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

National Security Council Part 3: Texas National Security Network and Anti-Access/Area Denial

I recommend that the people of Texas lead the way in becoming better citizens by becoming more engaged in issues like national security.  There is now within Texas an organization called the Texas National Security Network.  It has a Texas National Security Review with this website:  https://tnsr.org/.  I find the website War On the Rocks pretty interesting:  https://warontherocks.com/.  They have an article, e.g., about anti-access and area denial — known as A2/AD:  Demystifying the A2/AD Buzz by Luis Simon.  A2AD is a big topic, as shown by this article:  The Russia – NATO A2AD Environment by Ian Williams.  Here is a picture of air defense around Kaliningrad  from that article.  I first heard of A2/AD in the article from the War On the Rocks website.  Since then I have seen the term in other articles and it catches my eye as an important item with the articles I read.

Kaliningrad can be conflict hot point.  It is one of the most heavily militarized zones in the world.  You might remember that Kaliningrad is a German city given to Stalin by F.D.R. in the Potsdam Conference.  We must remember that F.D.R. was responsible for the Iron Curtain and the enslavement of many free Eastern European people by the U.S.S.R. because F.D.R. appeased Stalin in much the same way that Neville Chamberlain appeased Hitler.  Kaliningrad is an enduring testament to F.D.R.'s abandonment of the Eastern Europeans.  Of course no Americans died for the freedom of these people so it is hard to blame F.D.R. for his decision.  This is realism:  freedom has a price.

Here is a quote from their website:  War on the Rocks is a platform for analysis, commentary, debate and multimedia content on foreign policy and national security issues through a realist lens.

It is good that Texans are looking carefully at national security issues.  If you are a Texan, you ought to be reading the War on the Rocks website.

Robert

Anti-Access/Area-Denial (update on 9/1/2018)

The July 30, 2018 issue of National Review, on pages 28 to 30, has this article that mentions Anti-Access/Area-Denial:  The Sea Will Not Be Tamed, On China's Formidable, Flawed Effort to Turn Naval Strategy Upside Down by Jerry Hendrix, Captain, USN Retired.
https://www.nationalreview.com/magazine/2018/07/30/chinese-naval-policy-upending-conventional-wisdom/
     The author says this about anti-access/area-denial:  China’s most significant reaction to America’s ability to project power was its investment in a new series of capabilities that have since been called “anti-access/area-denial” weapons systems. These systems, a combination of anti-ship ballistic missiles, anti-ship cruise missiles, and new advanced long-range fighter-interceptors, were designed to push American forces back from China’s shores, mitigating America’s ability to project power onto land and effect regime change.
      I also liked learning about Malford Mackinder within this National Review article.  I have heard of Geopolitics, but not of Mackinder's Heartland Theory, or Pivot of History.