And I know what you're thinking, Dr. Dillard, you've really lost it. Why are you showing this this chicken commercial from the 80s? What the hell could that have to do with anything? does seem a little weird, doesn't it? Getting a campaign contribution right there on the floor of the Texas legislature. That does seem kind of odd. And it's for this reason, and a lot of others, that interest groups occasionally get a bad name. How often do we see that in campaigning, right? so and so is going to stand against the special interests which are running our state or our country or something. We hear that from various gubernatorial races all over the country. We hear that from even presidential candidates who say things that are similar or maybe slightly different wording like I'm going to drain the swamp. That kind of thing. It all has the same central kind of meaning which is you can't buy us in the same way you might have been able to buy some former legislator. Okay. No, I will stand above that. And the reason why people have this negative kind of idea of interest groups is well undue influence that can be purchased with money. We've learned here in this last section, well the really throughout the entire semester just how big of a factor money is in politics, not just in Texas, but in the United States. We saw it in street fight even, right? How much time was Cy Booker spending on the phone every day hitting up potential donors? Okay, you talk to anybody that has spent any time in the US Congress and they all have the exact same complaint. Even when their campaign is looking good, they are required by their parties to continue making phone calls to build up their partisan war chest of contributions. It's become such a huge part of the office that we are talking about several hours a day that the average US congressman has to spend on the phone hitting people up for money. And it what it does is it takes away our rights as regular citizens in a lot of ways. Okay. Lobbyists are people who are usually pretty experienced at working within government. They have held positions within government before, either working directly with a congressman or perhaps through some kind of an administrative agency. And they make their living. They get paid to go and lobby on behalf of whatever it is you want. We as regular citizens of both Texas and the United States have a right to go and petition our members of Congress or our members of the state legislature. That is inherently part of our rights. In fact, it's constitutionally protected under both constitutions. We have the power to do that. And I've said before, one of you can probably accomplish a lot, but if you take a million of your friends with you, you can accomplish even more. But maybe having l, you know, lacking access to a million friends, maybe, just maybe, you could walk in with a $10,000 check. Now, how many of you have $10,000 checks available that you can go hand them out to eight different legislators at once? Probably not, right? But Bo Pilgrim did, which calls into question, is this a threat to our democracy? This is why politicians talk about it so much. But at the same time, you know, it's worth noting that we can look at interest groups in a slightly different way. We don't have to look at them as purely these negative kind of things. Yes, there is this fear that they can through their more hands-on approach to, you know, getting involved with legislation that lobbyists frequently take part in, you know, committee hearings and things like that. maybe even contribute, you know, to the wording of individual pieces of legislation. All that is true, but what else might interest groups be able to accomplish? Well, we can look at something like the civil rights movement here in the United States. The civil rights movement was not accomplished through normal democratic means. There was not a gigantic ground swell of emotion where all the people went and voted for the candidates that were going to pass the Civil Rights Act of 64, Voting Rights Act of 65. That didn't exist. In fact, a lot of Americans were really just either behind the times or didn't see civil rights as being that pressing of a thing. The groups that accomplished the civil rights movement were special interests. Okay? They were special interests that hired gigantic teams of lawyers and they hired lobbyists to go and work on their behalf. Now, would you say the civil rights movement was not democratic? Well, that's kind of hard to define. What it's asking us to do is to look at democracy as something more nuanced in the American experience. not just a question of majority rules, but protection for the individual and the ability of the individual to petition members of Congress or to file suit in court. Both things that special interest groups like to do in order to achieve, you know, something uh a little bit closer, like I said, to a nuanced form of democracy. So, interest groups are not the same thing as political parties. Political parties adopt large platforms where they take a stand on a number of different issues. Whereas interest groups usually have one single focus. But we can categorize these and this is a little bit different from the categorization scheme that I use in 2305. But we can categorize these and try to imagine where certain interest groups that we might be familiar with may fall in all of this. Number one is economic interest groups organized to influence government policy for the economic benefits of their members. This is where you would find Bo Pilgrim. And Bo Pilgrim doesn't necessarily fall into a group here. He was really trying to just sort of directly, you know, kind of bribe. But there are groups that might speak on his behalf. There might be an association of chicken processors. There might be a chamber of commerce. There might be uh an organization of manufacturers. There might be a labor union. All of these you could argue fall under economic interest groups. They are seeking an economic you know uh return for the lobbying they do. This is in contrast to non-economic interest groups. These do not obviously seek economic. That's why it's sort of built in. What they seek is a social change. They seek some kind of a change that is more in line with what their ideal vision of what the United States might be. Might be here that we would find uh you know perhaps a group that advocates for gun rights. We might see the NRA as a non-economic interest group. We might see an environmental group. Okay? There's no economic benefit that you get from clean air or you know clean water or something like that. Okay, they have a social vision, a larger vision of how they think our society. But then there's these mixed interest groups and this is where I would actually put a group like the civil rights movement. This is where I would put the NAACP, Southern Christian Leadership Conference, those kinds of groups that were very, very prominent in the 1960s and made the civil rights movement happen. I would put them under mixed interest because on the one hand, yes, the non-economic pursuit is pretty obvious. Okay, there's no there's nothing economic associated with having a desegregated water fountain. Okay, that that's not that is a social concern. There's nothing economic associated with making people sit at the back of the bus because of their color of their skin. Okay, that's a social problem. But those groups I was talking about that led the civil rights movement, they were also at the same time concerned with housing and employment and hiring and equal pay. Okay? Once again, all based on questions of race, but that's a major economic side. So, you see how they fall into this category of mixed interest groups. ma'am something like Planned Parenthood or you know right to life whatever group I would put those more under social now the argument of course frequently gets gets made that there's economic sort of things attached to this I would still personally categorize them as non-economic but maybe some of these are going to be more economic than others I guess I is and some of these will be more social than others. Okay. But we have a a basic way that we can kind of now out of this I can ask the question what groups do you think are the usually the most powerful? I would say economic if I had to guess those are going to be the groups that really wield the greatest deal of power. Right now, there is, for example, a bill under consideration in the Texas legislature, and we've only got 20 something more days left in the uh in the legislative session. There's something under consideration right now, a bill that will mandate that 50% of all Texas power will continue to be generated by fossil fuels, i.e. natural gas primarily. That's that's the main one. It's an effort to try to protect the long-standing energy, you know, producing sector that we already have as wind and solar continue to grow. Wind, by the way, is now up to something like 27% of the overall uh energy grid here in the state. In other words, it's rapidly growing. Now, who would be interested in keeping natural gas and coal and oil? Who who would have the biggest interest in keeping this viable? Okay, the people that make the right? That's would probably be the group. Okay, so they would definitely fall into the category of of an economic interest group. At the same time, we could look at those other groups. Okay, maybe a group that supports, you know, continued development in renewables, in wind and solar. Theirs is economic as well, but maybe just maybe with the uh uh you know non-economic or social side at the same time. Tough to say, but I I think you can see here that the one that's probably going to be more powerful is the one that's going to have a lot more money, i.e. the established energy sector is probably going to have a great deal more power, which is why that bill is even under consideration. If we were to think about what it truly means to have a free market, would a free market really determine that we're going to mandate that 50% of our energy comes from fossil fuels? Does that sound like the free market? Sounds like the government mandating something to me. Okay, put that aside for a second. We can look at techniques that get frequently used. As I mentioned, the best technique you can use if you are a business or maybe uh maybe you're an interest group, you know, with purely purely a social concern, the best thing you can do is hire a professional to work on your behalf. You might be very very loud and very very effective about what your interest is, be it economic or non, but the truth is the most successful legislators in both Washington DC and Austin are professionals that have experience and know what they're doing. And a lot of them will hire themselves out for basically whatever you want to pay them to do. Can you we kind of get an impression that lobbyists maybe they're super idealistic and going a lot of them are just we'll just do whatever you pay them to do and they're really damn effective at what they do. Okay. So they lobby the legislative and the executive branches. They schedule meetings with individual members of the legislature and they sit down with them and it's not that they sit down and just begin to beg and plead please pass this bill. It's not quite like that. It's more, okay, this is what this bill is about. Here's who it's going to help and here's who it's not going to help. Here's how it's going to benefit you, Mr. or Mrs. Legislator. Okay? They're very, very good at putting things in terms of who is going to benefit and how this is going to benefit you, the individual member of the legislature. I mentioned filing suit in court. That is another direct means that they use. This happens all the time. It serves as the heart of civil rights. advising and serving the state. It is true what I mentioned earlier that quite frequently lobbyists will show up at committee hearings. When a committee is hearing the pros and cons of a certain piece of legislation, let's say they are talking about this piece of legislation mandating the use of fossil fuels. They are going to hear from various subject matter experts. A few of them will be paid lobbyists that come from somebody that works for natural gas and somebody that works for wind. Okay? They actually will be there to inform and educate during legislative sessions, during committee hearings, and of course, organizing public demonstrations. This is particularly important if you're in a non-economic interest group like a civil rights group to get, okay, a 100,000 people out in front of the state capital. That sends a very very powerful message as you can imagine. And then there are the indirect sides out of all of this. Socializing and educating the public. Those two kind of go along. It is very very important that effective interest groups educate the people that you know that are signed on to them. So you take maybe a gigantic interest group like the NRA. The NRA puts out frequent publications and in their publications they do things like rate members of the US Congress according to where they stand on gun rights. This guy is totally all about gun rights and this guy not so much. Okay, that is considered educating the public. Now, there are limits exactly on what they can say. Holy Anybody else been suffering from allergies the past few days? Yeah, absolutely. Kicking my ass. Oh my god. Okay. So, they have a very very important role in terms of educating not just the members of the legislature, but they want to educate and inform their actual membership as well. Okay. And then electioneering is just another fancy word for mobilizing people. Now, there's limits on exactly what they can and can't say when it comes to this, but they will be sure to remind you, hey, be sure and go vote on November whatever because there's an important piece of legislation and it involves what our interest is, be it gun rights or something similar to that. Make no mistake, this is protected speech. This comes to us directly from the const article one of the Texas Constitution. Citizens shall have the right to apply to those invested with the powers of government that is legislators and whatnot for address or grievances of grievances or other purposes by petition address or remmonstrance. It is written into the constitution. Every single one of us has the right to schedule a meeting with our state legislature legislator and go and complain. Okay, that is built into the constitution and you can do it. You can totally do it. Like I said, you're going to get a lot further if you've got a $10,000 campaign contribution at the same time. Now, how do we do anything about this? Because this sounds just awful to me. Okay? It sounds like we once again fall into a category of the rich get richer and the rich seem to control everything. There is a Texas Ethics Commission. I mentioned them before in another context. They're a state agency that does things like enforce state standards for lobbyists and public officials. lobbyists here within the state have to be registered with the Texas Ethics Commission. There is a lot of uh there is necessary reporting of campaign contributions and they will keep track of every single one of them. Okay. While money is limited for campaigns for judicial candidates, there is still a great deal of loopholes and leeway uh for Texas lobbyists. That is how Bo Pilgrim was able to effectively go down and offer $10,000 checks on the floor of the Texas legislature. Because at that particular time, and they've corrected it since then, there was no law against him doing that during special sessions. More and more loopholes come up along the way. Thus, the law continues to be an ever evolving thing. so incredibly, you know, evolving and so rapidly does it happen that we can't really count on our government to be able to keep up. We really can't. And that applies at both the national level and down here at the state level. So are we just at the mercy of these, you know, wealthy interest groups? Well, the best defense that we have is us. We have the best defense. We are the last line of defense. really we are the ultimate kind of watchd dogss on this. You hear about a bill let's say you know that's going to dramatically help say natural gas or something like that. Okay, public records will reveal where campaign contributions go and you can look at maybe how your individual member of the state legislature voted and you can look at where they received their money. Okay, that's a matter of public record. Did they receive a gigantic campaign contribution from natural gas company X or something like that or wind company X to vote a certain way? Quite often they might be getting something from both and the larger one might win. Okay, that's sort of sort of politics as usual. So we have kind of a duty attached to all of this. And with that in mind, I can abruptly change to the second part of class here, which is talking about our exam. And I don't need a lot of your time, just a few minutes. Hey, it's Wednesday. It's coming up really quick. And the crazy part is my other class that I teach at 1 today. It's happening immediately after this exam. So, I actually have back-to-back exams, which never happens. Totally pisses me off. Anyways, be right here in this room 11:00 on Wednesday. We're going to have till 1:30, but you you're not going to probably need that. It's 50 questions, so longer than usual. It's going to be a format that you recognize and the multiple choice and the true falses. 50% coming from the fourth unit. Okay, that's this last one we had where we talked about things like local government and the judicial branch. Okay? And 50% coming from the previous units. Now, it's a lot of material that I could potentially cram in there, but let's consider a few things that we know for sure. So, we talked a lot about the law. We talked about how law in a lot of ways, despite the fact that I left it sort of separate from the other branches of government, we saw how much the judicial branch really does matter in a lot of ways, okay? and how it sort of serves as the very basis for our society as a whole because it's what gives us stability, predictability, security. And we have a system that is based on the idea of precedent. And that precedent thing is important of course because it opens up this question of judicial activism and judicial restraint. Remember those that's something that has been sort of a a thorn in our side since our very foundation as a country. When we gave power over to the judicial branch to be able to determine what is and is not constitutional, we were in a lot of ways we could say we were handing over a question to an insulated branch of government. But you could also argue we were kind of nullifying the power of our legislative branch and of our executive branch by giving all the power over to the court system. Hard to say and it's a debate that we've been sort of wrestling with. There's the my slide for that that we've been kind of wrestling with ever since. Judicial restraint would be sort of our kind of our ideal. If we could imagine what we would like judges to be, we'd like them to be sort of purely legal machines that pay a no attention to what is happening in society and they listen to no politicians and instead they focus on case law all day long. That's what we'd like to see. But the truth of the matter is okay judges are influenced. They do see what is happening in society. And so an activist judge is one who is said to act as an independent policy maker. And I went through some examples when we talked about this previously. Again, we got things like civil rights. That that that one's that one's pretty obvious, but we can maybe put it more into the modern era. Remember the gay marriage example that I used? Okay. The Supreme Court was hearing a case back in 2013. And it was a case that had been brought against the state of California, okay, who had passed the Defense of Marriage Act, which basically said there will be no gay marriage. People immediately sued for that. The US Supreme Court listened to it and they said, "You know what? You're right. This Defense of Marriage Act that you have passed in California, that's unconstitutional, and we're striking it down. The result is legalized same-sex marriage." The problem that's associated with that along the way is that they've effectively said all the people of California when you voted for that you were wrong. Is that democracy? It's a more nuanced version of democracy is what I want us to keep kind of understanding. It is a protection of the minority rights that maybe you know we'd be a very very different kind of democracy if everything we did was based on the idea of majority rule all the time. From there we moved into local governments and I gave and I gave this huge slide right here. Counties, municipalities, and special districts. The top two would be what we would call general purpose governments. They provide a wide range of services. Y'all don't have to really take pictures. I see like 10 different people taking I put these up like right after class. Y you'all know that, right? Okay. It's the last day. I I figured y'all knew that before right now. Okay. Anyways, general purpose governments that provide a wide range of services. This is in contrast to special districts which provide a single purpose. The easy one here would be something like school districts. Okay? We don't think of CCISD as a government, but it effectively is. We vote for it. They administer how the school district is going to work. Counties are effectively an arm of the state. Counties are there to fill in the gaps for what the municipal municipal governments and their general purpose government. The county fills in what the municipal government cannot. So if you say live right outside the line that is Corpus Christie, Texas, but you are still within Noasis County, there's a very good chance that your basic services, things like ambulance service for example, is going to be provided by Noasis County. There's a very good chance if you have to call the cops, you're not going to get someone from CCPD, but rather someone from the Noasis County Sheriff is going to come and respond. And then municipalities are well cities as we understand them. But there are big differences here. And of course here we fall into that easy to grab kind of category for figuring out what kind of questions that I ask. I always like stuff that comes in very very easily defined lists and stuff like that. Things like, I don't know, systems of government. Hey, there's three of them. That might be three questions on the exam. Okay, it is. We know there are home rule cities versus general law cities. Home rule city is what happens when your population hits 5,000. You can petition the state of Texas to become a home rule city. It will allow you to structure your government as you see fit. And there's some leeway here and there for the actual laws that you can have within your municipality. It does not mean you can do anything you want. Okay? You can't become a home rule city and legalize prostitution or drugs or something like that. You can't do that. You are still confined somewhat by state law, but you are able to choose the actual arrangement of government that you use. Okay. general law cities. These are the ones under 5,000 which make up about 75% of the municipalities here in Texas. Okay? They are bound by what the state tells them to do. But if you're a home rule and you can pick for one of these systems, you might choose the council manager system. That's the one that has become increasingly popular. It's increasingly popular because when you choose a city manager, you are not electing that person. That person is chosen based on their merits. the fact that they are very very good at their job. Maybe they got an MPA right here at this university. Okay, it means they know how to run a city. They are very very effective at managing largecale operations like our water and our trash pickup and a whole bunch of different stuff that I don't understand. City managers are very very good at that and that's why we have one here in Corpus Christi. A mayor council system is something a little bit more like what we would see in running the state or running the United States where you have a mayor serving as the executive and then you will have a council serving as the legislative body and they are the ones creating you know the dictates to run the city and the commission system that's the one that I said is relatively relatively rare but it's kind of an experiment it's kind of an idea where you will take the heads of the city departments and you will put them in the position of being effectively legislators for the entire city. Hold on one second. What slide I'm on? Oh yeah. Okay, there we go. And then stuff from the previous blocks. Not only is it going to follow uh uh effectively the same kind of format and the same kind of questions I like to grab where you'll have something in a group of three or four. Yes, I I do that. But I also grab stuff that I think is fundamentally important. Political cultures, for example, that's where we started this semester. That was the first content slide of this entire semester was those three political cultures given to us by Daniel Elazar back in the 1960s. And I think it's important. It's important because it takes us a very very long way in understanding Texas political culture because we are not easily defined. For a very large portion of our history, we were both traditional and individual. Individual being sort of West Texas, traditional being sort of sort of East Texas. But in the modern era, we have seen the rise of moralistic political culture here in Texas in our major urban centers. Dallas, Houston, Austin, San Antonio. They have a growing idea of a moralist political culture. And that's one that believes that government is of course a source of good. Okay? And that we should look out for the community as a whole. It's very much not the individualist culture at all. the one that sort of forms the foundations of what is West Texas. And we talked about things like governmental structures. And I talked about that a lot. I think I ended up talking about that in like every single unit of instruction this semester. Unitary system is what we would call the state of Texas on its own where power comes from Austin. Okay? And then it is given almost like a chain of command to the counties and to the municipalities. But if we were to take Texas out or or put it back into the United States, Texas does not take its orders directly from Washington DC. Not on everything anyways. There's more of a division of power that kind of exists, but it's something that has been has continued to be a point of controversy throughout our entire life as a nation. Right? the fact that the president of the United States might say something, but the governor of Texas doesn't necessarily have to listen. He kind of has an option on okay, that's that sounds not therefore the way that the federal government actually is able to induce states to do things is usually through the control of federal money. That's usually how things happen. You hadn't been noticing in the news lately, there's been a whole lot of mandates that have been coming from Washington DC recently, right? A whole lot of you're going to do this, this, and this. And what has been the threat that's been attached to every one of those orders? Do this or you're going to lose access to federal money. It's a pretty strong uh pretty strong enticement. Okay? And make no mistake, our current president is not the first president that has done a lot of things exactly like this. Okay? A lot of other presidents have done the exact same thing. Okay, now I had to figure out what was a good way for me to end the semester. And amazingly, something fell right into my lap this weekend that I can use as a fiveminute way of sort of summarizing what I hope you guys got out of this entire semester. How many of you did I have for political science 2305 American government? Just a handful. Not everybody. Okay. Well, if you do, you might remember on the very first day of political science 2305, I told the story, okay? I told the story of state legislatures across the country having to deal with issues involving transspecies children. You see, there was a legend that began somewhere in the Midwest a few years back. And the legend was that children identifying as trans species, like dogs and cats and like that were being accommodated by their school districts and by their schools when it came to where they sat and even uh uh even where they would go to the bathroom. And it began to spread like wildfire to the point that school districts began to have they they began to actually have press conferences where the questions were coming up. And the most frequent one that came up was, you know, are you really providing transspecies children with litter boxes? I'm not making that up. You can look this up. This actually happened. And it became so incredibly powerful that we began to see our own news media kind of divide on the question. Okay? Because there's a point that I made before in both classes, which is whatever reality you want to exist, it's available for you online. Y'all know that, right? If you think the CO 19 vaccine is killing millions of people, you can find that online. Absolutely. If you think that sounds like a conspiracy theory, you can find that online. Both realities exist out there and so too does the reality of transecies children and school districts that are accommodating them. And so what I asked us to do in 2305 and I will ask you guys right now, I want us for one second, let's let's say five seconds. I want you to put aside Republican, Democrat, conservative, liberal, whatever you think you are. Put all that aside and clear your mind for one second and I want you to think for five seconds. Did this really happen? Were school districts really letting children in litter boxes? Doesn't sound likely, does it? Not at all. In fact, it's never happened. All you had to do was apply your most basic detector and say, "Wait, no, no, no, that didn't freaking happen. Are you out of your mind?" And that was sort of the reaction of a number of school districts along the way, by the way. But that didn't stop the internet, did it? In fact, I grabbed this. It's 2022. Okay, this has already been around for at least a couple years before before this was printed. And this article was basically, now the website that I grabbed this from is I looked it up. It's actually owned by the John Burch Society, which is like an ultra-conservative uh uh uh group saying that brainwashed school kids now identifying as animal furries. And the article goes on and yes, they're taking shits in litter boxes. Okay? Because the schools, the evil school districts want to indoctrinate your kids into being animals or something like that. Sounds pretty stupid, right? I can't believe how dumb we were back in 2022. Yeah, there's no way anybody in Texas would fall for that Oh my god. There is a Texas bill right now addressing this exact same fake urban legend. It is there because the school districts are trying to I I don't know. And okay, that one's from March. Okay, here's what is in the bill by the way. Digging deeper. Number one, using a litter box to relieve yourself. That would be an example of nonhuman behavior that they are trying to ban. Sounds pretty ridiculous, right? Okay. And I grabbed that article from May 1st. In other words, just a few days ago. Now, it is worth not Okay. Author of the bill can't find examples of it actually happening. Okay. So, we start with that. Okay. The point is there have been statements put out by the governor's office and things like that. And it is worth noting the bill has not even been sent to committee and that other members of the state legislature have stood up and said this is a dumbass conspiracy theory. Stop this nonsense. But we're still being presented with two versions of reality here. That's kind of what I'm getting at here. Whatever reality you want to exist is totally available. So what does this do in the modern era when you can find whatever reality you want? Well, it enhances our sense of group biases, doesn't it? Doesn't it kind of serve the purpose of enhancing the sense that your group is in the right and that other group? No, they're wrong. They want to turn your kids into animals or whatever. It doesn't matter. My example's done. I have no other slides though. Okay. It enhances our idea of group biases and it drives us further and further apart over what? Over absolutely nothing. Over absolutely nothing. And it's all because people seem to have forgot the most forgotten the most fundamental lesson about a democracy which is that politicians want you to like them. Politicians want you to believe that they are the ones who are going to come save you. That's how they make their living. Y'all know that, right? A politician does not want you to tell you anything negative unless it's about the side they're opposed to. Political leaders want you to think they are the ones who are going to come save you. Don't worry. And y'all can look up who the actual legislator was attached to this. Don't worry. I am going to stop this campaign to turn your kids into animals. That's how they make a living. And so when we forget about that message, when we forget, oh yeah, I forgot somebody's trying to profit here, when we forget to ask that basic question of who profit, we begin to fall into a pit of demagoguery where we begin to look at individual politicians and say, "Don't worry, so and so is going to save us from the evil underground cabal turning our kids into dogs and cats." And thus we fall into a a a reality which is basically an echo chamber where we have other people agreeing and disagreeing, you know, with the exact same things that we do. Does that sound American? Does that sound Texan? Not at all. Back in 1936, Texas was preparing to celebrate its centennial. is a key historic moment because up to this point, the state of Texas was really lumped in with the remainder of the southern states. That was our identity through about 1936. In other words, Confederate Confederate and you know, statues of Confederate generals and Confederate flags and racism and that was kind of Texas identity up till about 19. But even by 1936, even when we were several decades away from actual civil rights, okay, even then that sort of image was quickly falling out of style. It really was. And Texas found itself at an interesting crossroads where we knew it was time to rebrand ourselves as a state. And fortunately, Texas had an advantage that a lot of other southern states don't have, which is the fact that we are not just a southern state, we're a western state. Well, that turned out to be pretty good because what Texas did in 1936 was rebrand itself not around the plantation, but around the Old West, not around a slave culture, but around the cowboy. And what what are the key features that come to mind when we talk about the mythologized cowboy? Not the reality. the reality was dirty as But let's think about the mythologized version of a cowboy. A cowboy is an individualist. He is tough. He's compassionate. And he is above all fearless. That's kind of the main thing, right? Because what is a website trying to tell us when they say that somebody's trying to turn your kids into animals? They're trying to scare the out of you, right? I couldn't imagine anything less Texan than that than to fall into the kind of pit where we need representative so and so to come and save our kids from turning into furry weirdos. Okay, I can't imagine anything less Texan. Edward R. Muro, the famous journalist, once said, "We will not walk in fear, and we will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason if we dig deep enough into our history and our doctrine and remember that we are not descended from fearful men." I think that's a pretty good summary of what it means to be a Texan and a pretty good summary of what it means to be an American. So, I got news for you guys. When you graduate college, you're not going to remember very much at all. Okay? It happened to me and it's going to happen to you, too. You're going to forget a lot of the stuff that you learn. How many of you are political science majors? Okay? Most of you are going to forget completely about this class. Okay? In fact, a lot of your core classes. But I call on you right now. 20 years from now, 30 years from now, when you've got kids and you are the professionals that are running the world and somebody tries to scare the out of you by telling you that some evil cabal is coming after your children and the only thing that can save you is me, the politician. I want you to remember your long-haired government professor, telling you that we are not descended from fearful men. I will see you guys on Wednesday. All right.