Essays From West of 98: On Being Texan

Reflections on pride, patriotism, and roots, for Texas Independence Day

I continue to pick up new clicks and new subscribers from my letter to new Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins, so if you are new to this Substack, welcome! Historically, I write on or near Texas Independence Day about that topic, but this year, it’s less of a recitation of history and more of a reflection on my life and a changing Texas. Is there something you’d like me to write about or address in a future essay? Let me know!

One of Texas’ first flags used during the revolutionary period in 1836

There’s a certain cultural pride that comes with being a Texan. I’m not telling you anything that you don’t already know, whether you are a Texan or you have merely encountered Texans in the wild. I’m writing this on March 2, 2025, Texas Independence Day. 189 years ago today, 60 men affixed their names to a document that declared Texas’s independence from Mexico. I have written about this momentous occasion in the past, from what the Declaration itself meant to the powerful inspiration of flawed heroes. Today, I am taking a slightly different turn.

Pride in place is important to me. I suspect that is obvious whether you are a new reader or you’ve been around a while. My pride in place extends from the global—in my appreciation for stewarding the entirety of Creation—down to the very local, such that I identify myself on social media as a “Stamford, Texas propagandist,” which is both accurate and perhaps an understatement. Over the last few years, though, I have considered the distinctions that come with that type of pride, in particular the difference between patriotism and nationalism. These words are interconnected and the differences might often seem blurry at first impression, but they are very, very different.

In his 2022 book, “The Need to Be Whole,” Wendell Berry tackled the distinction between patriotism and nationalism at some length. Berry quotes author and historian John Lukacs, who distinguished patriotism as defensive and nationalism as aggressive. Lukacs wrote, “patriotism is rooted to the land, to a particular country, while nationalism is connected to the myth of a people…”¹ Lukacs wrote that patriotism was not a substitute for religion, but nationalism often is, as “it may fill the emotional—at least superficially spiritual—needs of people.” In a sense, patriotism is based on the real and nationalism is based on the abstract. Why does that matter, you ask? Isn’t it good for people to have strong feelings associated with their place, no matter how they are rooted?

It depends, I guess you could say. Patriotism is typically viewed more favorably than pure nationalism. Patriotism is hardly without flaws, and an obsessed patriotism can become dangerous if not channeled properly, but patriotism’s inherent connection to place is a healthy tether. Patriotism without that tether is not actually patriotism. It is nationalism. There are plenty of outlets on the internet and in history books where you can read about the dangers of unbridled nationalism, so I won’t spend my time there today. Instead, I am thinking of the anodyne version, which is a hollow, jingoistic fervor that elicits exuberance without any real meaning behind it, cheering on something for the mere sake of its existence. Alas, so much Texas pride can devolve from a healthy, rooted patriotism into hollow, meaningless jingoism. I have engaged in it myself. I’ve shouted at people on the internet about the moral superiority of Texas chili (among other things) and what has it gained, really? Other than reinforcing the notion that Texas cultural “pride” is better described as “arrogance”? I’d say not much.

Arguably the most famous description of Texas and her peoples comes from someone decidedly not a Texan, the great Californian John Steinbeck. In “Travels With Charley: In Search of America,” Steinbeck famously described the Lone Star State:

Texas is a state of mind. Texas is an obsession. Above all, Texas is a nation in every sense of the word.²

This quote appears all over the internet. It has been used by politicians and Texas marketers. I feel certain that more than a handful of Texans have gotten it tattooed on their body.³ It is a quote that I dearly love myself. But it exemplifies the distinction of patriotism and nationalism. A place-rooted Texan feels that statement to their bones and channels it into how they view their community, their neighbors, and every aspect of their life as a Texan. But without that rootedness, merely reciting that quote to boast about Texas for its own sake is a very hollow celebration. Texas is not an obsession because it is an obsession. Texas is an obsession because of the people and places that make it special.

Texas is rapidly changing and growing. Your mileage may vary as to whether that is good or bad. Truthfully, it is a little of both and the balance of the two depends on your perspective. The state population has grown by double digit percentages in every census conducted in Texas since the first one in 1850. The population neared 30 million in the 2020 Census and has since crossed over that threshold. The population of Texas is now over 80% urban. The state has the second largest urban population (trailing only California), but it also has the largest rural population by a significant margin. Five of the twelve largest cities in America are in Texas. These cities and their sprawling suburbs are the center of Texas culture, politics, and power, whether rural denizens such as myself like it or not. In 1968, Larry McMurtry wrote a book called “In a Narrow Grave: Essays on Texas,” and he described Texas as:

“at that stage of metamorphosis when it is most fertile with conflict, when rural and soil traditions are competing most desperately with urban traditions—competing for the allegiance of the young. The city will win, of course, but its victory won’t be cheap—the country traditions were very strong. As the cowboys gradually leave the range and learn to accommodate themselves to the suburbs, defeats that are tragic in quality must occur and may be recorded.”

If I may extend McMurtry’s illustration, the cowboy leaving the range for the suburb is the moment where the line between patriotism and nationalism gets blurry, and thus, the danger sets in. No longer defined by his place, which was often a place unique to his life or generationally important to his people, he has been cast into a new place. New places take time to build roots, assuming the new places are conducive to roots (in some cases, thanks to “upward mobility,” they are not).

A decade after McMurtry published that fine book, the great country songwriter Ed Bruce wrote a tune called “The Last Cowboy Song.” He made it a hit in his own name with a guest appearance from Willie Nelson and then it became part of a legendary album by Willie, Waylon Jennings, Johnny Cash, and Kris Kristofferson, billing themselves The Highwaymen. It is a beautiful but depressing song. Bruce tells of the cowboy straddling McMurtry’s line between range and suburb, but the range is fading away:

He rides a feed lot, clerks in a market

On weekends sellin' tobacco and beer

And his dreams of tomorrow, surrounded by fences

But he'll dream tonight of when fences weren't here.

The cowboy in that song is struggling to hold on to a world where his love is connected to a real place. As Bruce recites in the final, spoken-word verse (or Johnny Cash in the version recorded by The Highwaymen), the Chisholm Trail has been paved over with concrete and the trail drive replaced by fifty-foot cattle trucks. The cowboy life was then (and is now) something of an abstract notion to too many people who care about it.

My ancestors have been in Texas a long time. We have not been here as long as some, but we’ve been here longer than most. My great-great-grandfather Thomas Decker arrived in Haskell County from Arkansas in 1906. Another great-great-grandfather, “Uncle Mike” Perry moved to Haskell County in 1889, but he was born in Panola County, Texas in 1856 and his own father J.W. Perry came to Texas from Alabama sometime shortly before that. Not all of my family has had a love for genealogy and family history. There can be burdens associated with family histories. Some of my ancestors held the view that what you do with your own name is more important to your life than what was bequeathed to you in that name, for good or bad. That opinion has a good point, but I have found value in the heritage while also striving to make my own mark on the family legacy.

My last grandparent passed away in the spring of 2024. Nanette Perry was my maternal grandmother. She had a deep love for genealogy herself and she catalogued the family trees for her family and my grandfather Don Perry’s family many years ago. Genealogy research was about 95% of her motivation for learning to use the internet. I found her work to be extremely interesting and I talked with her about it at length on more than a few occasions. After my grandmother passed, my mother found a box that my grandmother had intended as a gift to me, but it was never given for some unknown reason that is now lost to the ages. It was a compilation of genealogy and family history for my father’s family, every branch of it, from my generation all the way back to the 17th century in England and Germany. It was an extraordinary, shocking gift. It is something that deserves more writing in the future, but I have resisted the urge to fully dive into each and every page, lest I disappear from society for six months. All of the people who comprised both sides of my family converged in Haskell and Knox Counties in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The Adams, Decker, Perry, and Weaver families shaped me through my parents and grandparents, but so did the many generations before that: people named Sargent, Throneberry, Dinsmore, Stewart, and so many more.

As I reflect on Texas Independence Day, I am less concerned with Texas jingoism than I used to be. There are many beautiful things about Texas that I love, but my youthful exuberance has been replaced by some modicum of wisdom. I am wary of the hollow celebration of Texas for its own sake, which often gets mixed up into a brand of Yee Haw Politics performed by politicians (or aspiring ones) who are just a little too eager to prove that they’re as big a Texan as you are.

My passion for Texas is a patriotism rooted in place. I love it for the people, the passions, and the dreams that led my own people to these Rolling Plains as sharecroppers, ranchers, bakers, carpenters, school teachers, and more. I am here because they came here, stayed here, and rooted themselves here. No one in my family had lived in Stamford until 1986, when my parents received an opportunity to move 37 miles south from Munday. They launched the next chapter of our family’s life in Texas. Today, Lauren and I are writing our own chapter with our children. It will go into the long line of history in my family, to say nothing of her own.

Being a rural Texan in 2025 is ever more peculiar. McMurtry was right in 1968. The city won. The cowboy departed the range for the suburbs and others followed, often as a matter of economic necessity. Few have returned, at least not permanently. Texas is now a very urban state, but it still clings to its rural roots. We see it in music, food, sport, attire, interior design, vehicle selection, and more. And that’s fine. I hope that a few will search for the meaning behind those roots and seek life in authentic rural places. Some have. Many more would like to. I choose not to call rural Texans a “dying breed,” even if that might be the easiest turn of phrase, because that suggests a sort of determinism that rural Texas must eventually fade away. I refuse to accept that. Texas may grow more urban and its metropolitan areas may sprawl even farther afield, but rural Texas will not die anytime soon.

Rural Texas and its people will persevere on. This is the Texas that I love. This is the Texas that my people settled and in which they sunk their roots for good, bad, bountiful crops, dust storms and droughts, and more. This Texas—a pride rooted in land and in place—is the Texas that I celebrate today on Texas Independence Day. It is the Texas that I fight for each and every day.

James Decker is the Mayor of Stamford, Texas and the creator of the West of 98 website and the “Rural Church and State” and “West of 98” podcasts. Contact James and subscribe to these essays at westof98.substack.com and subscribe to him wherever podcasts are found. Check out the West of 98 Bookstore with book lists for essential reads here.

1. This quote comes from Lukacs’ “Democracy and Populism,” a book that I have not read but which seems worthy of adding to my ever-growing pile to read.

2. There is another famous Steinbeck quote about Texas in the book. It is much larger and similarly themed to the quote above, but they are different quotes and both are worth sharing: “I have said that Texas is a state of mind, but I think it is more than that. It is a mystique closely approximating a religion. And this is true to the extent that people either passionately love Texas or passionately hate it and, as in other religions, few people dare to inspect it for fear of losing their bearings in mystery or paradox. But I think there will be little quarrel with my feeling that Texas is one thing. For all its enormous range of space, climate, and physical appearance, and for all the internal squabbles, contentions, and strivings, Texas has a tight cohesiveness perhaps stronger than any other section of America. Rich, poor, Panhandle, Gulf, city, country, Texas is the obsession, the proper study, and the passionate possession of all Texans.”

3. If you are a reader who HAS done this, or if you know someone who has, please, I must know.