I'm blogging from the Red Carpet Lounge at Heathrow Airport.   I've been here in London for close to a week on a business trip and had a few Iraq & North Korea articles queued up for blogging....   But, I think guys like Parapundit and Den Beste have been doing a great job with the subject and after 3 North Korea articles in a row, it's time to move on.  

Luckily, the Economist's Christmas issue (Dec 21-Jan3) had an interesting article titled "The Future is Texas" describing the shift (in no small part due to the Bush administration) of the "moral center" of the nation from California to Texas.   I came across the article almost a month ago and placed it on the backburner.   Unfortunately, the article isn't available on-line so I'll copiously excerpt it here --

For the past century, the history of the United States has been written by a succession of mega-states.   New York pioneered New Deal liberalism.   Michigan pioneered mass production and giant trade unions.   California was the incubator of the Reagan and high-tech revolutions.  Today, American history is being shaped by a giant south-western state that is best known for its cowboys and oil batrons. 

Great, now that I'm finally turning the corner and confidently proclaiming that San Francisco, CA is "home", we have Texas rising.   Reasons --

...The state owes its importance to the fact that, in many ways, it has arrived at the future first.  Texas led the charge away form the Great Society (introduced by a Texan, Lyndon Baines Johnson) to today's [neo]conserative Republicanism, with its enthusiasm for business, religion, rolling back the sate, muscular nationalism, and open borders.  Texas, together with California, is also pioneering the Latinoisation of America.  Latinos already make up 32% of the state population, a share that is rapidly growing.  The state has far more affinity with Mexico than far-away Europe.

There are other conflicting visions of America that seem to coalesce well in Texas.   City slickers and farmers are in close proximity both physically and emotionally there in a way that's quite alien in other states.  I've always noted that Texans have a curious mix of intellectualism, anti-intellectualism, classical, and romantic that's highly visible.   It's a state where for every Truck driver who barely speaks English, there's one who can engage in serious discussion of how rent control has destroyed Yankee cities and why it will never happen in Texas (an actual conversation I've had...).  

Against these contrasts, there is one belief that's nearly universal - an almost absolute faith in individual freedom and personal responsibility.  There's a very healthy skepticism for intellectual fashions du jour (often originating from the badlands of the Northeast or California;  or even worse, their intellectual parents in Europe).   One would have to imagine that the lifespan of a of an overly loud Chomsky-ite at the Texas A&M campus would be nasty, brutish, and short.

My old school district, funded by property taxes from NASA employees, simultaneously produced strong debate teams and science fair winners and also the state's largest chapter of the FFA (Future Farmers of America).   We had an annual livestock show & rodeo with competing pigs raised by the graduating senior class.   And we had kids whose parents had walked the moon.   (although these were probably separate groups)

There's a classical culture thoroughly embodied by the Yuppie in a gleaming downtown office tower and a romantic culture around the campfire with solemn guitar vocals.   Robert Pirsig, in his book Lila described how Midwestern culture descends from the Romantic plains Native American culture;   this is visible to a remarkable degree in Texas "traditional culture" as well.  Think of a strong-but-silent & deliberate John Wayne-esque cowboy -- they aren't necessarily cowhands anymore but more than a few of them are still floating around in other occupations.   More than a few old school NASA employees are this way.

The Economist continues -

"in the land of the bland, Texas retains its unique flavour... Texas has an almost national sense of identity."

My favorite Texas-ism -- every can of Lone Star beer is brandished with the motto "the National beer of Texas."   I also recall reading that Texas is the most popular place cited in Music (think about the sheer volume of country music out there).

Here, I think the economist hits the nail on the head:

So what is Texas?   The simplest answser is that it is America on steroids.   Think of the characteristics that make America distinctive -- its size and diversity, its optimism and self-confidence, its crass materialism and bravado, its incredible ability to make something out of nothing -- and they exist in their purest form in Texas.

...Texans have a gift for turning their boasts into reality.   Dallas's gleaming towers arise out of a featureless plain.   Houston has built a sophisticated civilization on a steaming and mosquito-infested swamp.   Fort Worth, a former cow town, has some of the most charming museums in the country."

Houston's sophistication is something I'm constantly surprised by (and something which my CA friends have a hard time truly believing).   Trappings of David Brooks' BoBo culture are just as native in Houston as they are in tonier locales such as Palo Alto or Chicago's north end.

The article describes a few of the contradictions inherent in Texas (for ex., a famously weak state government with a legislature that only convenes a few months a year;   contrasted with vicious/aggressive national politicians who have brought significant federal spending to the state for decades).   

However, one point the author attempts to make I found shocking in it's lack of understanding of the concept of social capital. 

...this points to a second source of ambivalence:  individualism.   Texans pride themselves on preserving this American tradition -- and its economic partner, entrepreneurialism--in its purest form.   Who but a larger-than-life individual would have the guts to settle in such unforgiving land?  

... But Texans also have a strong collectivist streak, seen in their obsessive loyalty to their football teams, in their fondness for fraternities, and in the intense rivalry between the state's two leading universities... the Texas business oligarchy is one of the clubbiest in the country, forever working behind the scenes to fix problems, organising civic projects and win one for Texas

Perhaps one of the strongest contributions by Texas to the national psyche is enshrining Founding Father principles for later rediscovery.  And, in this case, by a nation suddenly more comfortable with asserting these principles.   The particular idea is the notion that issues and problems of greater-than-individual importance are not automatically governmental.  

Cross-individual convenants are maintained through voluntary, non-governmental associations throughout the state.   I have no data to back me up but I have a very strong hunch that "community" rather than outright "religiosity" provides a driving impetus for that states' higher-than-average church attendance.   Or, that Texas features relatively high individual membership in chamber-of-commerce type organizations which are losing their civic vitality in other cities / states.

A British pub likely has a hard time groking this fully but the voluntary collectivism the Economist notes here is actually a direct outgrowth of the state's respect for the individual.  

The article finally delves into the impact of the Texas Republican party on the national scene.   Echoing an earlier blog article about NeoCon ideology, the Economist notes:

The Texas Republican Party as thrown in its lot with openness, thanks in no small part to the Bush dynasty.   The party refused to engage in the immigrant-bashing that eventually condemned the Californian Republican Party to irrelevence.

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