Understanding Texas Political Culture and Government

The town of Gonzales, Texas, sitting at the confluence of two rivers, the Guadalupe and the San Marcos, is historically notable because it is the site of the first skirmish of the Texas Revolution. Even if you aren't familiar with the city of Gonzales, there's a chance that you're familiar with what happened there. The area's first Anglo settlers had begun arriving in 1825, having received land grants from the Mexican government. in an attempt to project the power of the Mexican government. We'll talk about that more later in the semester. It was on the banks of the Guadalupe River, 1836, where a hundred Mexican soldiers and one Mexican officer were demanding the return of a small bronze cannon that had been given to the colonists for protection against incursions from the natives. In defiance, 18 of the men of Gonzales were trying to stall for a few days to fatten up their ranks. And the first shot of the Battle of Gonzales happens October 2nd, 1835. But of course, what's significant about the Battle of Gonzales is not the strategic value of the battle itself. In fact, the city of Gonzales was actually burned to the ground later, under orders from Sam Houston, and then rebuilt about a decade later. Nor was it the significance of the cannon itself. In fact, most people that see the cannon Today, or a replica of the cannon located in the museum in Gonzales, most people that see it, they always have the same reaction. That's it? Because the thing's only like a foot and a half long. It's like really, really tiny. So small that it leads a lot of people to ask, this was big enough to trigger the Texas Revolution? That's crazy. Now, what's really famous about... The Battle of Gonzales is neither the battle itself nor the canon, but rather the defiant stand that was taken by the men of Gonzales in the face of, well, overwhelming odds. Long before the term come and take it was sort of co-opted and used by defenders of the Second Amendment, it had a completely different meaning. And it wasn't completely historically original, make no mistake, because it kind of harkens back... to John Paul Jones in the American Revolution saying, I have not yet begun to fight. But it has the same kind of meaning and one that has special relevance when we're going to try to begin to understand Texas culture, Texas political culture, the history of Texas, the development of Texas government, and current public policy in Texas. It's going to become very clear how an expression as simple as come and take it does a lot more than just set a tone for the revolution. It sets a standard for Texas political culture as we know it today. It is a rallying cry which still resonates because Texas does remain a bastion of individualism. We can talk throughout the semester as we go about maybe how things have changed and maybe how things are still the same. Just know that we are in fact descended from some very rugged people. Texans are the kind of people that would rather die than submit. This will all become clear throughout the semester. Make no mistake, don't let the naysayers fool you, Texas is a very special place. You can roam the entire country, you can conduct a survey, you can ask people, what do you think of Texas and what do you think of Texans? And by and large, the only really negative thing you're going to hear is that we're incredibly arrogant. Well, for good reason. And this will become apparent as the semester goes on as well. We are descended from a special breed of people. Our exceptionalism among the citizens of the United States goes well beyond our love of guns. It goes well beyond our football teams. It goes well beyond our greatest natural resource, which is, of course, Mexican food. We are also the home to four Americans. presidents, a number of A-list Hollywood actors, and some of the most important names in the development of rock and roll from the very, very beginning all the way through to the greatest metal band of the 1990s. Make no mistake, Texas is a very, very special place. And this sense of exceptionalism that we have is going to play a very big role in helping us to understand Texas political culture. Real quick before I go any further with this. Hi everybody, I'm Dr. Dillard. I guess I could have gone with that to start with. Welcome to Political Science 2306, State and Local Politics, with a focus here on Texas. If you haven't had me before... If you have had me before, you kind of have a general idea of how this class is going to go. If you haven't had me before, just understand that I do like to take a rather historical approach, but this is a class in political science. The goals, as laid out in these significant learning objectives found on your syllabus, are for us to understand how Texas government works, what our role is in, you know, contributing to and forming Texas government. how current public policy is made, how Texas democracy works, how the Texas Constitution works in cooperation with the U.S. Constitution. So we're going to talk about federalism quite a bit. But understand this is a political science class and not a history class. I just take a lot of time talking about historical events to make political science points. The syllabus is available right now on Canva. I strongly suggest taking a look and familiarizing yourself with the dates of the exams. That's the first thing. My grading structure for this class is incredibly simple. Four exams, four reading quizzes. It used to be even simpler. I used to only give four exams. Each were 25% of your... great. I repeatedly got complaints from students saying that that was absolutely killing them and I needed to come up with some way to diversify my syllabus a little bit. So, because of this, I now have the four reading quizzes. In fact, reading quiz number one is currently available on Canvas. You can take it, well, as soon as you get around to it. There's an accompanying reading that's there and then there's this short quiz. The quiz is incredibly easy. It's only five questions long. It's a gimme. It's a total easy quiz. The point of it is to force you to read something. That's one. Number two is to hopefully diversify the syllabus a little bit, make things a little bit easier for y'all. And then the third one is to make sure that you do it on time. I do not reopen the reading quizzes. You have like a month to do this quiz that is going to take you a matter of minutes. Okay, part of the test is seeing that you can do this on time. So familiarize yourself with the due dates of the quizzes as well. Okay, I think for the most part I put the all of the due dates for the quizzes right before your exams. So you have the entire, you know, we have four units here and you have the entire the length of the entire unit to get that reading quiz done. An incredibly easy quiz. My exam, okay, and those are obviously on Canvas. All of our exams are going to be happening in person. Okay, they're usually somewhere between 25 and 35 questions. They are a mixture of multiple choice and true false. I like using old school Scantrons. And then the final exam, so you know, is cumulative. Okay, about 50% of the final exam is going to come from Older material throughout the semester and then about 50% of it is going to come from The stuff that we cover in that last unit the final exam will be about 50 questions Okay, so a pretty straightforward old-school style Syllabus, okay, so check out the dates for everything on there. So you know what topics we're covering when as well as of course The dates of the exams and the dates of the reading quizzes, okay, but we're turning back to what is the material today. And you don't have to hurt yourself writing this stuff down right now because I'm going to bring this back when we meet again on Friday. But to start with, what I want us to understand is that political culture is something a little bit bigger than public opinion. And it is something a little bit bigger than simply a dominant ideology. Because we can consider a place like Texas, and if I were to ask you what the political culture is, culture of Texas is, your immediate response might be something like, well, Texas is a conservative place. Texas is a Republican-dominated place. And those facts are true. Those are true. But I'm actually getting at something even deeper when I'm talking about political culture. For years and years, trying to explain and identify exactly what political culture was, was... an enigma in a lot of ways, and not just for political scientists, because honestly I'm talking about the era before we even called it political science, really going pre-1960s when it was really political theorists. Both political theorists and historians had an idea in their head of what comprised, say, the character of a state. You know, oh, those people from Texas, they're like this. And you can expand that worldwide. You can think about countries around the world. Oh, you know the Germans, they're like this. Very industrious people, okay? Good engineers, very precision engineering kind of thing, okay? And then you've got the French. They're more romantic and they like their wine and cheese. That's their character. You have all these ideas, and while some of these things I'm throwing out are stereotypes, They might actually be kind of true about the character of some of these nations, but these aren't exactly quantifiable academic sort of answers, are they? You know, how do you fit that into a political science examination of the French? Oh, they like wine and cheese. Well, okay, that's kind of hard to model in any sort of political science fashion. In other words, political culture is a notion for both Political scientists and historians in its earliest days was a very, very vague thing, but it was widely accepted, which is kind of weird. It's about the early 1960s that political science takes a gigantic leap forward as a discipline, as it becomes really more of a science science rather than just purely theory, purely speculation. Because it was around this time that a group of political scientists began to figure out ways to try to quantify and properly model what constituted a political culture. And one way that they started, for example, was by modeling patterns of religion. Okay? That was one way. That was one way to do it. But you also, they began to look at migration patterns from east to west across the United States, looking at the patterns of the type of people that would settle in a certain place. And it's in this way that they establish the political values and beliefs that are dominant in a nation or state. It becomes bigger than just public opinion. For example, I could poll this entire class and I could ask you guys, what's your opinion on... some hot-button issue. What's your opinion on immigration or abortion? We're not going to talk about either of those in this class because I don't want to touch them with a 10-foot pole, but I can ask you that and you can all say we are staunchly, you know, pro-life and we are, you know, we want stricter security of the border. That would be, you know, a public opinion, okay, and that has a way of feeding into public policy, no doubt. But I'm actually looking for something slightly deeper. And by this, I want to incorporate both ideology as well as historical experience. And when we're considering really what culture means, one big part of it is the difference that may exist from one person to another, with one person considering themselves maybe conservative, and the next person maybe thinks of themselves as a liberal. A lot of it comes down to a basic question of what do you think a government should and should not be responsible for? Does a government have a responsibility to make sure that we are all fed? Does it have a responsibility to make sure we are all educated? Does it have a responsibility to make sure we are all protected by the police? Everybody has a different kind of impression about all of these different dimensions of what a government may do. This gets us closer to the idea of a political culture. And maybe it'll help if I identify the huge cultures that we're going to talk about. I'm going to repeat all of these on Friday, so don't kill yourself writing this one down. But back in the 1960s, there was a very famous political scientist, a guy by the name of Daniel Elazar. And he was one of the ones that contributed a lot towards this making political culture a more viable subgenre of political science. Because a lot of the initial theorists about political culture, a lot of their work sort of got replaced and relegated over the course of generations. Not Daniel Elzar. His work has actually stood the test of time very, very well. In fact, he gets mentioned in... political science textbooks to this day, which brings me to something I missed from earlier. There is no required textbook in this class. because textbooks are too expensive and I think publishers are bastards. So, no required textbook in this class. Returning back, though. So, Daniel Elazar looked at migration patterns moving east to west across the United States to try to delineate the different types of political cultures. So, he began in the Northeast. This is the part of the United States, we're thinking New England here, where Anglo-settlers, well, all European settlers, were living in the United States. This is where they first gather. And they developed what is known as a moralistic political subculture. And this was the cause, was the result of the circumstances of the time. When they arrived here in the New World, they were faced with incredible difficulties. You get on this big-ass boat ride, and that's dangerous enough, and a lot of people die just on the boat ride itself. You arrive here on, you know, at Plymouth Rock or wherever, and, you know, HEB isn't open yet, and you've got disease, you've got starvation, and the local people, they don't want you there either, and they might try to kill you too. You've got all these different reasons why you might die now that you've arrived in the New World, okay? Half of you are going to be dead before the first winter. That kind of thing, right? So what they figured out was that the only way that they could survive in this kind of environment was to gather very, very closely together in a tight-knit community and try to share as much as they could and try to work together as a community to save as many of them as humanly possible. This is the birth of a moralistic political subculture. It views government as a positive force, one that values the individual, but primarily functions to benefit the general public, the community being more important than the individual. As time goes on, people start to move away from the American Northeast. They start to expand westward, and they start to expand down to the south. And a lot of these people were moving to places that were not particularly hospitable. We can take, I don't know, Texas, for example. If you are moving to Texas and it's 1830 and you move to El Paso, you're a brave soul. Anybody been to El Paso? If you've never been there, that is some desert-ass desert. Okay? That is a very, very difficult place to try to live, especially in the 1830s. Why would you try to make that move? Why would you move from the relative comforts of the Northeast out to a place like that? A no man's land. Well, you might die, it's true, but you live life on your own terms. You live independently. You live as an individual. is the development of the individual political subculture, one that dominates the western half of the state of Texas to this day. It views government as a practical institution, but it should be there to further private enterprise, but only intervene minimally in our lives. In other words, government shouldn't be there to guarantee our safety, guarantee that we're fed, guarantee that we're taken care of. It should be there... to, I don't know, make sure that we are, you know, have a military, make sure that we have law and order. A very bare-bones kind of interpretation of what government should be. That is an individual political subculture. And that explains much of Texas development. But at the same time, there's a third culture worth mentioning, and that's the traditional culture. This is what defines most of the Deep South. And in a lot of ways, it really kicks off in the early 1600s as the New World transitions towards a slave-based economy. When the colonies finally accepted slavery as a common good, it drew a very, very big sort of dividing line between the classes. And by classes, of course, I mean race. One that builds up the idea of government as an institution that maintains dominant social and religious values. This starts arguably on the East Coast in places like South Carolina and then expands westward as the institution of slavery expands westward. Throughout the Deep South where you have soil that is immediately... you know, open to cultivation, you get people immediately growing things, you know, a commercial crop. Thus, the institution of slavery spreads across the South. And it begins to, even beyond slavery, it begins to define the people's relationship with their government, the government that is there to maintain strict sort of lines of social division and strict lines of social hierarchy. And with this becomes... an expectation that the government is also going to maintain things like religious values. It's going to maintain religious values, and it's going to keep the races separate even after slavery is gone, and you could argue that the traditional culture still exists throughout much of the Deep South. It's a very different thing right now. Don't misinterpret what I'm saying to say that there's still people fighting for slavery. That's not what I'm trying to get at. but the political culture, one that still maintains an idea of social hierarchy and an idea of religious values as being a government responsibility, that defines the traditional culture. And in fact, it makes its way all the way into East Texas, and throughout the first phase of our history as a state defines East Texas. So Texas becomes kind of an unusual entity by Daniel Eleazar's classification scheme, because on the one hand, you have West Texas, which is an individualist culture, and on the other you have East Texas, which is more a traditional culture. If you fast forward to the modern era and the rise of our major urban centers, places like Dallas, Houston, Austin, San Antonio, all of our giant cities, they have adopted a much more moralistic political culture. Therefore, Texas is rather interesting in that We kind of encompass all three of these political cultures, which, you know, sort of, and I'm going to come back to those in a later class, so don't worry. But it does kind of lead us towards one of the questions of why we study state and local politics. And I explain in the American class, and the same thing goes within this class, that the reason why we are forced, at this university, like all Texas state universities, to take classes in political science, is because going back to the mid-1970s and the post-Watergate, post-Vietnam, post-Nixon era, you had a serious breakdown in faith in our democratic institutions. It was from this that the Texas legislature started to mandate civics. It started to mandate political science courses for all of our graduates as... part of the core because this university is interested in putting out more than just great engineers, great nurses, great business people, whatever. It is part of this university's responsibility to put out good citizens, particularly good citizens of the state of Texas. How often do you actually think about Texas government? Chances are, probably not very often, but you probably should. Because as we go through a topic like federalism, you're going to see how incredibly important Texas government is and how incredibly important local government is. If your house is on fire right now, are you going to call Donald Trump to come put it out? I wouldn't do that. I recommend calling somebody local. That's probably going to help out a lot more. If you're being held at gunpoint, are you going to hope that Congress is going to come save you? No, it's probably going to be the cops, the local cops. They'd probably be a much better source for protecting you. And that's just a couple examples, you know, off the top of my head to show. State and local government is the government that has a much deeper connection to our actual lives. Everything that happens in Washington, D.C. with these, you know, clowns that are all fighting for our vote. It's not going to change your life that much as we move from Congress to Congress. congress or president to president it might long term but far more immediate and far more important to your regular life is what happens down here at the state and local level and texas is incredibly diverse we have a lot of different takes on you know what is and what is not politically valuable And so it's for this reason that the Texas legislature mandates that you will take classes in Texas politics. Now be damned if the day ever comes when you show up on... You know, some video on the internet or on late night talk show and they're asking you a question about politics and you say, I don't know, and Dr. Dillard never told me that. I consider it a sacred duty that you succeed in this class. I consider what I do to have incredible value because, if you hadn't noticed, politics is an extremely contentious business. It brings out the absolute worst in people. And the only contribution that I can physically make towards making our country a better place is to make better citizens and to make better voters. That is why we take this class. I will see you guys in person on Friday.

It was on the banks of the Guadalupe River, 1836, where a hundred Mexican soldiers and one Mexican officer were demanding the return of a small bronze cannon that had been given to the colonists for protection against incursions from the natives. In defiance, 18 of the men of Gonzales were trying to stall for a few days to fatten up their ranks. And the first shot of the Battle of Gonzales happens October 2nd, 1835. But of course, what's significant about the Battle of Gonzales is not the strategic value of the battle itself.

In fact, the city of Gonzales was actually burned to the ground later, under orders from Sam Houston, and then rebuilt about a decade later. Nor was it the significance of the cannon itself. In fact, most people that see the cannon Today, or a replica of the cannon located in the museum in Gonzales, most people that see it, they always have the same reaction.

That's it? Because the thing's only like a foot and a half long. It's like really, really tiny. So small that it leads a lot of people to ask, this was big enough to trigger the Texas Revolution?

That's crazy. Now, what's really famous about... The Battle of Gonzales is neither the battle itself nor the canon, but rather the defiant stand that was taken by the men of Gonzales in the face of, well, overwhelming odds. Long before the term come and take it was sort of co-opted and used by defenders of the Second Amendment, it had a completely different meaning.

And it wasn't completely historically original, make no mistake, because it kind of harkens back... to John Paul Jones in the American Revolution saying, I have not yet begun to fight. But it has the same kind of meaning and one that has special relevance when we're going to try to begin to understand Texas culture, Texas political culture, the history of Texas, the development of Texas government, and current public policy in Texas. It's going to become very clear how an expression as simple as come and take it does a lot more than just set a tone for the revolution.

It sets a standard for Texas political culture as we know it today. It is a rallying cry which still resonates because Texas does remain a bastion of individualism. We can talk throughout the semester as we go about maybe how things have changed and maybe how things are still the same. Just know that we are in fact descended from some very rugged people. Texans are the kind of people that would rather die than submit.

This will all become clear throughout the semester. Make no mistake, don't let the naysayers fool you, Texas is a very special place. You can roam the entire country, you can conduct a survey, you can ask people, what do you think of Texas and what do you think of Texans?

And by and large, the only really negative thing you're going to hear is that we're incredibly arrogant. Well, for good reason. And this will become apparent as the semester goes on as well.

We are descended from a special breed of people. Our exceptionalism among the citizens of the United States goes well beyond our love of guns. It goes well beyond our football teams.

It goes well beyond our greatest natural resource, which is, of course, Mexican food. We are also the home to four Americans. presidents, a number of A-list Hollywood actors, and some of the most important names in the development of rock and roll from the very, very beginning all the way through to the greatest metal band of the 1990s. Make no mistake, Texas is a very, very special place.

And this sense of exceptionalism that we have is going to play a very big role in helping us to understand Texas political culture. Real quick before I go any further with this. Hi everybody, I'm Dr. Dillard.

I guess I could have gone with that to start with. Welcome to Political Science 2306, State and Local Politics, with a focus here on Texas. If you haven't had me before...

If you have had me before, you kind of have a general idea of how this class is going to go. If you haven't had me before, just understand that I do like to take a rather historical approach, but this is a class in political science. The goals, as laid out in these significant learning objectives found on your syllabus, are for us to understand how Texas government works, what our role is in, you know, contributing to and forming Texas government.

how current public policy is made, how Texas democracy works, how the Texas Constitution works in cooperation with the U.S. Constitution. So we're going to talk about federalism quite a bit. But understand this is a political science class and not a history class.

I just take a lot of time talking about historical events to make political science points. The syllabus is available right now on Canva. I strongly suggest taking a look and familiarizing yourself with the dates of the exams.

That's the first thing. My grading structure for this class is incredibly simple. Four exams, four reading quizzes.

It used to be even simpler. I used to only give four exams. Each were 25% of your... great. I repeatedly got complaints from students saying that that was absolutely killing them and I needed to come up with some way to diversify my syllabus a little bit.

So, because of this, I now have the four reading quizzes. In fact, reading quiz number one is currently available on Canvas. You can take it, well, as soon as you get around to it.

There's an accompanying reading that's there and then there's this short quiz. The quiz is incredibly easy. It's only five questions long.

It's a gimme. It's a total easy quiz. The point of it is to force you to read something.

That's one. Number two is to hopefully diversify the syllabus a little bit, make things a little bit easier for y'all. And then the third one is to make sure that you do it on time. I do not reopen the reading quizzes.

You have like a month to do this quiz that is going to take you a matter of minutes. Okay, part of the test is seeing that you can do this on time. So familiarize yourself with the due dates of the quizzes as well. Okay, I think for the most part I put the all of the due dates for the quizzes right before your exams.

So you have the entire, you know, we have four units here and you have the entire the length of the entire unit to get that reading quiz done. An incredibly easy quiz. My exam, okay, and those are obviously on Canvas. All of our exams are going to be happening in person.

Okay, they're usually somewhere between 25 and 35 questions. They are a mixture of multiple choice and true false. I like using old school Scantrons. And then the final exam, so you know, is cumulative.

Okay, about 50% of the final exam is going to come from Older material throughout the semester and then about 50% of it is going to come from The stuff that we cover in that last unit the final exam will be about 50 questions Okay, so a pretty straightforward old-school style Syllabus, okay, so check out the dates for everything on there. So you know what topics we're covering when as well as of course The dates of the exams and the dates of the reading quizzes, okay, but we're turning back to what is the material today. And you don't have to hurt yourself writing this stuff down right now because I'm going to bring this back when we meet again on Friday.

But to start with, what I want us to understand is that political culture is something a little bit bigger than public opinion. And it is something a little bit bigger than simply a dominant ideology. Because we can consider a place like Texas, and if I were to ask you what the political culture is, culture of Texas is, your immediate response might be something like, well, Texas is a conservative place.

Texas is a Republican-dominated place. And those facts are true. Those are true.

But I'm actually getting at something even deeper when I'm talking about political culture. For years and years, trying to explain and identify exactly what political culture was, was... an enigma in a lot of ways, and not just for political scientists, because honestly I'm talking about the era before we even called it political science, really going pre-1960s when it was really political theorists. Both political theorists and historians had an idea in their head of what comprised, say, the character of a state.

You know, oh, those people from Texas, they're like this. And you can expand that worldwide. You can think about countries around the world. Oh, you know the Germans, they're like this. Very industrious people, okay?

Good engineers, very precision engineering kind of thing, okay? And then you've got the French. They're more romantic and they like their wine and cheese.

That's their character. You have all these ideas, and while some of these things I'm throwing out are stereotypes, They might actually be kind of true about the character of some of these nations, but these aren't exactly quantifiable academic sort of answers, are they? You know, how do you fit that into a political science examination of the French?

Oh, they like wine and cheese. Well, okay, that's kind of hard to model in any sort of political science fashion. In other words, political culture is a notion for both Political scientists and historians in its earliest days was a very, very vague thing, but it was widely accepted, which is kind of weird. It's about the early 1960s that political science takes a gigantic leap forward as a discipline, as it becomes really more of a science science rather than just purely theory, purely speculation. Because it was around this time that a group of political scientists began to figure out ways to try to quantify and properly model what constituted a political culture.

And one way that they started, for example, was by modeling patterns of religion. Okay? That was one way.

That was one way to do it. But you also, they began to look at migration patterns from east to west across the United States, looking at the patterns of the type of people that would settle in a certain place. And it's in this way that they establish the political values and beliefs that are dominant in a nation or state. It becomes bigger than just public opinion.

For example, I could poll this entire class and I could ask you guys, what's your opinion on... some hot-button issue. What's your opinion on immigration or abortion? We're not going to talk about either of those in this class because I don't want to touch them with a 10-foot pole, but I can ask you that and you can all say we are staunchly, you know, pro-life and we are, you know, we want stricter security of the border. That would be, you know, a public opinion, okay, and that has a way of feeding into public policy, no doubt.

But I'm actually looking for something slightly deeper. And by this, I want to incorporate both ideology as well as historical experience. And when we're considering really what culture means, one big part of it is the difference that may exist from one person to another, with one person considering themselves maybe conservative, and the next person maybe thinks of themselves as a liberal. A lot of it comes down to a basic question of what do you think a government should and should not be responsible for? Does a government have a responsibility to make sure that we are all fed?

Does it have a responsibility to make sure we are all educated? Does it have a responsibility to make sure we are all protected by the police? Everybody has a different kind of impression about all of these different dimensions of what a government may do.

This gets us closer to the idea of a political culture. And maybe it'll help if I identify the huge cultures that we're going to talk about. I'm going to repeat all of these on Friday, so don't kill yourself writing this one down.

But back in the 1960s, there was a very famous political scientist, a guy by the name of Daniel Elazar. And he was one of the ones that contributed a lot towards this making political culture a more viable subgenre of political science. Because a lot of the initial theorists about political culture, a lot of their work sort of got replaced and relegated over the course of generations. Not Daniel Elzar.

His work has actually stood the test of time very, very well. In fact, he gets mentioned in... political science textbooks to this day, which brings me to something I missed from earlier. There is no required textbook in this class. because textbooks are too expensive and I think publishers are bastards.

So, no required textbook in this class. Returning back, though. So, Daniel Elazar looked at migration patterns moving east to west across the United States to try to delineate the different types of political cultures.

So, he began in the Northeast. This is the part of the United States, we're thinking New England here, where Anglo-settlers, well, all European settlers, were living in the United States. This is where they first gather.

And they developed what is known as a moralistic political subculture. And this was the cause, was the result of the circumstances of the time. When they arrived here in the New World, they were faced with incredible difficulties. You get on this big-ass boat ride, and that's dangerous enough, and a lot of people die just on the boat ride itself.

You arrive here on, you know, at Plymouth Rock or wherever, and, you know, HEB isn't open yet, and you've got disease, you've got starvation, and the local people, they don't want you there either, and they might try to kill you too. You've got all these different reasons why you might die now that you've arrived in the New World, okay? Half of you are going to be dead before the first winter. That kind of thing, right?

So what they figured out was that the only way that they could survive in this kind of environment was to gather very, very closely together in a tight-knit community and try to share as much as they could and try to work together as a community to save as many of them as humanly possible. This is the birth of a moralistic political subculture. It views government as a positive force, one that values the individual, but primarily functions to benefit the general public, the community being more important than the individual. As time goes on, people start to move away from the American Northeast.

They start to expand westward, and they start to expand down to the south. And a lot of these people were moving to places that were not particularly hospitable. We can take, I don't know, Texas, for example.

If you are moving to Texas and it's 1830 and you move to El Paso, you're a brave soul. Anybody been to El Paso? If you've never been there, that is some desert-ass desert.

Okay? That is a very, very difficult place to try to live, especially in the 1830s. Why would you try to make that move?

Why would you move from the relative comforts of the Northeast out to a place like that? A no man's land. Well, you might die, it's true, but you live life on your own terms.

You live independently. You live as an individual. is the development of the individual political subculture, one that dominates the western half of the state of Texas to this day.

It views government as a practical institution, but it should be there to further private enterprise, but only intervene minimally in our lives. In other words, government shouldn't be there to guarantee our safety, guarantee that we're fed, guarantee that we're taken care of. It should be there...

to, I don't know, make sure that we are, you know, have a military, make sure that we have law and order. A very bare-bones kind of interpretation of what government should be. That is an individual political subculture. And that explains much of Texas development. But at the same time, there's a third culture worth mentioning, and that's the traditional culture.

This is what defines most of the Deep South. And in a lot of ways, it really kicks off in the early 1600s as the New World transitions towards a slave-based economy. When the colonies finally accepted slavery as a common good, it drew a very, very big sort of dividing line between the classes. And by classes, of course, I mean race. One that builds up the idea of government as an institution that maintains dominant social and religious values.

This starts arguably on the East Coast in places like South Carolina and then expands westward as the institution of slavery expands westward. Throughout the Deep South where you have soil that is immediately... you know, open to cultivation, you get people immediately growing things, you know, a commercial crop. Thus, the institution of slavery spreads across the South. And it begins to, even beyond slavery, it begins to define the people's relationship with their government, the government that is there to maintain strict sort of lines of social division and strict lines of social hierarchy.

And with this becomes... an expectation that the government is also going to maintain things like religious values. It's going to maintain religious values, and it's going to keep the races separate even after slavery is gone, and you could argue that the traditional culture still exists throughout much of the Deep South. It's a very different thing right now.

Don't misinterpret what I'm saying to say that there's still people fighting for slavery. That's not what I'm trying to get at. but the political culture, one that still maintains an idea of social hierarchy and an idea of religious values as being a government responsibility, that defines the traditional culture. And in fact, it makes its way all the way into East Texas, and throughout the first phase of our history as a state defines East Texas.

So Texas becomes kind of an unusual entity by Daniel Eleazar's classification scheme, because on the one hand, you have West Texas, which is an individualist culture, and on the other you have East Texas, which is more a traditional culture. If you fast forward to the modern era and the rise of our major urban centers, places like Dallas, Houston, Austin, San Antonio, all of our giant cities, they have adopted a much more moralistic political culture. Therefore, Texas is rather interesting in that We kind of encompass all three of these political cultures, which, you know, sort of, and I'm going to come back to those in a later class, so don't worry. But it does kind of lead us towards one of the questions of why we study state and local politics.

And I explain in the American class, and the same thing goes within this class, that the reason why we are forced, at this university, like all Texas state universities, to take classes in political science, is because going back to the mid-1970s and the post-Watergate, post-Vietnam, post-Nixon era, you had a serious breakdown in faith in our democratic institutions. It was from this that the Texas legislature started to mandate civics. It started to mandate political science courses for all of our graduates as...

part of the core because this university is interested in putting out more than just great engineers, great nurses, great business people, whatever. It is part of this university's responsibility to put out good citizens, particularly good citizens of the state of Texas. How often do you actually think about Texas government? Chances are, probably not very often, but you probably should. Because as we go through a topic like federalism, you're going to see how incredibly important Texas government is and how incredibly important local government is.

If your house is on fire right now, are you going to call Donald Trump to come put it out? I wouldn't do that. I recommend calling somebody local. That's probably going to help out a lot more.

If you're being held at gunpoint, are you going to hope that Congress is going to come save you? No, it's probably going to be the cops, the local cops. They'd probably be a much better source for protecting you. And that's just a couple examples, you know, off the top of my head to show. State and local government is the government that has a much deeper connection to our actual lives.

Everything that happens in Washington, D.C. with these, you know, clowns that are all fighting for our vote. It's not going to change your life that much as we move from Congress to Congress.

congress or president to president it might long term but far more immediate and far more important to your regular life is what happens down here at the state and local level and texas is incredibly diverse we have a lot of different takes on you know what is and what is not politically valuable And so it's for this reason that the Texas legislature mandates that you will take classes in Texas politics. Now be damned if the day ever comes when you show up on... You know, some video on the internet or on late night talk show and they're asking you a question about politics and you say, I don't know, and Dr. Dillard never told me that.

I consider it a sacred duty that you succeed in this class. I consider what I do to have incredible value because, if you hadn't noticed, politics is an extremely contentious business. It brings out the absolute worst in people.

And the only contribution that I can physically make towards making our country a better place is to make better citizens and to make better voters. That is why we take this class. I will see you guys in person on Friday.

Transcript for:Understanding Texas Political Culture and Government

Transcript for:
Understanding Texas Political Culture and Government