That’s Right Nate

Eric Clapton’s song Layla is a very key piece of rock and roll history.   Clapton had written that song to George Harrison’s wife Patty.   In fact, Eric Clapton was eventually successful in getting her to leave the Beatle guitarist for him.  It was a tribute to the two guitarists’ friendship, the  free love of the 1960s, or heavy drug use that the 2 men remained very good friends.   I would have hated to be in Eric Clapton’s position.   When you convince somebody to leave their happily married life you now have a ton of responsibility you wouldn’t normally have in a relationship.   When you tell somebody that you have a once in a life time love and that even the bonds of matrimony shouldn’t hold you apart, it makes it tough to leave her alone the following Saturday to go drinking with your buddies.

There was a big rally in Austin of nearly 200 Texas secessionists yesterday.   These secessionists are sometimes called tenthers because they  believe that everything from Social Security to Medicare to the federal highway system violates the Tenth Amendment. According to the petition, Texas officials must either “immediately move for the restoration of the complete and unadulterated Sovereignty of Texas, explicitly adhering to the 10th Amendment wording of the U.S. Constitution,” or “move immediately for complete Secession from the United States of America.”

I hate to see Texas go, but like all conservatives I am very concerned with following the original intent of our founding fathers regardless of how contradictory it can be at times.   This brings us back to that Eric Claption, George, and Patty Harrison love triangle.

When Thomas Jefferson made the Louisiana Purchase, he had actually sent Robert Livingston and James Monroe to buy New Orleans and West Florida from Napoleon for up to $10 million.   At first, the French weren’t interested, but after losing Haiti and needing money to pay for costly European wars, the French agreed to sell the entirety of the Louisiana Purchase to the Americans for $15 million.  The problem is, this is not what Thomas Jefferson had wanted.   In fact, he was pretty sure he couldn’t do it constitutionally because the Constitution said nothing about a President having the power to buy new land.   In the end, he tried to make the deal as a treaty to get around the Constitution.

When Texas first joined the Union, we made the kind of promises to Texas that Eric Clapton had made to Patty Harrison.   We told Texas that they should be with us and we wouldn’t free their slaves or make them convert to Catholicism like the Mexicans would.   Now at first the United States refused to allow Texas into the Union, but Texas was crafty.  Sam Houston threatened to ally itself with England and the US didn’t think they had a choice.  In many ways, this is analogous to a woman pretending to be pregnant to get you to marry her.   Frankly, our whole relationship with Texas has been based on that kind of deception.   It is clearly time to let Texas go and in fact the really infuriating thing is you know Texas is the type of state that will eventually start calling us and bothering us to take it back when as a country we are ready to move on with our own lives.

Like Eric Claption, we made promises to Texas, but at the time we didn’t reallize we were being played.   Texas has always been a playa and Texas will continue to be one.  The moral of the story is that when you see how a state or territory treats the country its with, it is a very good indication of how it will treat you.   We can still buy our oil from Texas and as they’re trying to replace science with the Bible I am pretty sure there are a lot of things they’ll need to buy from us.   In fact, for every 88 cents that Texas sends to the United States government, it gets $1 worth of services back.  In the end we will be money ahead by letting them go.  Maybe they’ll go back to Mexico.  This was never going to be a long term relationship and unfortunately, it’s gone on way too long.

I started to make a video montage that I hoped would convince Texas to stay in the union.  I had that catchy Against All Odds song by Phil Collins cued up and was all set to make the ultimate sappy video of the great times we’ve had together, but then it hit me like a ton of bricks.  When one partner keeps threatening to leave, it isn’t a healthy relationship. It is called emotional blackmail.  Even though it pains me to say it, perhaps it is time for the United States to secede from Texas.  This video captured my feelings at the moment.  It really isn’t the warm and sappy video I had intended, but maybe it is the video I needed to make.  What really hurts is the one person who would probably understand how I’m feeling is Dr. Phil and he’s a Texan.