War has been the name of the game for humanity’s most recent spin around the sun. American soldiers have been sent to oust a dictator from the lands of wind and sands, and democratic battles are being waged against Iran and North Korea. Never before has an entire continent made a concentrated and personal attack on a leader in the way that Europe threatened Bush with steel tariffs. Terrorism is being pursued like a fox being chased by a hound. Bush thinks that these are historic times that he is presiding over. He likens himself to such great men as Washington, FDR or Lincoln. Unfortunately for the citizens of the Stars and Stripes, he is not.
Hope is not lost; the citizens that have been trampled under Bush’s fiscal recklessness and inflated pride may yet bellow the patriotic cry “Don’t tread on me.” It is possible to see Bush as having more in common with one heroic president than he would like, particularly for the patrons of his and my own shared state. To those who can, I say get out while the getting is good.
I love my home state; we have rolling plains, plentiful oil and patriotic citizens. With these resources Texas can be self sufficient: we’ve been our own country before, and we can do it again. I propose that we wait until George is safely re-elected to insure that the United States will remain in disarray, and then put the Texas Militia and the Texas Rangers (the mandated vigilantes, not the baseball team) to work setting up a defensive perimeter along the northern Texas border. Hopefully we can annex Louisiana and control the mouth of the mighty Mississippi. We’ll convince California to secede at the same time; combine that with the renewed uproar over the right of secession and U.S. troops being scattered across the globe and there will be no way for George to reclaim these powerful states.
Our friendly relationship with Mexico will be put to good use. In exchange for citizenship for illegal aliens within Texas’ borders, Mexico will allow us to annex a strip of desert between El Paso and the Pacific Ocean, or at least grant an easement. We’ll achieve manifest destiny in no time. Europe will love us for defying Bush, and California, who could independently be the seventh largest economy in the world, will be our comrade in arms. With all these friends, a trans-continental span, and control of the Mississippi, Texas will become a major trading nation and stay that way by actually embracing free trade.
Most importantly of all, transitioning from a state to a country will be a fresh start, politically. Machiavelli believed that a state must return to its beginnings every so often or it will become corrupt, and the United States has not renewed its original ideals in over two centuries. The U.S. political system, no longer “a convention of demigods” as it was during Jefferson’s time is little more than a popularity contest. No longer are we led by sages like Franklin Roosevelt. Nor, despite the Bush family’s enthusiasm for battle, are we led by a hero of war. George is not a brave or wise warrior; he is a rash prince, wielding his power like a child wields a pistol that has not been properly protected from his searching grasp.
Trust has been placed in the people to pick a leader responsible enough to use this power for the collective good. Checks and balances were created for the various branches of government, but there is no scale for the quality of our representatives. Congressmen are disturbingly homogeneous, simply greedy businessmen who have enough money to get a campaign off the ground. Once elected, they strangle states’ rights with “cooperative” federalism; funnel cash home to their largest donors, and encourage their state-level equivalents to gerrymander the districts. This insures that these beloved representatives will continue to be re-elected until they are too old to throw pork to their supporters at home.
As for the executive branch, malleable, dark-horse candidates abound because nobody with any ideas of his own fits the presidential profile mandated by the two major parties. The executive branch has definitely become the most powerful branch, in large part due to the greatness of the many executives we have enjoyed. But our supply of great men, or at least the interest of great men in being president, has dwindled, leaving the presidency to be refilled with men interested in little else besides personal gain; their skill lies in the campaign, not in leading a country.
In the new Republic of Texas we will return to the origins of our political system, where men who were concerned with the government of their country and the well being of their fellow man took office reluctantly, shouldering the duty of keeping the people free. People have become so disillusioned with their choice of candidates that they don’t even vote, and the structure of personal favors that currently supports the government will never increase the quality of the citizen’s choices. There is no reason to think that another man like George Washington will step up, a candidate who would refuse an offer to be king.
If Texas, California and Louisiana secede it will bring into sharp relief what has been lost in the corruption of our government. A return to our noble and democratic beginnings is what we really need to become the country that we could be.
When the direction of immigrants scurrying across the southern border of the United States shifts from North to South, the world will again see the greatness of a democratic republic. The new land of the free, the Republic of Texas, will be a land where our leaders rise from the dust of the field and remember that rise during their tenure as our representatives. Leave America to wallow in its own shallow pool of candidates.
Michael J. Bruns is a first-year in the Business School. He is afraid of gremlins.
