In February 1836, Mexico’s “liberal” president, Gen. Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna, having two years earlier imposed a dictatorship and nullified his country’s constitution, marched his army against Texas, then part of the Mexican state of Coahuila y Tejas. In large part, the casus belli originated with a disagreement about immigration.
Santa Anna’s destination was Miśion San Antonio de Valero—the fortress-church known as The Alamo, named for the Mexican Army’s Second Flying Company of San Carlos de Alamo de Parras, which had arrived at the presidio on December 29, 1802, to guard against immigration from the United States.
Civilian disarmament being a precursor of tyranny throughout history, in October 1835, with revolution against Santa Anna in the air, the Alamo Company was sent to Gonzales, roughly 80 miles east of San Antonio, to confiscate the town’s cannon. The town prepared for the company’s arrival with their now-famous flag:
History repeats itself. Two thousand fifteen years earlier, at Thermopylae, in response to invading Persian King Xerxes’ demand that the Greeks surrender their weapons, Spartan King Leonidas had replied “Molon labe”—“Come and take them.” And in 1788, during the American Revolution, Americans replied “Come and take it” to the British demand for the surrender of Fort Morris, in Georgia. Whether the people of Gonzales knew history or came up with their flag by coincidence, we may never know.
With the same foolishness that inspired a few South Carolinians to fire a cannon at Ft. Sumter in 1861, provoking the United States to invade the Confederate States, the Texians opened fire upon the Alamo Company. Foolish, because the company’s soldiers had been ordered to avoid hostilities, and many of them were on the Texians’ side in their disagreement with Santa Anna. Tragically, one or two Mexican soldiers were killed. The Alamo Company retreated to San Antonio.
On October 10, Texian forces captured the Presidio Neustra Señora de Loreto de la Bahia, 60 miles south of Gonzales, near Goliad.
On the 24th, Texians under the command of Col. James Bowie skirmished with Mexican forces under Santa Anna’s brother-in-law, Gen. Martín Perfecto de Cos, at Mísion San Francisco de la Espada, a few miles down the San Antonio River from The Alamo.
On the 28th, Bowie and the Texians, reinforced by cavalry led by Lt. William Barret Travis, won a battle with Cos’ troops near Mísion Nuestra Señora de la Purísima Concepción de Acuña, upriver from Espada.
In late November, the Texians began closing in on The Alamo, and after significant fighting, Cos surrendered on December 10.
The war for Texas’ independence was on. Santa Anna arrived in San Antonio with 1,500 soldiers on February 23, 1836. The next day, now-Lt. Col. Travis, commanding Texian Army infantry and volunteer cavalry barricaded within The Alamo, wrote his now-famous letter “To the People of Texas & all Americans in the World.” It read:
“Fellow Citizens & compatriots—I am besieged, by a thousand or more of the Mexicans under Santa Anna. . . . The enemy has demanded a surrender at discretion, otherwise, the garrison are to be put to the sword. . . . I have answered the demand with a cannon shot, & our flag still waves proudly from the walls—I shall never surrender or retreat. Then, I call on you in the name of Liberty, of patriotism & every thing dear to the American character, to come to our aid, with all dispatch. . . . If this call is neglected, I am determined to sustain myself as long as possible & die like a soldier who never forgets what is due to his own honor & that of his country—Victory or Death.”
The coincidence and parallels are unmistakable
For the February 23-March 6 anniversary of the siege and final battle at The Alamo, Travis’ letter, under heavy guard, will be on display there for public viewing. Meanwhile, Texas is faced with another president-dictator who is nullifying his country’s constitution. And though Joe Biden’s crimes against his country, its constitution, and Texas, like those of Santa Anna, are many, they, like those of Santa Anna, include some that are related to immigration.
Article 2, Section 3 of the Constitution of the United States provides that the president “shall take care that the laws be faithfully executed.” Federal law requires the government to secure the border, but Biden is preventing the U.S. Border Patrol from doing so.
Article 4, Section 4 provides that “The United States . . . shall protect each (state) against invasion.” Biden is instead facilitating the invasion across our southern border, an act of treason, a crime the potential consequence of which is not limited to impeachment (possible in the House of Representatives, because it would require only a majority vote) and removal from office (impossible, because it would require a two-thirds vote in the Democrat-majority Senate).
Article 1, Section 10 provides that Texas and other states can “keep Troops” and “engage in war” if they are “actually invaded” or in “imminent danger.” Also, the Tenth Amendment reserves to the states and the people all powers not expressly granted to the federal government. Such include states’ “police powers” to enforce order in the interest of safety.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, the smartest of all candidates for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, correctly points out that if the states, in 1789, had thought that the proposed U.S. constitution would not allow them to defend themselves against invasion, they would have never ratified it. DeSantis also cites the author of the Bill of Rights in the House of Representatives, future president James Madison, in The Federalist No. 46 (1788):
“[S]hould an unwarrantable measure of the federal government be unpopular in particular States . . . the means of opposition to it are powerful and at hand. The disquietude of the people; their repugnance and, perhaps, refusal to co-operate with the officers of the Union; the frowns of the executive magistracy of the State . . . would form, in a large State, very serious impediments; and where the sentiments of several adjoining States happened to be in unison, would present obstructions which the federal government would hardly be willing to encounter. But ambitious encroachments of the federal government, on the authority of the State governments . . . . would be signals of general alarm. Every government would espouse the common cause. . . . Plans of resistance would be concerted. . . .’
“The only refuge left for those who prophesy the downfall of the State governments is the visionary supposition that the federal government may previously accumulate a military force for the projects of ambition. . . . Extravagant as the supposition is, let it however be made. Let a regular army, fully equal to the resources of the country, be formed; and let it be entirely at the devotion of the federal government; still it would not be going too far to say, that the State governments, with the people on their side, would be able to repel the danger. . . . [The federal army would be outnumbered by] citizens with arms in their hands, officered by men chosen from among themselves, fighting for their common liberties, and united and conducted by governments possessing their affections and confidence. It may well be doubted, whether a militia thus circumstanced could ever be conquered by such a proportion of regular troops.”
Election-year theater at the border
Two hundred thirty-six short years after Madison’s observation, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has sent the Texas National Guard to Eagle Pass (located on the Rio Grande River across from Piedras Negras, Mexico, roughly West Southwest from San Antonio).
There, the soldiers and state police troopers of the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) have taken control, from the U.S. Border Patrol, of a small area where illegals from around the world frequently invade Texas. To Biden’s chagrin, the Texans have emplaced concertina razor wire in the area, pretending to blunt the invasion.
In 1836, men from Alabama, Arkansas, Connecticut, Georgia, Illinois, Kentucky, Maryland, Massachusetts, Mississippi, Missouri, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, Vermont, and Virginia, as well as from Denmark, England, Germany, Ireland, and Scotland, came to join Texians and Tejanos in their defense of The Alamo.
Today, the Republican governors of 25 states have pledged to support Texas, and roughly 10 have reportedly already sent members of their National Guards to Texas in keeping with that pledge. However, despite what rabble rousers on social media sites pretend, no shoot-outs between the Border Patrol and Texas’ troops and peace officers will occur. In fact, the Border Patrol supports what Texas is doing, their gripe being that Biden has prevented them from enforcing the border themselves. The Border Patrol’s union describes the open border as a “catastrophe.”
Also, Texas DPS troopers and Border Patrol officers work together 365 days a year, and have for many years, and they aren’t going to sacrifice their relationship over the situation in Eagle Pass.
Today, Texas and the rest of America are “besieged” by Marxists
Upset because blocking the invasion interferes with their desire to make America a majority-Hispanic nation, two pipsqueak Democrat-Marxists—U.S. Reps. Joaquin Castro (whose mother was a member of La Raza Unida, a Marxist Chicano nationalist group) and Greg Casar (formerly on the Marxist-dominated city council of Austin, Texas) have called for Biden to federalize the Texas National Guard.
According to the Supreme Court’s unanimous ruling in Perpich v. Department of Defense (1990), the president can federalize the National Guard for almost any reason. However, Biden will likely not do that, especially if the National Guards of multiple states are involved. It would be a public relations nightmare.
Besides, as noted, Texas DPS troopers are also on the ground in Eagle Pass, as are soldiers of the Texas State Guard (a military force answerable to only the governor). Biden cannot federalize them, nor can he federalize Texas county and city law enforcement officers, or law enforcement officers and soldiers of other states’ purely state-level military forces (e.g., Florida State Guard).
Ultimately, what does Biden care?
Abbott’s Eagle Pass escapade is mostly for theater. Razor wire in one spot along Texas’ half of America’s 1,954-mile southern border is not thwarting the invasion. Most illegals invade somewhere other than in Eagle Pass, and those that would otherwise invade in Eagle Pass are going a short distance upriver or downriver and invading there.
Also, if Abbott were serious, he would not only be stopping the invasion everywhere along the Texas-Mexico border, he would have done it as soon as Biden opened the border in January 2021. Instead, Abbott waited until election year, possibly to audition for selection as Donald Trump’s 2024 running mate.
Furthermore, while troops and cops are in Eagle Pass for the sideshow, Abbott— a World Economic Forum acolyte who fashions himself a global leader—is in India trying to increase immigration, promoting H1-B visas at the behest of business interests who don’t care what happens to Texas or the rest of America, so long as they make money.
The numbers and reasons
During the first two years of the Biden administration, the number of illegal aliens invading our country rose 16 percent, to 16.8 million. Several million more invaded in 2023. Invaders detained by the Border Patrol over the last three months include 49 terrorism suspects. The number who invaded without being detected is unknown.
None of this is because of Biden’s “incompetence,” as claimed by countless spineless establishment/uniparty Republican politicians, leftist-sympathizing newspapers, and political gadfly staff writers for conservative websites. Instead, like everything else Biden is doing to destroy the country, it’s intentional, for three reasons.
First, the vast majority of the invaders, once they are allowed to, will vote Democrat and so will their “anchor baby” children. There are now enough illegal aliens in the country to vote Democrats into power permanently. Unless they are rounded up and deported, as promised by suspended presidential candidate Gov. Ron DeSantis and fake-promised by Trump (who deported fewer illegal aliens than Barack Obama), the country will be transformed irretrievably.
(Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., has stated that he supports Texas in its disagreement with Biden, and that if elected he would “secure the border.” However, neoliberal Republican candidate Nikki Haley, like Abbott, a World Economic Forum acolyte, wants more immigration to benefit corporate interests.)
Second, crimes and terrorism committed by illegals destabilize society, a core objective of Marxism, the ideology of Barack Obama, whose operatives give Biden his marching orders.
And third, “replacement theory” is not merely theory. The illegals are not of European descent. Democrats, including mentally ill, self-loathing “liberals” of European descent, delight in seeing this country become less White.
The battle in court
Before hearing oral arguments in the case arising from the situation in Eagle Pass, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit temporarily prohibited Biden from using the Border Patrol to remove Texas’ razor wire. Thereafter, Biden asked the Supreme Court to vacate the Fifth Circuit’s order, and, by a 5-4 vote (Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Amy Coney Barrett siding with the court’s three radical leftists), the Supreme Court agreed.
With another of his periodic attempts to remain relevant, former Congressman “Beto” O’Rourke claimed that Abbott (who defeated O’Rourke in Texas’ 2022 gubernatorial election 55%-44%) is “using the Texas (National) Guard to defy a Supreme Court ruling.” O’Rourke, who fantasized about running children over with a car, and who wrote a poem the content of which is too vulgar and perverse to bear repeating, is adored by Texas Democrats, and, as usual, is wrong. The Supreme Court didn’t order Texas to do anything. It said only that the Border Patrol can remove Texas’ razor wire, for now. And the Border Patrol isn’t doing that, because it’s more on Texas’ side than on Biden’s.
The case will go before the Fifth Circuit for oral arguments on February 7.
© 2024 Mark Overstreet