Good morning,

This long weekend gives us countless distractions, but I reflect on what we should be remembering… and why.

Here is the Texas Minute for Friday, May 27, 2022.

– Michael Quinn Sullivan 

PROGRAMMING NOTE 1: So we can pause in observance of Memorial Day, the Texas Minute will resume on Tuesday, May 31.

PROGRAMMING NOTE 2: I’ll be out of the office the next two weeks, so Brandon Waltens is assuming control of the Texas Minute in my absence. Let me know how he does!

Examining The Runoff Results

• Speaking of Brandon Waltens… Join him on The Headline at 5:30 p.m. this afternoon as he unravels the election results. Brandon will also have a conversation with Jeremy Newman of the Texas Home School Coalition about Gov. Greg Abbott’s latest push for school choice.

Energy Emergencies

• As Texans prepare for the summer heat, the North American Electric Reliability Corporation warns that Texas is at “elevated risk” for energy shortfalls. Sydnie Henry has the story.
     
• Texas in particular is expected to face “wide-area heat events coupled with drought [that] can lead to higher than expected peak electricity demand and tighter reserve conditions.”
     
• This stands in contrast to the rosy self-promotion of the Energy Reliability Council of Texas, which claims there is “sufficient installed generating capacity.”
        
• Critics have been warning that the state’s energy grid relies too heavily on unreliable, taxpayer-subsidized wind and solar sources, which have proven to be ineffective at meeting Texans’ energy needs.

‘My Nightmare Experience at the University of North Texas’

• The entire nation has seen the video clips of Kelly Neidert being stalked and hunted by leftists at the University of North Texas. Her life was repeatedly threatened and her apartment vandalized. What was her crime on one of the state’s oldest and largest universities? Being the chairman of the campus’ chapter of Young Conservatives of Texas.
     
• She graduated earlier this month, and now Kelly Neidert provides a firsthand description of the “nightmare” she experienced… which included hostility even from the university’s highest officials. She names the professors and administrators who are – even today – pushing leftist ideologies on students.
     
• When leftists students organized a violent and riotous protest against Neidert and YCT, UNT’s president – Neal Smatresk – attacked not the miscreants, but the victims. But the problems don’t end there.
      
• “Gov. Abbott has claimed to be an advocate for free speech, yet he remains silent every time that right is squelched by leftist students on the UNT campus,” she writes.

Different Approaches To Educational Choice 

• Two commentaries submitted to Texas Scorecard look at the competing notions of how to maximize parents’ rights to direct the education of their children.
   
• In one commentary, Andy Hopper and Nicki Truesdell urge approaches that put parents in control rather than government bureaucracies. They find proposals involving “vouchers” to carry the potential for burdensome strings and new regulations.
     
• “Texas is unique. We must not allow ourselves to be beguiled by the flavor of school choice adopted by other states.”  – Andy Hopper and Nicki Truesdell
   
• In a separate commentary, Jeff Younger writes that conservative critics of school vouchers are right to worry about government intrusion, but they misunderstand the risks of doing nothing.
     
• “Conservatives must provide a way for parents to move children out of public schools. All policies have risks. Doing nothing has risks. The risks of school vouchers are far less than doing nothing.” – Jeff Younger

And Finally…

• Please join me in wishing a very happy Saturday birthday to Texas Scorecard’s controller, Darrell Frost!
   
• Later this afternoon, my youngest child will graduate high school and start the next phase of his life’s journey. Congratulations, son!

Friday Reflection: What Are We Remember?

Let’s be honest with each other. The only thing any of us are likely to remember on Memorial Day is where the best mattress sales are happening. And we’ll count ourselves lucky if we remember to take potato salad to the neighbor’s cookout.

Otherwise, the last weekend in May is just three days of self-indulgent merrymaking.

It is supposed to be something more.

Since the late 1860s, we have set aside a day of national remembrance. Remember what? Exactly.

To justify our national forgetfulness, we smugly – and, yes, correctly – assert that our rights to life, liberty, and property are endowed by God. Yet we gloss past the stark reality that securing those rights has fallen to men and women willing to battle enemy forces intent on destroying the glorious American experiment in self-governance.

We have lived in the liberty their ultimate sacrifice made possible. We have slept easily at night under the protection of men and women who stand willing to give their lives up for us.

Frankly, remembering those sacrifices is a kind of a buzz-kill. How are we supposed to enjoy a party with such somber thoughts running through our heads? It’s easier to forget.

This callous approach to Memorial Day is just another symptom of our national disregard for the daily work of self-governance in preserving liberty. The last couple of years have shown how easily too many of our countrymen will sacrifice their rights for the thinnest veneer of “protection” promised by bureaucrats and experts.

It is undoubtedly easier to enjoy a beer and burger in the backyard than to reflect on the sacrifices made on our behalf – often before we were ever born, by men who would only be known as “the uncle who died in the war.”

Yet reflect, dwell, and consider we must. If we are to give up our liberties and adorn our ankles with the soft chains of tyranny, what was the point of their sacrifice? Did they die for a lost cause, or to give us the opportunity to be better, to be more?

The best way to ensure their sacrifices have meaning is to keep fighting daily for our republic. The greatest memorial to those honored dead is to ensure self-governance continues strongly into the next generation.

But let us also take a moment from the cookouts, a break from the sale-shopping, to remember and honor those who laid down their lives for us.