re: How does TEXIT avoid losing our independence vote like Scotland did in 2014?

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Can you draw some parallels to Texas? Not so much language but demographics?

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Great question—one I believe would take days to answer.

Ultimately Texas does have a very unique culture that’s remained relatively uniform (ideologically) since we originally joined the Union. We’re not the North. We’re not the Deep South. We’re not Western or even Southwestern. We’re Texan. The TEXIT movement articulates that fact in its mission: The people of Texas constitute a distinct nation by every definition of the word, with a distinct culture, economy and system of governance. Texas should always be politically self-governing, culturally distinct, and economically independent.

Most Texans believe government activity should be encouraged only to the extent that it creates opportunity for individual achievement. This individualistic nature likely has to do with the enormous swath of land we encompass (many people lived—and still do—far from others), along with our history—a lone cowboy riding the range, accountable only to himself. Even a segment of Texas Democrats holds on to this belief.

Individualism makes Texas hostile towards government activity, especially government interference in the economy. Government is expected to stay out of people's affairs; when it does get involved, it should be controlled locally. Government should spend little and tax little—if at all. Individual businesspeople should control their own fate and the economy. Most Texans see the government as a barrier against individual competition.

One need only look at the differences in success between Texas Hispanics and California Hispanics (an entire thread unto itself) to see the impact this has had. Hispanic Texans are afforded the benefits of a state with dynamic economic growth and small government. To say that California’s government plays an expansive role in people’s lives is to severely understate the situation.

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In both states, nonwhite Hispanics make up the same percentage of the population: about 38 percent. And both are “majority-minority” states, where no one group has an outright majority. In California, Hispanics became the largest group earlier this year. Texas has not yet reached what people refer to as “the tipping point.”

Famously, both California and Texas were settled by Spain and were briefly part of Mexico after its independence from Madrid in 1821. People can be forgiven, therefore, if they see the Hispanic population of both states as monoliths. But there the similarities end.

The pre-existing Mexican populations in the two states were very different. Texas’ was large, estimated between 15 percent and 25 percent of the population of the new state. We’re talking possibly as many as 50,000 so-called Tejanos.

By contrast, California’s Mexican population was small when Mexico ceded the state — maybe around 10,000 when it entered the Union in 1850. These “Californios” were swiftly overwhelmed by the hundreds of thousands who flocked to the state starting with the Gold Rush of 1848.

As Joshua Treviño, vice president for communications at the Texas Public Policy Foundation and a proud multigenerational Texan, told me for my book: “California Hispanics have a very tenuous thread to the past. I lived in California for several years and cannot remember a single time when someone said to me, ‘Oh, I’m a descendant of one of the original Californians.’ They’re all recent imports, going back at most to the 1920s.”

These roots have helped a great deal to deepen Texas’ culture of self-help, small government, low regulation, patriotism and entrepreneurship among the state’s large Hispanic population. At the other end stands California’s model of large transfer payments, putting significant portions of the population on the dole, and more divisive identity politics.

The results are bare for everyone to see. All in all, they make the Lone Star State a golden one for Hispanics.

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For Hispanics, the Lone Star State beats the Golden one - Dallas News