Free Liberty's Last Stand by Stephen Coonts Page B

the market, it’s our own low-skilled citizens—black, white, brown—who pay the price. People understand that, and they understand that it’s high time someone stood up for them . So sure, seal the border, cut off all trade to Mexico if necessary, and force Mexico to patrol its own borders and crush the drug trade that does even more harm to Mexico than it doesto us. Make Mexico an offer it can’t refuse. Not a single dollar, truck, railroad car, or immigrant, legal or illegal, crosses the border until Mexico cleans up its own house.”
    â€œThat might precipitate a revolution in Mexico,” Jack Hays said. “Or Mexico might declare war on us.”
    â€œAnother Mexican revolution or another Mexican-Texas war, let it come,” Nadine shot back. She had steel in her.
    Jack Hays wasn’t sure he bought all that. And yet, “We’ve been Mexico’s safety valve for a long, long time,” he admitted.
    â€œThink about it,” Nadine said, and finished her wine. “I’m sorry about your uncle. His was a needless, useless death. And as long as we leave that border open to drug gangs and criminals, we’ll have more needless, useless deaths. I’m going to bed. I’ve had all I can take today.”
    Jack Hays was tired too, but he sat in the silent house thinking. About his uncle. About the possibilities of a free Texas, out from under the yoke of Barry Soetoro, Washington bureaucrats, and a feckless Congress stymied by cries of racism. Was freedom worth all the blood it would take to reap the benefits? No one but God knew how much blood freedom would cost.
    His thoughts drifted back to the American Revolution. The revolutionaries then knew the British would fight. Great Britain had the finest navy in the world and a solid, although small, professional army. All the colonists had were farmers and a dream.
    And yet, who today would argue that the lives of American patriots killed during the revolution had been squandered? Or the lives of the Texans who fought at the Alamo and at San Jacinto? Sometimes those half-seen, fog-shrouded dreams of national destiny and the unpredictable future must be anointed with blood to make them reality. Not someone else’s blood, but yours. Or your son’s or daughter’s. Your blood is your gift to future generations.
    He was thinking of the Texans at the Alamo who knew they were doomed but fought to the last man. Then the telephone rang. He looked at the number before he answered it. A 301 area code. The Maryland suburbs of Washington, D.C. There was no one in Washington he wanted to talk to at that hour of the night. After ten rings the phone fell silent.
    Perhaps he should think of independence as a maneuver, not an end in itself. The name of the game is bettering the lot of your constituents. Nadine was right: in politics there is always an end game. You say you want A, the opposition offers E or F, and all of you settle for C. Or B or D. Something in the middle. The real problem, as Jack Hays saw it from Austin, was that Barry Soetoro refused to settle for anything less than the whole enchilada, everything he wanted, which in a democratic republic is simply impossible. He was the prophet, the messiah, and he was driving a stake through the heart of the Great Republic.
    Jack Hays was a good working politician. All he wanted was to move the needle in his direction. He well knew that every political question is not black or white, but some shade of gray. He still believed that most Americans were well-meaning people, not ideological crazies, and that compromise was possible.
    The telephone rang again. He looked at the number and saw that it was the state director of the Department of Public Safety, Colonel Frank Tenney. The man wanted to talk about the riot in Houston. Hays listened carefully, grunted twice, said yes three times, then hung up.
    After he finished his drink, he turned off the lights in the living room and