Texit – two opposing voices

Last week your editor described two important bills now pending in the Texas Legislature that relate to Texit. They include the Texas Independence Referendum Act and the Texas Border Security Enhancement Fund Act. Both have reached the Texas State House Committee on State Affairs. In the meantime, two prominent opposing voices have emerged, one in the Texas House, the other in the Texas Senate. The arguments they make, and their quality (or lack thereof), illustrate the obstacles that voices for Texas independence face.

Against Texit – from Republicans?!?

The information on these two opposing voices comes to CNAV from the Texas Nationalist Movement. Critically, these are Republican voices. One expects opposition to Texit from Democrats. After all, Democrats have sold themselves, body and soul, to two things:

1. A direct-governing national oligarchy that treats the States as mere provinces – conquered regions. That’s what a province was in the Roman Empire, and still is. But more than that:
2. A regime to “unite” all of humanity into one world, one economy, one employer, one organizer. St. John of Jerusalem first warned of this kind of thing. (See Revelation, but especially chapter 13.) But more than that, Shem, son of Noah, described the first one-world government movement and how God defeated it directly. (See Genesis 11:1-10a.)

More than that, the Democratic Party, as its name implies, stands for “democracy.” Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for dinner. Democracy always devolves to oligarchy. Which is the Alpha Dog of the wolf pack telling everyone what’s for dinner.

CNAV expects better of Republicans, and urges Texas Republican rank-and-file to expect more, and demand more. The name Republican should suggest support for the Republic – the Res Publica – the public thing – the law! Sadly, too many Republicans do not stand for the law. They merely stand for another oligarchy. And they are quite comfortable with minority status, so long as the Alpha Machine – the Democratic Party – throws them the occasional rack of lamb.

The opposing voice in the Texas State House…

First, let us introduce ourselves to Representative Travis Clardy (R-Nacogdoches). He actually suggests that Texit is a cowardly position. He compares the proponents of Texit to the man who quit the Alamo at the end of its 13-day siege. Instead of leaving the union, Clardy suggests fighting – somehow – for the republican principles that the forty-fifth President propounded. But at the same time he concedes such a fight before it begins – by citing the War Between the States as a precedent.

Like too many nominal Republicans elsewhere, he will not acknowledge this hard reality. The Democratic Parties of six or seven States certified Democratic voting Electoral College delegations. They did this apart from, above, and against the actual wishes of living, breathing eligible voters. And now the national Democrats spit on the “better ideas” Rep. Clardy touts. Mr. Clardy also will not recognize that today’s Democrats no longer want the same things as the rest of us. They want the authoritarian national government, and to join the one-world government. And they will likely kill anyone who stands in their way. Already they are purging the United States military of true patriots.

Dan Miller, head of the TNM, challenged Rep. Clardy to a debate. Thus far Rep. Clardy refuses to answer the challenge.

… and the State Senate

Turn now to Senator Kel Seliger (R-Amarillo). In a way, Amarillo almost isn’t a part of Texas. Together with the northwestern half of the Texas Panhandle, Amarillo keeps a connection to the Western Electrical Interconnection, not the Texas Interconnection. Amarillo was remote enough in the late Seventies to serve as the second venue for the trial of the first case of People of the State of Texas v. Thomas Cullen Davis, on murder charges. (An Amarillo jury acquitted Davis.)

So what does the Man from Amarillo have to say today? Well, first he says, when people remind him of the strength the TNM is gaining, that

crazy people found some more crazy people to hang out with.

Let’s lay aside the argumentum ad hominem. Or perhaps we should call that argumentum ad populum (argument directed at the people, not deriving authority from the people). As may be: let us examine his own war game:

We secede and are no longer part of the United States. They move their military bases, and they terminate Medicare and Medicaid, and Social Security, and all those things. And we’ve got an oil and gas industry, and very little else. And we become a third-world nation with oil and gas. [So] we look a lot more like the [United Arab Emirates], or Kuwait, than we do the State of Texas.

So I tell people, don’t secede! Take people to the polls with you, and vote!

Flaws in the argument

News flash, Senator! Attorney General Paxton tried to straighten things out after an unconstitutional electoral vote compact negated Texas’ Electoral College vote! And the Supreme Court declined the case. (Commander Chuck Smith USN, a retired Navy judge advocate with 20 years’ service in the JAG Corps, told CNAV eight days ago that the Supreme Court erred in declining that case. He is now running for Attorney General of Virginia.)

And, like Rep. Clardy, he cites the War Between the States as a precedent. Never mind that the Texas of 1860 had no industry – no metallurgy, no munitions industry, nothing. Texas has many more resources today. And looking like the UAE or the Emirate of Kuwait would actually mean looking good!

A tax donor State, or a tax recipient State?

The Senator’s radio host reminds him that Texas is a tax donor state. But Seliger either disputes that or dismisses it as of no moment:

A lot of the strength that all States have, is because they are the United States. We send money to Washington for things like Medicaid, but we get back more than we spend. Even things like rural broadband [inaudible] we get back two or three times what we send to Washington. Now: is a lot of our money spent ineffectively, unwisely, or poorly? Absolutely. But why does anybody think that if we move central government from Washington to Austin, all of a sudden it’s going to become more intrepid or wiser? It’s not! Do people think that folks in Austin can’t find a way to waste money just [as] they do in Washington? That’s one of the reasons I ran [for the State Senate] in the first place. Because I thought we ought to spend money wisely, and I thought we ought to tax people wisely.

And so – we get a lot of money back from Washington. What about the things we get back from Washington, for which we do not spend money? When you say we’re going to pay for our own defense – my gosh, that’s a very, very expensive thing! We depend upon a lot of federal grants. And when you say, “It was our money in the first place,” well, maybe it was, or maybe it wasn’t.

Loss of defense assets?

Senator Seliger also suggests that the rest of the United States might not defend Texas from external attack. He further suggests that Texas would lose several national armed-forces assets, including:

• Fort Hood, a major training and transport hub for the Army.
• Fort Bliss, outside El Paso, which provides (among other things) anti-aircraft defense.
• Lackland Air Force Base, outside San Antonio.

Then the Senator makes a very odd suggestion: that the Air Force could somehow shut down jet aircraft production at Fort Worth.

Texit and the industries of Texas

The worst flaw in the Senator’s argument lies in his ignorance of the industries Texas has, and would have. Texas industry includes more than oil and gas. He barely acknowledges that Texas already has an aerospace contractor: General Dynamics of Fort Worth. That company builds the F-16 Fighting Falcon. But: how can the Senator seriously suggest that the United States Air Force would shut down General Dynamics’ aircraft factories? General Dynamics is a private firm. They can decide to build the F-16 for the Texas Air Force (and the Israeli Air Force) if they want.

Nor is General Dynamics Texas’ sole aerospace contractor today. The Space Exploration Company (SpaceX) now contends for that honor. SpaceX has a proving ground near the village of Boca Chica, Texas. Elon Musk, the founder, has talked boldly of building a company town to incorporate the village and the proving grounds.

Elon Musk brings more than aerospace industry to Texas. He brings automotive industry, also. His Tesla company is building a gigantic factory in Travis County, to build cars and trucks – including pickups and “semis.” The Tesla Cybertruck could, with slight modification, serve as an armored fighting vehicle. (Mount counter-rotating propellers underneath it, and it could be amphibious as well.) Furthermore, the basic design principle lends itself to a design for a Cyber Tank.

Bunkers?

Close observers of the “Terafactory Texas” site have marked the delivery of tunneling machines to it. Musk has talked publicly of boring tunnels through the “Austin Chalk” beneath Travis County. The City of Austin does wish to build a mass-transit tunnel network. Musk’s Boring Company is, one presumes, actively seeking that contract. But Musk would want to do more: to connect all his facilities with tunnels.

Obviously he could do more than that. The Texas Military Department might give him a contract to build a comprehensive underground Communications, Command and Control center. They could build it in the Hill Country – and thus imitate the North American Aerospace Defense Command beneath Cheyenne Mountain.

About being a donor state

TNM has researched extensively all the federal programs from which anyone in Texas sees a dime. Social Security comes in for two separate treatments, and Medicare for another.

The Social Security treatment is especially instructive:

Fortunately, Texas is already leading the way with concrete examples of what a Social Security replacement could look like.

Three counties in Texas have shown the public that they can opt-out of Social Security by setting up their own system for personal retirement accounts. This decision has allowed these counties to avoid any financial concerns and has even provided their retirees with a higher amount of retirement income.

Employees of Brazoria, Matagorda, and Galveston County have experienced a growth in retirement savings annually. Under their model, both employee and employer contributions are handled by a financial planner. The agency “First Financial Benefits Inc.” of Houston currently manages their retirement accounts and has done so since the system’s inception in 1981.

Let the Senator tell us again that Texit would cut off Social Security.

Rural broadband? Elon Musk is putting up Starlink®, an independent low-earth-orbit satellite Internet system. That requires no infrastructure, other than accountholders’ receiving stations. So much for federal infrastructure spending!

As to “the folks in Austin … find[ing] a way to waste money,” the answer is not to abandon independence. The answer is to give the wasteful spenders the bum’s rush. And that’s easier to do for Austin than for Washington!

Texas defenses

The TNM assumes that any military move against an independent Republic of Texas would falter for lack of support at home and swift condemnation abroad. But suppose an angry “President Harris” orders the military to attack anyway?

The Republic of Texas would start with the Texas Army and Air National Guards and Texas State Guard. Furthermore, the expurgation of conservative and patriotic sentiment from the U.S. military would boost recruitment by Texas in two ways. First, Texans now serving in the U.S. military could and would resign and join up with Texas. Second, many non-Texans, finding themselves “on the outs” with those they thought were their buddies, would do the same.

Does Texas have a Navy? Texas could get a Navy, faster than people think. Texas could build a Navy from the following three asset classes, in order of increasing feasibility:

• The former USS Texas BB-35, a New York-class dreadnought with some of the largest guns any ship ever mounted.
• The former USS Lexington CVT-16, last of the Essex-class aircraft carriers.
• Two oil rigs and several barges and recovery vessels belonging to SpaceX.

The Texas arguably is in critical material condition. But it is about to go into drydock for extensive repair and preservation. The Battleship Texas Foundation set this in motion years ago. Lexington is in better shape.

Conclusion – Texit still feasible

All of which to say that neither Rep. Clardy nor Sen. Seliger have offered disqualifying arguments against Texit. Indeed their arguments have their basis in common misconceptions, bad arithmetic, and worse economics.

Their worst failures stem from simple lack of imagination. Neither man can imagine Texas existing as anything but a State within the United States. But that failure of imagination leads them to forget that:

• The Texas of 1845 and 1860 had no industry worthy of the name. That, and many other human factors arising out of Richmond, Virginia and not Austin, Texas, cost Texas in the War Between the States. Today the game would be different.
• The present government of the United States has been acting like the government of America’s largest cities. Worse, it is acting like the Interim Government of a “North American Polity” that would pledge its loyalty to a one-world governing United Nations. Those who talk of unity ought not belie it by their actions. While this does not apply to Rep. Clardy and Sen. Seliger, it definitely applies to “President” Biden and his administration. Clardy and Seliger ought to understand that – it’s their job to know.

This is why Texit is not only feasible – but might now be imperative.

List of earlier articles relating to Texas independence and readiness