just unbelieveable how far we have fallen as a country.  About half the comments say that the mother in the story is wrong.  She should have no say in the matter.  What the school did was legal.  In 1995, Texas repealed the law that would allow the schools to do this in Texas.  So maybe California, Illinois, Louisiana, New York, Washington, Colorado, and D.C. should just close their mouths and take a look at the scoreboard.  Follow the example of a successful state.