A Little Known American Civil War

I once worked for a university located in Texas and I noticed that my co-workers took pride in being Texan and had a spirit of independence. Brexit made perfect sense to them. Unlike the English who are expected to apologise abjectly and relentlessly to foreigners for their history and society by masochistic Anglophobes on the Left, Texans make no apology at all and celebrate their culture and land. I remember a pastor from Dallas telling me without a hint of irony that he was convinced that the Garden of Eden had been in Texas. I did not have the heart to reply that Texas was therefore the place where sin began. Texas’ flag is distinguished by a single star in contrast to the national flag’s fifty stars. That single star seems to symbolise Texas’ willingness to go it alone. It seems as if Texas is saying to the rest of the Union, yes, we are part of you, but we do not need you and think yourselves lucky you have us. If there is any state that would defy the federal government, it is Texas, and so it has come to be over insane levels of illegal migration into Texas.  

According to US Government data, 6 million migrants have crossed illegally from Mexico into America since 2021. As Texas shares a 2000 km long border with Mexico, many of those migrants come into the US via Texas. To picture the magnitude of such migration, it is equivalent to the population of Denmark.   

Understandably, Texas has pleaded for the federal government to help with its migration crisis but there has been no response. The Texan governor, Greg Abbott, has therefore taken matters into his own hands and has ordered his state’s national guardsmen to set up razor wire at the border. That did draw a response from central government which has condemned the tactic as harsh and has ordered the federal Border Patrol to cut the wire at Eagle Pass. The US Supreme Court has sided with Washington by decreeing that the border is a federal responsibility, not a state one.   

Texas, however, is defiant. Abbott has publicly declared that the federal government has broken its contract with Texas by refusing to defend its border and therefore Texas has the constitutional right to defend it. On Abbott’s orders, the Texan National Guard restored the cut wire. Fellow Republican governors have applauded Abbott’s actions, and the Republican speaker of the House of Representatives has pledged the support of the House’s majority.

President Biden has not responded to this challenge to his authority. He is no doubt aware that according to recent polls, voters regard migration levels as the most important national problem. There is even evidence that up to 50% of Democrat voters want tougher border policies. Biden’s approval ratings generally are very poor, and he faces a re-election campaign most likely against Donald Trump who will make illegal migration once more a major campaigning issue. If Biden clamps down on Texas, he risks making himself more unpopular.

If Biden were to act, he could invoke the very rarely used Insurrection Act to federalise Texas’ National Guard which means it would come exclusively under his authority. There is no guarantee that the use of the Act would pacify Texan defiance. A state that has the Battle of the Alamo (1836) as one of its founding narratives is unlikely to cave in to a bumbling progressive like Biden when it comes to Texan territorial and cultural integrity. 

Where this civil ‘war’ will go next is anyone’s guess, although it could explode nationally if the Republican governors who have promised their support for Abbott choose to send their national guardsmen to Texas to help seal off the border.

What is certain is that the Texas-Washington stand-off is a stern warning to Britain and West Europe’s liberal elites who have encouraged mass migration and have ignored their populations’ discontent over this. Those who are complacent about the numbers entering the West must learn that preserving national and local identities and protecting public services from being overwhelmed by a sudden influx of foreigners are what their populations increasingly want. As the election of right-wing leaders in Italy and Holland and the large protests in Dublin over the Irish Government’s migration policy have shown, the little people, who unlike the elites bear the brunt of mass immigration’s effects on their localities and infrastructure, have run out of patience and are making their opinions known at the ballot box and on the streets.  

Peter Harris is the author of two books, The Rage Against the Light: Why Christopher Hitchens Was Wrong (2019) and Do You Believe It? A Guide to a Reasonable Christian Faith (2020).

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