No Silver Bullets

51Kylf76zCL Currently reading Doug J. Swanson’s detailed history of the Texas Rangers, Cult of Glory (a real “myth buster”). Swanson expands on the pronouncement of Maxwell Scott and prints both the legend and the fact.

Two things caused me to stop early in the book and think. The first was in a section devoted to John Salmon Ford, Old Rip (a sobriquet indicting Ford’s prominence as a Texas Ranger who dealt savagely with any person he deemed a bad-guy). Ford attempted to create a slave empire in northern Mexico as a by-product of the Mexican-American War. He failed.

Continue reading “No Silver Bullets” →

The Alamo: Why Did It Happen?

I might have added, but didn’t, that the martyrs at the Alamo had died for the right to own slaves. They didn’t want to be a part of Mexico anymore because it was against the law in that country to own slaves of any kind.

Wow! I didn’t know that. Is it true? After all, the above quotation was from a work of fiction: Hocus Pocus by Kurt Vonnegut. If this was true and the word got out, Texas might have to disown their supreme monument (and Walt Disney would roll over in his ashen grave). I wonder if Louie Gohmert knows this?

Still, I expected such a devastating truth to be expunged from history or at least buried deep inside the deepest salt mine in the country. What if Max Zorin found out?

Continue reading “The Alamo: Why Did It Happen?” →

Erasing U. S. History

It has been a concern for years and I have tried to spread the warning in earlier posts, but here we go again.

Texas represents two major themes in this controversy. First, being the second most populist state in the union, Texas commands a major role in the content and publication of learning materials, not just in Texas, but throughout the country: after all, publishers don’t want to lose profits by printing one textbook for Texas and another for the rest of the United States.

I didn't read in my history textbook about the Japanese
internment until I was about to graduate from college (and even
then the book we used was banned from the public High Schools).
The irony here is that my father enjoyed dividing his time between
his lounge chair and taking long drives all over the southwest.
I had seen the remains of the internment camps and was aware of
the fact that my country wasn't always exceptional .. or even
admirable.

Continue reading “Erasing U. S. History” →