When Prosperity Becomes a Curse: The Fall of Texas

The Great Flipping of Texas is a story as old as time—literally.

Rather than consult sociological data to understand the last election, people would do well to read about the fate of the Israelites. Their kingdom grew large and powerful, often through God’s favor and adhering to a strong moral code. But then they grew proud, vain, and soft, eventually collapsing under the weight of their own mediocrity and foolishness.

Similarly, Texas was a state that grew large and powerful due to certain advantages (i.e., being insanely large, having vast reserves of oil, and enjoying a long coastline on the Gulf of America) and upholding a strong Christian moral code. While other states drove away employers with high taxes, myriad regulations, political corruption, and woke stupidity, Texas welcomed them by ensuring the opposite. While other states allowed their cities to be consumed with crime, homelessness, and urban decay, Texas usually contained these problems and encouraged the development of wholesome middle-class neighborhoods.

Because so much of this happened under Republican leadership, Texans continued voting Republican for more than three decades. This allowed the state to grow by leaps and bounds, with new residents flocking to the state to find work, buy an affordable home, and enjoy life under sane leadership and friendly neighbors. True, compared to other places, Texas lacked much history or high culture and somehow retained its slow-talking provincialism, but no one really seemed to mind this too much.

However, in the past few years, Texans became discontented. Much of this had to do with the endless growth that the state kept experiencing. New construction was omnipresent: new residential subdivisions, new roads and highways, new schools, new strip malls, new offices, and new facilities. Traffic was constant, with rush hours extending into most of the day (lunch traffic, after-school traffic, football game traffic, Christmas shopping traffic, etc.), stores and restaurants always being crowded, and schools constantly adding portables to their campuses to accommodate the never-ending influx of more students. Growth fatigue became a real problem in many parts of the state.

At the same time, Texas natives were regularly forced to adjust to an influx of newcomers from a wide variety of backgrounds. Even for the most welcoming Texans, this was becoming a strain. It was becoming apparent that Texan culture was disappearing. And even if this change didn’t always threaten the material well-being of Texans, it felt demoralizing and disorienting.

This was why the infamous tweet by Railroad Commission candidate Bo French showing a picture of Indian students cheering at a University of Texas football game resonated so much. It reminded Texans of the massive wave of South Asians settling in Texas and noticeably altering the character of many suburbs, almost all within the span of a decade. It wasn’t who they were—most of them are wonderful, hardworking people—but what their rapid arrival and integration symbolized. It was all too much, too fast, and an indication that the Texas of old was long gone.

Then again, there was one material consequence of so many new arrivals: housing prices and accompanying property taxes both skyrocketed. The surge in demand led to people’s homes soaring in value. Although older Texans who owned property probably saw this as a good thing, younger Texans wanting to move out of their parents’ houses desperately sought respite.

Nevertheless, it’s important to recognize that the combination of Biden’s open-border policies and dysfunctional blue states facilitated this migration just as much as Texas Republicans’ pro-business accommodation. And in the past several months, the housing bubble is finally starting to deflate, helped by Trump closing the border, deporting illegal immigrants, and reforming the H-1B visa system.

With all that said, these growing pains felt by Texans never justified the full-on revolt that happened last week. On the whole, Texas was thriving and doing far better than most states. Even if its leadership could have done more to prioritize Texans over newcomers, it was already doing a great job keeping the economy humming, the government solvent, and the streets clean and orderly.

But this evidently wasn’t enough for the majority of Texans. More out of restlessness and vibes than anything else, they voted for politicians committed to raising taxes, imposing woke nonsense, hindering law enforcement, and facilitating ever more migration. Despite having little experience and offering precisely zero actual solutions to the challenges Texans are facing, they still seemed better than their Republican opponents, all of whom had proven records of success.

At best, this new leadership will be too incompetent and vain to implement serious changes. If so, Texans can carry on as before, busily assimilating newcomers, building up infrastructure for new businesses, and dominating in sports. Meanwhile, their new Democratic governor and House majority will sit back, relax, and make some TikTok videos.

At worst, the Democrats will make a huge mess of things and create more problems. As writer Chris Bray recently reported, this seems like the likelier outcome, with members of the Texas House of Representatives having pre-filed a slate of far-left legislation: “They hate guns, they adore transgender everything, they very much want to trans kids, they want more illegal immigrants, they want much more abortion, and they want a much bigger welfare state.” Added to this will likely be increased scrutiny of Elon Musk and other billionaires who made the mistake of thinking Texas was a safe place to do business.

Whatever happens, it’s clear that Texans must learn the hard way not to take their conservatism for granted. If they thought Gov. Greg Abbott and the Texas GOP did too little, they will learn just how much worse it can get when politicians do too much. We had a good thing going.

Those of us who foresaw all this and ardently encouraged people to vote for the GOP in this last election will have to cultivate the Christian virtues of faith, hope, and love within ourselves. We must have faith that Texans will learn from their mistakes and that God has not abandoned the Lone Star State. We must hope that Texas survives the incoming leadership and dumb policies. And we must love our neighbors who needlessly erred in their vote as well as our enemies who will test the limits of our patience for the next two years.