Deep in the Heart

Cowboy politics is in. When George W. Bush announced a new American policy of preemptive attack against potential enemies in 2002, he ushered in the triumph of Texas values over the American agenda. This book traces the fascinating influence of the Texas warrior culture from the Alamo to the present day. This is not a history of Texas, yet much of the state's history is entwined with American national politics. McEnteer locates such diverse phenomena as Cold War politics, the Kennedy assassination, U.S.-Mexican immigration policies, Texas death penalty practices, and our recent Middle East policy in the context of this Alamo attitude. While the Texan influence has always been strong, and has ebbed and flowed, it has never been stronger than now, especially as a guiding force in American foreign policy. Today, people around the world perceive this swaggering, Manifest Destiny style in our foreign policy. Texas is unique in American politics due to its size, its border wars with Mexico, its ten-year history as an independent republic, and its settlement by a warrior culture, which originated in the English-Scottish borderlands and arrived via the southern Appalachians. McEnteer does not assert that Texas is the sole force behind the policies and violent events that have dramatically affected the United States in recent years. Instead, he demonstrates that the Texas warrior culture provides a compelling context for national politics in a way that no other state's political culture has.