[jonascord]

"Whether that's going to be satisfactory to everyone. I doubt it.

Translation: As long as it is politically correct, what does truth have to do with it?

[Burr5]

Not to sound like a peacenik here, but the truth does matter. The hicks in the nacent Texan Republic were on Mexican soil. They refused to accept Mexican authority and started the war in 1835. Their great contribution to geopolitical history, apart from the fact that John Wayne was one of them, seems to have been an unremitting insistence on the perpetuation of slavery. Which Mexico didn't practice, BTW. The outcome, of course, was that the U.S. annexed Texas in 1846, starting the deeply unpopular Mexican-American War. The significance of all this is a mixed bag. On the down-side we got stuck with LBJ and Ann Richards. On the up-side we got Dubya. But if Opie wants to tell the true story of these Texans (i.e., that they weren't fighting for any particularly just cause, or that they weren't even Americans) cut him some slack. I always prefer real history to the John Wayne version. Flame away!