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Good morning,

Let's be honest: given the state of the world today, there is intense pressure to give up—from others and ourselves. But let me suggest our obligation isn't to "win" but to fight faithfully on. I'll continue that thought below.

This is the Texas Minute for Friday, Sept. 27, 2024.

– Michael Quinn Sullivan

The Fate of Texas’ Border at a Crossroads The future of illegal crossings along Texas’ border with Mexico hinges largely on the results of the 2024 presidential election. Will Biagini reports [[link removed]] on what Texans among the hardest hit by the current policies have to say about it.

Kinney County sits between Del Rio and Eagle Pass on Texas’ southern border. County Attorney Brent Smith said building a border wall is a start at securing the border but that an effort must be made to uproot and remove the cartels that have come across.

Katie Hobbs and her husband have managed a farm in Quemado for decades along a several-mile stretch of the Rio Grande. She said in recent years, their property has sustained heavy amounts of damage as a result of illegal border crossings. At one point, they discovered five young girls abandoned on their property; the oldest was seven and the youngest just 11 months. "This next election will determine whether we have permanent open borders. Or, it will determine if we are selective about the people we allow into the country, and that we want them to come in the right way—the legal way." – Katie Hobbs [[link removed]] Karl Rove’s Taxpayer-funded Casino Lobbyist Wife Serves on A&M PAC Board A supposedly conservative institution, Texas A&M has a taxpayer-funded casino lobbyist on the board of its political action committee. Robert Montoya and Daniel Greer investigate [[link removed]] the connections between Karl Rove's wife, Karen, and out-of-state interests seeking to get state-protected monopolies from the legislature.

State records show Karen Rove has been paid between $208,000 and $417,000 by the Nevada-based Sands Corp.

She also lobbies for government entities (and against taxpayers), taking taxpayers' money from the cities of McAllen, Pharr, Mission, and Alamo Heights.

Why does Texas A&M, a state university, need a political action committee at all? A state agency allowing money to be raised in its name to hand out campaign cash to politicians charged with overseeing it seems problematic... Tensions Rise Over Student Safety in McKinney Tensions began to rise between board members and residents during the McKinney Independent School District’s board meeting this week. As Emily Medeiros reports [[link removed]], parents are upset by what they describe as unsafe conditions facing children in McKinney schools. Those concerns have been met with derision and even mockery by school trustees.

For example, a young special-needs student was assaulted at school, but district officials did not inform the boy's parents.

Trustees in McKinney have also refused to protect girls from boys entering their bathrooms and other private spaces. Denton City Council Rejects Conservative Library Board Nominee Denton City Council members voted 4-2 to reject a conservative nominee for the city’s Library Board, with one Democrat councilman calling her a “book banner” for challenging age-inappropriate books in public and school libraries. Erin Anderson has the details [[link removed]].

Conservative activist Debi Scaggs, a grandmother who has lived in Denton since 1979, was nominated by the mayor to serve on the six-member Denton Library Board. She has been sounding the alarm about sexually explicit and age-inappropriate books in the city’s three public libraries.

Back in July, she brought to the city council a book—available as a children's book at the library—which was so graphic she was asked to cover images.

"I find it sad that nonpartisan politicians are very partisan," wrote Scaggs in a statement posted on social media following the vote to keep her off the board. "Because I believe in protecting our children from sexually explicit and vulgar content, I’m deemed a radical."

Apparently, the city council majority decided Denton's inclusive values cannot include someone protecting kids.

Friday Reflection

We Must Fight On [[link removed]]

by Michael Quinn Sullivan

The Reflections Podcast [[link removed]]

Before my first trip to Israel, numerous friends had told me Masada would be my favorite stop. “It’s Israel’s Alamo!” they would say. It’s a starkly beautiful place overlooking the Dead Sea. The innovative architecture made it all but impenetrable. And, yes, there are striking parallels to the battles that occurred there and at the Alamo.

But the differences are even more critical for us looking back at both.

Masada was a remote and massive fortress built by Herod the Great, designed to sustain its occupants for a long time, even in the face of an entrenched enemy. On the surface, the comparison to the Alamo isn’t completely wrong. Masada saw the vastly outnumbered “good guys” hold out against superior forces. And, of course, all the good guys in both stories eventually died.

Similar, but you have to do a lot of squinting to make Masada into the Alamo. Where the Alamo came at the beginning of Texas' War of Independence, Masada was the final blow to the Jewish Great Revolt of A.D. 66 to 73.

The Jewish Zealots, who dreamed of political independence from the Romans, had been fighting for six years when Masada became their last stand. Built on the top of a plateau similar to an American mesa, nearly 1,000 Jews were able to hold out against 15,000 Roman forces.

Over several months, the Roman engineers built a massive siege ramp, which they used to march up to Masada’s walls. The ramp is still there, and the outlines of the legionnaire camps are still visible.

But one difference is the most important. While the Texans at the Alamo fought the advancing Mexicans to the death, the Jewish rebels took their own lives before the Romans could enter.

The Roman historian Josephus—himself a former Jewish general—wrote that the Zealots preferred to take their own lives rather than be captured and paraded around as a conquered people.

One group became a footnote in the history of Roman conquest, while the other inspired and mobilized a people to defeat what was the greatest military power in their hemisphere.

By choosing suicide at Masada, the Jewish Zealots spared themselves the personal embarrassment of being conquered, but that did little good for their fellow countrymen left suffering under the Roman yoke. For those Zealots, death was not a sacrifice made for the benefit of others. It was a prideful way out.

In choosing to fight, knowing their death was all but inevitable, the Alamo defenders hoped to inspire their countrymen to fight a tyrannical and murderous regime. They sacrificed themselves for the cause of liberty.

What will we do? The lesson from Masada and the Alamo is that our obligation isn’t to be victorious but to be faithful. Despite the odds, despite the peril, despite the risk, we must keep fighting. The fight matters. We must fight on.

Quote-Unquote

"Never give up the fight for freedom—a fight which, though it may never end, is the most ennobling known to man."

– Ronald Reagan

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