Our Texas Governor recently made an outrageously incorrect statement: "When we came into the union in 1845, one of the issues was that we would be able to leave if we decided to do that." Texas schoolchildren could tell you that no such deal was made; the real deal permitted Texas to self-divide into as many as five states. (The contemplated effect would have been that four new slave states were created if the northern territories turned free.)

Why have we heard this line from our Governor, last elected with a 39 percent plurality? Why would he expose himself to ridicule from all but the most extreme in a state where only 41 percent of recently Gallup-surveyed voters are willing to self-identify as members of his party? The reason is the most extreme slice of Texas will determine whether Perry wins his party's nomination for Governor next March in a hotly contested primary. He must get through the primary in order to stand a chance in a general election in what is now a "majority-minority" state. He must somehow rouse his dwindling base, and has apparently determined that inflammatory, unpatriotic language will suffice.

The Governor continued to say, "[I]f Washington continues to thumb their nose at the American people, who knows what may come of that?" That secessionist comment came after Perry implied that Texas hero Sam Houston's resistance to "oppression" supported the extremist notions of the current Governor. He forgets why General Houston - Commander in Chief and hero of San Jacinto, first President of the Republic of Texas, first Senator from Texas, and Texas Governor - is revered as a "Profile in Courage." Houston described his "wisest and most patriotic vote" as his 1854 vote against repeal of the Missouri Compromise and therefore against reopening of the extension of slavery, in order "to harmonize and preserve this Union." Houston's last act as Governor was his opposition to secession, his refusal to take the Confederate oath and his declaration that he was "stricken down because I will not yield those principles which I have fought for.... The severest pang is that the blow comes in the name of the state of Texas."

Please understand Texans' shame at the current Governor's race-baiting, code words of secession, the twisting of our history, and the mangling of the reputation of our supremely patriotic Sam Houston for whom, in the words of John F. Kennedy, "the Union was his guiding star."