Though I like to believe I think broadly and that I have strived to shed provincialisms, I am a Texan by birth, and I am heart-broken at the beating my home state is taking and has taken since George W.  Bush became President under suspect circumstances in 2000.

It is hard for people, perhaps, to understand what Texas means to Texans.  But more so than in sheer nativist or parochial loyalty, my sentiment for the state is rooted in the view that it is essential to the future of the country.  So my feelings are more than resentments about how the national press is making a joke out of Texas through the lens of the national political stage.  If Texas fails as a state – which it might well do if its growing HispanicLatino population does not accelerate its economic and social standing – the country will fail.  Think California, which remains on the ropes and whose educational system – meaning its future – has cracked.  California schools no longer are the foundation from which the state blasted into the future and took the world – not just the country – with it.  Continue reading →