The Hill News

“Come and take it” â€" Texas flag at the Battle of Gonzales, March 1831

Rick Perry takes it back to Texas. He might run again for governor. He should. As Steve Forbes says, he's a great governor with great ideas. I'd make the case that his poor performance in the presidential race is a credit to him as a Texan and as a Texas governor. He feels uncomfortable away from home, away from Texas. It is the Jeffersonian ideal, and Perry is paragon of these earth-based, sense-of-place values. More than values. A sense of being; at one with the ancestors, at one with God, at one with one’s own place on earth and free of abstractions.
 
What Perry wanted to achieve for Texas as a Texan is unachievable for a president, and Ron Paul should take note. Because Perry and Paul are both “free-state” guys. But the freedom and autonomy they seek cannot be granted top-down like a benevolent master freeing his provincial serfs in the far provinces. They ! need to take it. Like his boots say, "Come and take it." If Texas wants it, she’s got to take it.

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