Now, we learn that Wal-Mart is responsible for a significant chunk of the productivity gains of the Nineties. As if I couldn't love it more.
Yesterday was the 166th anniversary of the Battle of the Alamo. The Statesman had this story about attempts to document who the men were that died there. It's interesting enough, but I have to take issue with the reporter's specious summary of the events leading up to the siege of the Alamo:
The legendary Battle of the Alamo came after years of political scuffling. Two American presidents unsuccessfully tried to buy Texas land from Mexico, but thousands of white settlers were permitted to live in the area. Eventually those colonists began resisting Mexican rule. In December 1835, a small force composed mainly of Texan colonists defeated a Mexican force of about 1,200 soldiers in San Antonio and set up a fort in the Alamo.
The colonists, many of whom were Hispanic, were not resisting Mexican rule, but rather the crushing oppression of the petty tyrant, General Antonio López de Santa Anna, the self-styled "Napoleon of the West." After winning independence from Spain in 1811, Mexico had set up a democratic republic. Santa Anna was elected president of this republic in 1833, but in 1835 he led a military coup against it, set himself up as dictator, and suspended the Constitution of 1824. He also, interestingly enough, proceeded to disarm the state militias.
Texas was not the first state to revolt against this and other affronts to liberty. The people of the central state of Zacatecas rebelled in the summer of 1835, but were quickly crushed by Santa Anna's forces, who were rewarded with two days of vicious looting and rape. The General then turned his attention to Texas and instructed officials in San Antonio to recall the cannon that had been given to the settlers in nearby Gonzales for defense against Indians. The colonists were living on the edge of the frontier and had previously served as a useful buffer between the often hostile natives and the inner portions of Mexico.
The Revolution broke out over this cannon. The settlers in Gonzales refused to give it up and famously told Santa Anna's representative, "Come and take it." They tried and failed, and within a year the Texians had won their freedom from a military dictatorship, but not before the massacre at the Alamo.
The Texas Revolution had nothing to do with US designs on Texas. In fact, it took a decade for the US to agree to accept Texas as a state after independence. It is important to know and remember that Texas' fight was not some random gringo landgrab. It was a just revolution for constitutional democracy and human liberty. The men at the Alamo knew that these were worth dying for and that is why we Texans will never forget them.