What is Texas Ascendant?

Ten years ago, after the financial crash of 2008, I started posting articles to the Texas Ascendant blog.  Texas is a great state with wonderful people, and we have a lot to offer America.  Texas has a great economy and the people of Texas have a great spirit, a spirit that America needs, a positive spirit, a can-do spirit.

America has lost its way.  Starting as far back as the Vietnam War and continuing on through the Great Recession, our country's leaders in the Northeast, in Harvard and Yale, have failed and are continuing to fail America.  Our country's failure started with John Kennedy's election in 1961, with his Vietnam War and the Bay of Pigs Invasion, and this failure continues to this day in 2018, 57 years later.  It is Harvard and Yale that have failed America.  Read The Best and the Brightest by David Halberstam and see how America's elites wrecked Vietnam.

One of the Northeastern elites mentioned by Halberstam was Robert A. Lovett, who was born in Texas.  His father, Robert S. Lovett, sent his son to a Northeastern prep school, then to Yale.  The younger man married into a wealthy banking family, and he eventually joined his father-in-law's firm Brown Brothers Harriman.  Robert A. Lovett eventually served the State Department as under secretary and later became Secretary of Defense.

For too long we in Texas have accepted the leadership of Harvard and Yale, sending our children to the Northeast so they could be accepted by the ruling elite, serve the ruling elite, and become wealthy in this service.  I contend that Harvard and Yale ruin young people's minds.  I contend that our country is poorly served by letting the Northeastern elites continue to rule this nation.  The book Excellent Sheep: The Miseducation of the American Elite by William Deresiewicz  is a reasonable indictment of the education, or miseducation, of our best and brightest.  (You should know that Halberstam was ironic when he used that phrase in his book title.)  Another expose of Harvard is Privilege: Harvard and the Education of the Ruling Class by Ross Gregory Douthat.  William F. Buckley exposed the flaws of Yale back in 1951 in God and Man at Yale, an excellent book I highly recommend.

What Then Should We Do?

America needs better leaders for a better future and Texas should develop those leaders.  We in Texas should stop thinking of Harvard and Yale as the pinnacle of education.  They are not.  They are doorways to power.  They are a club.  If you want a good education for your children, they should go elsewhere.  So find good schools in Texas or the Midwest, and work to increase opportunities here in Texas and the Midwest.  Everyone can start thinking about what we can do to grow the economy in Texas, the Midwest, and the Southeast, the areas we interact with the most.  I have prepared a List of Projects for ideas to improve our lives, our country, and our economy.

We can improve our banking industry in Texas and the Midwast, as I describe in The Texas Banking and Finance Project.  We can develop an industrialization plan as I describe in Industrialization Instead of Economic Development.  There are many things we can do in Texas and neighboring states to improve our economy.

Better Leadership

America needs better leaders for a better future and Texas should develop those leaders.  We must look locally for leadership, and we must send our best citizens to serve in Washington without them selling-out to get ahead.  Here is what I said back in 2008 in the article Integrity and Competence, the Cornerstone and Keystone:  We need to restore America to greatness and prosperity. We need to start here in Texas, we need to start now, and we need to start upon a foundation of integrity. Then we need to rise to the apex of competence, accumulating wealth, power and influence along the way.

We need to work with our neighboring states, as I said in 2009 in The Heartland Union.  We all need to work together across our country to build a stronger America, a more prosperous America,  a country brimming with hope and happiness.  Our children deserve a bright future.  We can start now, here in Texas.  First we make Texas ascendant.  Then we make America ascendant.

Robert Canright
Founder, Texas Ascendant