Good morning,

On Oct. 2, 1835, the people of Gonzales refused to give up their cannon to Mexican soldiers. The soldiers left with two dead compatriots... and no cannon. Today I reflect on the importance of defending self-governance, no matter the odds. 

Here is today's Texas Minute.

– Michael Quinn Sullivan 

Friday, October 2, 2020
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• Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has joined with the attorneys general of 21 other states to call on the U.S. Senate to confirm Judge Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court.
   
• “Judge Barrett is a distinguished legal scholar and an exceptional appellate judge with a track record of interpreting the Constitution according to its text and original public meaning. As we are sure your review of her exemplary record will reveal, she has the qualifications, experience, and judicial philosophy to be an outstanding Associate Justice.” – Attorneys General of Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Utah, and West Virginia​

• A new national survey shows the University of Texas at Austin campus to be one of the worst campuses for free speech nationwide. Brandon Waltens has the details.
      
• The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, a national organization that works to protect free speech on college campuses, has issued their latest free speech rankings of 55 of “America’s largest and most prestigious campuses” according to a survey of students.
      
• UT-Austin comes in one spot removed from dead-last, at 54. Longhorn students specifically gave their school low rankings on self-expression, feeling that they could not express their opinions because of how students or administrators may respond. Recent years have seen conservative student organizations—such as Young Conservatives of Texas—targeted and harassed while holding events on campus.
        

• Meanwhile, just a little over 100 miles away, Texas A&M University received one of the highest free speech scores, clocking in at No. 3 in the nationwide survey.

• As Lubbock prepares to become home to the largest abortion clinic in west Texas, nurse and health writer Sandy Szwarc wonders how the conservative city’s mayor – Dan Pope – could allow it to happen. And not just that, but he has actively worked with “known abortion legal advocates” to stop a measure that would have halted Planned Parenthood from opening operations there.
     
• “Lubbock is known for its strong conservative Christian values and has the largest number of churches per capita of anywhere in the entire country,” writes Szwarc. 

• Adam Cahn examines the growing tragedy of homelessness in Texas’ Capital City, the result of policies promoted by leftwing local officials.
   
• For those tempted to think this is hyperbole or subjective perception, Cahn reports that a survey conducted earlier this year found the city’s homeless population has increased by 11 percent over the span of just one year.

Friday Reflection

We’re all encouraged by the idea of being outnumbered, out-gunned, or out-trained, yet still winning the day. The month of October gives us two great examples of this from the history of the fight for self-governance.

The first, of course, is the Battle of Gonzales on Oct. 2, 1835. The Mexican government told the people of Gonzales they were coming to take away the town’s cannon. The people had other ideas, and stood resolute against the action. 

They hoisted a flag over the town declaring “Come and Take It.” The people of Gonzales were determined to govern themselves, which meant maintaining their ability to protect themselves.

A short battle between the men of Gonzales against the better trained Mexican soldiers ended with the people victorious – and keeping their cannon – while the defeated Mexicans beat a hasty retreat.

Fast forward one hundred and forty years, and seven thousand miles due east, to the Golan Heights, at the border of Israel and Syria. There you find the Valley of Tears, where a severely outnumbered Israeli force bested the Syrian army in what can only be described as a miraculous encounter during the outset of the Yom Kippur War in October 1973.

The Syrians and their Arab allies – Egypt and Jordan – planned to invade Israel ahead of Yom Kippur, the holiest of Jewish holidays. In the critical Golan Heights, fewer than 100 Israeli tanks stood against more than 500 Soviet-made tanks backed up by as many as 1,900 other pieces of deadly military hardware. 

As the action began to unfold, the Israeli commanders on the ground didn’t wait for instructions from distant superiors who were no doubt enjoying the holiday. They went to work defending their country.

After four days of intense fighting, approximately 70 of the 100 Israeli tanks were lost... but the Syrians were in retreat. The Syrian forces lost some 500 tanks and armored vehicles in a psychologically humiliating defeat. The outcome of the two-week Yom Kippur War mirrored that decisive tank battle in the Golan Heights, with the outnumbered Israelis fighting off the Arab world.

The country’s main intelligence operations hadn’t forecasted the attacks, among other reasons, because of the way their bureaucracy processed reports for later analysis. Yet individual commanders on the ground saw what was happening and acted accordingly, taking advantage of the decentralized nature of the Israeli military at the time.

Self-governance as an operating model, based on Old Testament instructions from God, forms the basis of Israeli society even if it is not necessarily a part of their governing institutions. Without that ingrained sense of self-governance, the Battle of the Valley of Tears and the Yom Kippur War would have gone very differently for Israel.

In Texas and the rest of the United States, our founding fathers explicitly sought to frame our government in a way that emphasized self-governance by strictly limiting government. They understood that while a strong leader – a ruler, a king, a dictator – might allow his subjects varying degrees of freedom, only a self-governing people can truly have liberty.

That spirit of self-governance was on full display at Gonzales, where the people were unwilling to live as unarmed serfs. They wanted to govern and protect themselves. And they they were willing to be faithful to the fight.

The extent to which we value our liberty is the extent to which we will fight daily to protect our legacy of self-governance.