Today marks Texas Independence Day. It is a good time to pray and reflect on what liberty means. On this day in 1836, Texas took its place at the table of nations. We were NOT a subset of the States United, but our own Republic. Those men who fought and died at Goliad and the Alamo were fighting for Texas, not to expand the States United, no matter what John Wayne says. Texians stood up to two world powers in their struggle (US and Spain), and fought with Mexico to win their independence. They did not stand for tyranny. They grew tired of a centralized government ignoring them, they grew tired of the tyrant dismissing their state government, they grew tired of a dictator wanting to take their guns and force them into an alien religion. They saw Santa Anna for what he was.
The Texians stood against the cultural cleansing policy of the Mexican dictatorship. They stood together blacks, whites and Latinos against the common enemy of tyranny. We need to remember what they stood for, what they stood against and consider what we have lost. It is a sad day that since the US hoodwinked Texas into an illegal annexation, we do not have religious freedom in our schools, that our faith is ridiculed, our sons and daughter fight in colonial wars, our representatives ignore us and the central government wants us disarmed and seeks to muzzle the State governments. (See any similarities?) .
Read this portion of the Texas Declaration of Independence and see if it speaks to the present day situation:
When a government has ceased to protect the lives, liberty and property of the people, from whom its legitimate powers are derived, and for the advancement of whose happiness it was instituted, and so far from being a guarantee for the enjoyment of those inestimable and inalienable rights, becomes an instrument in the hands of evil rulers for their oppression.
When the Federal Republican Constitution of their country, which they have sworn to support, no longer has a substantial existence, and the whole nature of their government has been forcibly changed, without their consent, from a restricted federative republic, composed of sovereign states, to a consolidated central military despotism, in which every interest is disregarded but that of the army and the priesthood, both the eternal enemies of civil liberty, the everready minions of power, and the usual instruments of tyrants.
When, long after the spirit of the constitution has departed, moderation is at length so far lost by those in power, that even the semblance of freedom is removed, and the forms themselves of the constitution discontinued, and so far from their petitions and remonstrances being regarded, the agents who bear them are thrown into dungeons, and mercenary armies sent forth to force a new government upon them at the point of the bayonet.
When, in consequence of such acts of malfeasance and abdication on the part of the government, anarchy prevails, and civil society is dissolved into its original elements. In such a crisis, the first law of nature, the right of self-preservation, the inherent and inalienable rights of the people to appeal to first principles, and take their political affairs into their own hands in extreme cases, enjoins it as a right towards themselves, and a sacred obligation to their posterity, to abolish such government, and create another in its stead, calculated to rescue them from impending dangers, and to secure their future welfare and happiness.
We need to pray for forgiveness at having squandered our liberties given to us by our forebearers. We need to take steps to regain what we have lost and return to a course in the direction of liberty.
It is also not by accident that the day Texas declared its Independence from Mexico in 1836 is also the day we declared our Independence from the Union as well in 1861.
President Sam Houston once had a vision of Texas spreading from coast to coast. He envisioned a Texas that was the light of liberty and hope of mankind.
Let us remember this day.
Liberty for Texas and the South!
J Murrah
Culture, Political Well Being, Sam Houston, Santa Anna, Texas Independence
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