The Alamo -- Movie

The Alamo -- Movie

As military history, the War of Texas Independence was one of two U.S. and Mexican Wars which did, indeed, separate some of Northern Mexico from the rest. Most of the military detail depicted in the recent ?Alamo? movie -- including Anglo-American or Irish-American pirates, slavers, and other riff-raff, well turned-out Creole boys, and ill-trained Mestizo conscripts -- is typical of many battles between and among North Americans from the First Battle of San Antonio in 1812 to the last battle of the U.S.-Mexican War. Santa Anna was in nearly all of them with poor results for the cause of Mexican nationalism.

The Anglo-American nibbling away of Spanish claims in North America could well have continued. Had the CSA prevailed in the Civil War, I hold (with Harry TURTLEDOVE) that the CSA would have annexed Cuba and bought Sonora with loans from France and the UK. The Confederacy would have then reached the Pacific, too, and become something on the Caribbean like the late Hapsburg empire hoped to be on the Mediterranean.

I think that two ?Manifest Destinies? would have been worse than one, but we will never know.

Today, the political economic system, bourgeois culture and religious development that has prevailed in the U.S. part of Northern Mexico seems to have proven better for all but the former Spanish aristocracy, even a bit better for the black slaves and indigenous people of Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and Southern California than the even more devastating competition between pure European, former slave, Creole, Mestizo, and Native American cultures further to the South.

That may not continue to be the case, but, so far, the "second chance" ethos of "Gone to Texas" accurately depicted in the recent movie has not degenerated into the severe technical and social stagnation that Mexico proper seems always on the brink of.

The question for Texians ? patriotic Texans of any culture no longer on the run ? today and going forward is how to build a republican democracy, a robust economy, and a cosmopolitan culture on the actual history, geography, and people we have.

I am pretty sure that misrepresenting history, from the racist Texas History Movies of the 1920's to the leftist celebration of indigenous proletarian mythology is a bad start. The geography here remains challenging but very valuable -- valuable enough that many imperial projects from around the world will continue to be directed against the people here.

The opportunity for us today is cultivating republican-democratic political institutions within a cosmopolitan culture that has varieties of language, religion, and ethnic heritage as well as building military-economic institutions still capable of defeating imperial projects without ruining everything else we may build here.

None of the imperial systems look that good today: Russo-Prussian, Anglo-Austrian, Austro-Iberian, and Belgian-French. We might want to look at the ?light cavalry? model of the Mongols, though. I am not altogether optimistic about our political or military institutions today.

However, the Texican military, political, and economic record is certainly better than the strictly Mexican one at this point.

All I can say looking forward that a U.S. military of long-term hires fighting for the imperial projects of a pseudo-nobility of concession-tending Anglo-Austrian NeoCons and ChickenHawks seems like a rather bad direction for us to be headed in.

::JRBehrman

Can Kerry Stop The War In Iraq?

Can Kerry Stop The War In Iraq?

Let’s assume the American people are losing confidence in this administration over the long war in Iraq, persistent economic failure, and disgusting exploitation of 9/11 in some order or combination of importance. Yes, I think most Americans have seen all the extremism and lies from the White House they care to.

What can a Kerry Administration do about this?

It can start by not compounding the lies but by dealing with the superficial nature of a merely “moderate” critique, not really an alternative:

First, new administration should make it clear that the present difficulties in Iraq and elsewhere are reflections of long-standing problems that the Bush Administration, actually the Cheney Regency, misread, misrepresented, and made far worse but that they did not exactly create:

The Reagan/Bush policy of helping Saudi Arabia prop-up Saddam Hussein as a barrier to Iran was already a failure, and post-Zionist sabotage of the Oslo Accords was already a success even before Bush/Cheney took office.

Both parties were and still are complicit in converting Great, World, and Cold War economic institutions into today’s crony capitalism, thereby undermining both the structure and level of wages at home and abroad.

Neither party has even begun to deal with profound changes in the very nature of war and military-economic challenges that these pose.

Second, going way back, the Democratic Party does not actually know how to function outside the Jim Crow framework of bi-partisan concession-tending established in 1874 and lasting until 1994.

My guess is that John KERRY will pick maybe even John McCAIN to run as V-P on the Democratic ticket and will try harder to draw Moderate Republicans into some sort of partnership than to re-build his own party from the ground-up. I am no fan of anything smacking of a bi-partisan coalition, but given that he will have to deal with (a) a GOP-controlled Congress for at least half his first term and (b) with a right-wing judiciary for a generation, I am not sure he has much choice in that.

Third, many institutions in American life, not just the Democratic Party, need to be re-built after all sorts of damage done by a century and a half of civil wars in America and Europe. Those are challenges for entire generations, not mere administrations.

Still, a new administration that does “get down” and focus on what it can and should deal with immediately and effectively could and should inspire new generations and re-inspire mine.

For my own part, I hope my friends in this caucus will not be dismayed by signs of “collaboration” in the Kerry camp or get carried away with antique notions of left and right and empty gestures of political correctness. Think about it: Is it realistic to expect a Boston Brahmin, albeit nominally Irish and Catholic, to rebuild this party nationwide from the ground up?

No! Whose responsibility is it to put more depth in our politics anyway?

Actually, it is ours. Moreover, Texas Democrats have some unique things to bring to the task:

We could have an Energy Policy in one state: Texas could make better economic and political provision for a stable Middle East and Central Asia than anything that anybody in New York or Pennsylvania has come up with in over a century by fashioning moving well beyond antique notions of "coaling stations" and "naval petroleum reserves", which is where all this got started and is still stuck.

We gave the nation and used to adhere to the conventions of Common Carriage: These are a better foundation for both national security and international economics than either the “protectionist” or “free trade” doctrines that bi-partisan concession-tenders in Washington embraced after the Great War swamped the popular and progressive doctrines that had emerged in the early twentieth century, not least, from Texas.

Finally, Texas does have a rather unique military, medical, and educational heritage: We had a notably successful militia, have both secular and religious foundations for universal provision of health care, and remain constitutionally commitment to and endowed with the means of universal public education. These have no counterparts, for instance, in the Thirteen Colonies. Texas was never a Colony of Great Britain or a Territory of the United States. So, if you want to build on robust foundations of popular sovereignty, this would be a good place to do it.

Here are two formidable impediments to re-inventing Texas, besides bogus history from the Second Klan to Walt Disney:

Jim Crow: This was a deal Texas Democrats entered into to get out of jail, so to speak, after the Civil War. It was not just or even mostly about denying the vote to former slaves. It was much more than that, and it still lives on, in the Texas Election Code, not least.

Legal expediency: Rather than overthrow that Jim Crow regime – a national system of bi-partisan concession-tending – sometime between 1964 and 1974, when we could have, Texas Democrats – liberal lawyers mostly -- relied on the federal judiciary to remove the most obvious manifestations of anti-black discrimination. This was superficial, to put it mildly, and is now reversible. In any case, the result is more racially “inclusive” forms of Jim Crow that are, however, more economically discriminatory than ever and that are more profoundly divisive than overt racism.

So, we have to deal with the old and new Jim Crow ourselves and definitively, not send appeals to the Fifth Circuit or complaints to the so-called Justice Department. We have to get rid of the worst two aspects of our heritage to exploit the best three effectively and rapidly.

Now, obviously, I am obsessed with the past and not too happy with lawyers, even liberal ones.

But, for Pete’s sake, look at what a bootless moron with no grasp of history is doing in the White House to ruin our country and much of the rest of the world. A new generation, two or three of them actually, is going to have to dispatch some of the past and recover some of the rest to Move On. And, more than one profession needs to be involved.

But, all that is not so hard:

Much is rotten and ready to fall. But, flailing around and whining will not hasten that day.

There are wonderful, albeit also dangerous, new technologies to work with and work on.

So, both political maturity and the boundless energy and creativity of youth are required today. Actually, John KERRY is my generation and has a lot of maturity. But, that is not necessarily depth. He need a lot of the latter, and it will only come from the ground up, if it comes at all.

So, can Kerry get us out of the war in Iraq?

Actually, the war against Saddam Hussein is over. We won. Big deal!

The war against al-Qaida and the like has hardly begun. The war in Iraq was and is a diversion. Somebody in the Bush Administration thought we could win it alone, quickly, and at a place and time of our choosing – in Iraq. They are fools, they were wrong, and they need to be booted out of or demoted from any offices or commands they hold.

I expect a KERRY administration to do that, but I expect it will, first, increase the scale and broaden the scope of U.S. forces in Iraq. It will take longer and more effort to secure a measure of peace and stability in Iraq than it took to make the mess there. Then our forces can be ramped down replaced with something as successful as the NATO peace-keeping force in Kosovo has been and the same sort of force in Afghanistan now needs to be. Neither is all that well off yet. So, it will be difficult to snatch anything good from what is now two years nearly of all-out war in Iraq and what was, before that, ten years of siege warfare.

There has been virtually no peace in Iraq since the end of World War II. And, will not be any soon, now.

In any case, we are probably in a long war with all sorts of what history calls “pirates and slavers”, what people today call “terrorists”.

That sort of war is not actually won. Pirates and slavers, like war, disease, famine, and death, generally, are only attenuated and held in check.

We should be able to see this clearly here in Texas.

Santa Anna thought the Texians were just “pirates and slavers”. He was more correct than not about that. Some were, but some were constitutionalists before the Alamo and many, after San Jacinto, were idealists and very decent folk.

Santa Anna, in contrast, was a tyrant and nobody knew or knows that better than Mexicans. In fact, those of us as escaped Mexican rule – white, black, brown, and red -- did not always do well here but have done much better than those as did not escape or much improve Mexican rule.

So, here we are. We are not in Utopia and will not get there from here.

We are just “Gone to Texas!”

And, we -- some of us -- have a future here, too, I hope. Some more, I fear, will go to Iraq as soldiers or workers and not come back. But, for those as stay or come back here, I expect there are many good days and years ahead. One thing is sure: There is a better track to be on than the one we are now on – a broken loop.

In fact, there are a lot of good tracks – “Seventeen Railroads (or abandoned roadbeds) to the Sea” here in Houston.

So, all of us now need to be “Workin’ on the Railroad”.

“The Eyes of Texas”, incidentally, was a progressive political anthem here in Texas. That was back when there was more singing and less whining in politics. It referred to a political battle against the Santa Fe and Southern Pacific Railroad Monopolies. Only after the Texas (and California) Railroad Commissions were established did this very political ditty become a football “fight song”.

Here, then, is an interesting problem:

Progressive politics have tremendous momentum and carry on long after fashion changes and people forget how things got started. That is a problem of culture that only art, music, and literature can solve, a memory problem that biology, technology, and economics conspire to make worse.

The Risks of Electronic Voting

The presentation on The Risks of Electronic Voting at Democratic Party Headquarters is a useful and timely exercise in analytical engineering. As a Rice alumnus, I am particularly proud of Professor WALLACH's work in this field. Hopefully, Rice's new lawyer-President will not fire him.

Engineering should inform most of our political discourse at this level of government. In fact, city and county government are mostly about civil engineering and preventive medicine, not about theology or law.

So, what of the fundamental challenge of "black-box" voting and our actual response to it? In particular, what is this party going to do about the risks of electronic voting?

The answer, so far, is nothing:

To be sure, some Democrats have taken this matter seriously:

The ROADwomen and Harris County Democrats have done an outstanding job giving Professor WALLACH a platform in this party he never got from the party elite.

The Progressive Populist Caucus is pushing a well-drafted resolution through the party's conventions on this matter.

So, this party is still twitching, if not exactly rising to this challenge.

But, too many people we have put and kept in public and party office are complicity in perpetuating the Jim Crow Texas Election Code for 130 years now. This latest wrinkle on that system should not be too surprising:

Our Democratic legislative leaders selected the technologies deployed in Texas. The Republicans knew what they were doing, the Enron and Vichy Democrats did not have a clue. They still don't.

The previous County Chair was an integral part of promoting the eSlate.

The present County Chair lamely suffers the Republican County Clerk to control our election officials and to conduct our Primary Election using the eSlate, and ...

Democratic Party executives cannot imagine doing anything other than exactly what Republican officials they report to tell him to do. So, today, more than ever, our party is run as an instrumentality of the state and county governments, not as an arm of the people.

Inherent powers this party has (a) to authenticate voters with strong, trusted, and durable credentials, (b) to nominate for public office by convention and (c) to conduct our primary elections entirely by paper ballot go unexamined, undeveloped, and unused. In fact, they could be used to deploy a credible and effective alternative to "black-box" voting.

You can rage against the Republicans, but the eSlate makes sense to them and for them:

So does the County Tax Assessor-Collector's new computerized and "credit-scored" Voter Roll that you have barely heard anything about, nothing, of course, from your own County Chair.

And, then, there is computerized, "slice, dice, and pack", gerrymandering down to the Census Block Group in urban counties -- a practice we started and could not stop.

These are complementary applications of computer technology powerful enough to undermine the "demography" that our party-tenders expect to deliver state and county government back to them. But, Republicans read the same polls and studies we do. They know that "Black-box" voting, a "credit-scored" voter roll, and high-resolution gerrymandering can damn and channel the tide of minority voters that our washed-up party leaders think will re-float them.

So, we have to select new party leaders, starting with the SDEC to be seated after the State Democratic Convention here in Houston this June. And, we will need to replace county and district executives, who just cannot seem to get the donkey in front of the cart on this and other issues of party finance, operation, and basic orientation.

The "Hold Harmless" Enron Democrats and "Follow the Law" Vichy Democrats are oblivious to technology and, duh, accounting. They have undermined this party and, indeed, this republic though their incessant deal-making and a professionally narrow view of government and politics that regular and progressive Democrats urgently need to change.

Our first chance to overthrow a decrepit party leadership will be selection of SDEC members at the State Convention here in Houston on 18 June. In fact, not just rejection of "black-box" voting but support for practical alternatives to it and the rest of the other party's technology agenda should be the acid test of new leadership.
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