Ok so I said I was tired of the political crap, and I am. However the following are pissing me off.
1. We have a new MLS team here in Houston. The name they decided was Houston 1836. This follows the tradition of some of the teams in Europe who name their teams after the year the team was founded, the city was founded or whatever. 1836 was the year Houston was founded. It also happens to be the year that Texas won its independance from Mexico. Now a bunch of Mexicans are crying saying that the name is offensive. Give me a flippin break. I am an American. I am a Texan and proud of it. We are not in Mexico. We won our independance and were even our own Republic prior to joining the states. This name is for city and state pride. Its a damn name. It's not like we are saying, "Ha Ha we won in 1836 na na boo boo" What the hell ever. If you don't like it go cry somewhere else and don't support the team. And if it pisses you off that much then move back to Mexico !!!!
2. The city of Houston is looking at putting up cameras at stop lights in the downtown area to catch red light runners. I don't like it but ok. Now the ACLU is crying about it. Can someone please explain what civil liberties this violates. You are in public and breaking the law. Hey I have an idea.....don't run the flippin red light!!!!!
8 comments:
i fixed mine
MLS - Major League Soccer
Longhorn's comments will be deleted. Derogatory and unjistified comments towards the people who sacrificed, fought, and died for the independence of my great state of Texas will NOT be tolerated.
derogatory?
just challenging u 4 da truth.
they were traitors, they swore an oath 2 their country (mexico) and took arms against that country when the timing was right...
Its difficult to look at something in another light, especially one that raises emotions such as the forefathers independence...
maybe i was too strong, but they did go against their country, if they did that here, they would be considered traitors and probably would have been shot(at least in texas)
You are probably not from Texas Longhorn. Let me brush you up on some Texas history.
The Texas Revolution was fought from October 2, 1835 to April 21, 1836 between Mexico and the Tejas portion of the Mexican state of Coahuila y Tejas.
Animosity between the Mexican government and the North American settlers in Texas began with the April 6, Laws of 1835, when Mexican President and General Antonio López de Santa Anna Pérez de Lebrón, abolished the Constitution of 1824 and proclaimed a new anti-federalist constitution in its place.
This document is also important in the history of the United States for it was to this liberal constitution that the defenders of the Alamo referred on the flag they flew, which was emblazoned with the date "1824". Under this constitution, American and European settlers were drawn to Mexican Texas by its broad promises of freedom. After the Anglo settlers of Texas had become accustomed to their land, however, the political and social conditions suddenly became much less liberal under the harsh rule of President Antonio López de Santa Anna, who rescinded the 1824 Constitution and replaced it with the anti-federalist 1835 Constitution, thereby dissolving the federation of "free and sovereign states" centralising national power in Mexico City.
Texas Declaration of Independence
The declaration charged that the government of Mexico had ceased to protect the lives, liberty, and property of the people; that it had been changed from a restricted federal republic to a consolidated, central, military despotism; that the people of Texas had remonstrated against the misdeeds of the government only to have their agents thrown into dungeons and armies sent forth to enforce the decrees of the new government at the point of the bayonet; that the welfare of Texas had been sacrificed to that of Coahuila; that the government had failed to provide a system of public education, trial by jury, freedom of religion, and other essentials of good government; and that the Indians had been incited to massacre the settlers. According to the declaration, the Mexican government had invaded Texas to lay waste territory and had a large mercenary army advancing to carry on a war of extermination. The final grievance listed in justification of revolution charged that the Mexican government had been "the contemptible sport and victim of successive military revolutions and hath continually exhibited every characteristic of a weak, corrupt, and tyrannical government."
Goliad
The Texans were marched back to Goliad and held as prisoners. On 26 March 1836, at 7P, Portilla received orders from Santa Anna in triplicate to execute the prisoners. At around 8A on Palm Sunday, 27 March 1836, Colonel Jose Nicolas de la Portilla; commander at Goliad, had the 342 Texans marched out of Fort Defiance into three columns on the Bexar Road, San Patricio Road and the Victoria Road. Urrea wrote: ..wished to elude these orders as far as possible without compromising my personal responsibility.
Once the columns reached their selected location the Mexican soldados formed into two ranks on one side of the captives. The defenseless and unarmed Texans were then shot and bayoneted one at a time a few hundred yards from the fort. The wounded and dying were then clubbed and stabbed. The killing took about an hour with Fannin, already seriously wounded in the thigh, the last to be killed. Their bodies were stacked into piles and burned. There were twenty-eight Texans who did manage to escape by feigning death and other means.
Alamo
183 to 250 Texan and Tejano bodies were found at the Alamo after the battle, though Santa Anna's official report back to Mexico City, dictated to his personal secretary Ramón Martínez Caro, stated 600 rebel bodies were found.
All but one of the bodies were burned by the Mexicans
Battle of San Jacinto
On April 21, at the Battle of San Jacinto, Santa Anna's 1,250-strong force was defeated by Sam Houston's army of about 910 men, who used the now-famous battle cry, "Remember the Alamo! Remember Goliad!" The Mexican losses for the day were about 650 killed with 600 taken prisoner.
****Note: 600 were taken prisoner not slaughtered.
So Longhorn, there is no other light to look at it by. Just as Mexico won it's independence from Spain, America won it's independence from Britain, so did the Texans win our independence from Mexico.
Well Texan
You have managed to create a simplistic view of the history of Tejas, so cartoonish that even the president can understand.
You took out the 2 big emotional sticking points and called a great victory for the brave freedom fighters. sounds eerily familiar.
unfortunately, there is another way to look at it, more complex than anyone would like... did you forget the slavery issue that the Tejanos wanted to bring to Mexico? amongst others
The Alamo, a line drawn in the dust--the images of 1836 are almost as familiar to Americans as those of 1776. Many recognize the distinctiveness of Texas's experience--its revolt against Mexico, its life as an independent republic, and finally, its voluntary surrender of nationhood. But the causes and consequences of its unique course are less well understood.
After gaining independence from Spain in the 1820s, Mexico welcomed foreign settlers to sparsely populated Texas. Promised land on generous terms, some twenty thousand to twenty-five thousand Americans migrated there within a decade, far outnumbering the resident Mexicans (Tejanos). These immigrants clustered in relatively autonomous colonies along the lower Brazos and Colorado rivers and in the east. Alarmed at their reluctance to assimilate, Mexico passed laws in 1830 to slow American immigration. But rent by conflict between federalists and conservative centralists, the government could not enforce them. The regulations succeeded only in angering both settlers and those Tejanos interested in economic development.
Yet these laws were as much symptom as cause of friction. Some immigrants had never been reconciled to Mexican rule, citing putative U.S. claims to Texas by virtue of the Louisiana Purchase. Speculators counted on American annexation to raise the value of their land. Many Texans balked when earlier privileges, such as exemption from import duties, began to be withdrawn. The status of slavery rankled, too. The national government and the state government of Coahuila and Texas (in which Texans had little influence) passed various emancipation measures and banned the import of American slaves. Slaveholding Texans won exemption from some of these laws and evaded the others, and by 1835 slaves represented 10 to 15 percent of the non-Indian population. Though the laws did little except slow the immigration of slaveholders, they clearly worried those who believed rich but labor-scarce Texas could prosper only through slave cultivation of staple crops.
Mexico's ability to offend Texans without effectively regulating their behavior bespoke more general sources of trouble. The Mexican government presumed it could mold economic, social, even religious life in Texas. It allowed the military to intrude upon what Americans took to be civil affairs--trade, legal proceedings, the master-slave relationship. Yet this same government could not with any regularity provide such seeming fundamentals as speedy justice or trial by jury. Immigrants from Jacksonian America had certain expectations of republican government, expectations that involved government neither claiming so much nor delivering so little.
This failure of government to behave in accustomed ways provoked a crisis in 1835. Developments in Mexico had overshadowed political and legal reforms Texans had won in 1833 and 1834. Political turmoil allowed Gen. Antonio López de Santa Anna to amass an increasingly authoritarian power. Like colonists in prerevolutionary America, Texans perceived in the prospect of more strictly governed relations with the central government larger threats to their liberties and property. Santa Anna's triumph seemed also to dash the hopes of Tejanos for a democratic, decentralized Mexico. The coincidence of renewed trouble with the Mexican garrison at Anahuac and Santa Anna's march against various opponents in northern Mexico catalyzed resistance in the summer of 1835. A "war party" had been agitating for separation for some time, but the insistence of Mexican authorities that troublemakers be turned over to the military and, finally, an influx of Mexican troops in September convinced even the traditionally conciliatory Stephen Austin that "war is our only resource."
A chaotic rebellion ensued. Significant military action occurred well before the rebels officially declared for independence. A provisional government, established in November, called only for separate statehood within Mexico and the federalist constitution of 1824, hoping to win the aid of liberal Mexicans elsewhere. That government could barely rally support within its own ranks, however, as the governor and council vied for authority. No single, effective military authority existed either. Volunteers held the Alamo, for instance, despite orders to the contrary. The creation of a new government and a consolidated military command after Texas declared independence in early March 1836 did not immediately bring order. The fall of the Alamo and the retreat of Sam Houston's forces eastward provoked panic and mass flight among civilians. Perhaps only the overconfidence this bred in Santa Anna--and the anger of Texan volunteers over the massacres at the Alamo and Goliad--saved the day. In late April, Houston's men surprised a Mexican force at San Jacinto. Houston's victory and the capture of Santa Anna suddenly ended Mexico's effort to subdue Texas.
But apparently, independence was not what many Texans really desired. Voters elected Houston president, but also overwhelmingly endorsed union with the United States. The Jackson and Van Buren administrations spurned annexation, however. They feared both diplomatic trouble and the political consequences of pressing for the admission of a territory in which slavery, now constitutionally protected, was growing rapidly. A contributing factor to the Revolution, slavery had become the paramount consideration in annexation. As a result, the new republic struggled on alone. Presidents Houston, Mirabeau Lamar, and Anson Jones pursued various policies as to Mexican and Indian relations and the mounting debt, but none of them rendered Texas secure or solvent.
By 1844, American caution about issues that might divide national parties along sectional lines had diminished. Some hoped the increased enthusiasm for territorial expansion, or anxiety over possible European machinations in Texas, might eclipse northern concerns over slavery. Many southerners, eager to secure and expand America's slaveholding territory, worried that Britain intended to promote abolition in Texas. For Secretary of State John C. Calhoun, the well-being of the South overrode any commitment to the existing party system. The health of that system did not overly concern President John Tyler either. Having alienated both parties, he vainly hoped the Texas issue might win him a new following.
Initially, the traditional restraint regarding sectional issues seemed to prevail. The front-runners for the 1844 presidential nominations, Democrat Martin Van Buren and Whig Henry Clay, announced against immediate annexation. A treaty admitting Texas as a territory failed to win a majority in the Senate, much less the required two-thirds. But southern Democrats blocked Van Buren's nomination, opening the way for dark horse James Polk who campaigned for the acquisition of both Texas and Oregon (which presumably would remain free territory). Clay's subsequent equivocations on Texas may well have hastened the defection of antislavery Whigs to the Liberty party, a defection that probably cost him the election. Annexationists heralded Polk's narrow victory as a mandate. In early 1845 Congress, employing its power to admit new states, simply annexed Texas by a majority vote. Texan leaders who had been coy on annexation, hoping to prod either Europe into guaranteeing Texas independence or America into admitting Texas on the most favorable terms, likewise yielded to public sentiment. In June 1845 the republic's Congress accepted U.S. statehood.
James Buchanan would later compare Texas to the Trojan horse. Its admission hastened the unraveling of the national parties. Many Van Buren Democrats, convinced that southerners had ridden roughshod over them in 1844, found their way into the Free-Soil or even the Republican movements. Annexation helped provoke war with Mexico, bringing America additional southwestern territory and fatally linking the politics of slavery and expansion.
wow Longhorn, you did some research. I am fully aware of Texas history. The slavery issue. The disarm issue. The limitation of US settlers. etc...etc....The people who fought for Texas independence did it against an oppresive government and you belittled them. That is what I found unacceptable.
It's fun to recap the Texas Independence as it has been a while since I read up on it. However can you please let me know how the name of a Major League Soccer team called Houston 1836 is offensive?
Never said it was, just wanted to rile you up and get your debating juices flowing...
I suppose that if I were mexican american, i might feel that it is, althought there are many other issues to bitch about right now(most of them orininating in Tejas)
at least we can agree that it is more than just a simple our good guys beating them bad guys issue... which is no different from the war in Iraq... like there, we have a history of being part of the problem..
hugs and kisses!~
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