Tuesday, November 10, 2009
Lessons learned
It is raining in earnest. Griffin, too. I am sitting here at 5:20, watching "King of the Hill". Hank tried to get a reinactment of the battle of the Alamo for the benefit of Bobby and the rest of the students at Tom Landry Middle School. Unfortunately, everyone had their own idea of history. As Hank said, he had been taught that the men who died at the Alamo were there to try to gain freedom for the Texicans from Mexico. I suppose it is debatable as to the value of their motivations. Many of them had left their homes and places of business back east to find a new life in Texas. Many of them had left behind failures and troubles in their past. But they died at the Alamo trying to keep a more numerous force of Mexicans from reaching the rest of the Texicans before they were ready to defend themselves. It was a futile effort. In light of the end result and the odds of their attempt to stop a more numerous force of better trained and armed army from Mexico, it did show bravery to stand up to the Mexican army. Bravery is not always smart or the more prudent act. It is true, however, that their actions kept the Mexicans at bay long enough for Sam Houston to organize his troops and find a place where they could defend themselves and win the day. The winners write the history. That is true. And there are parts of the story which don't support the truth of the telling. But the importance of the story is not lost over time. The bravery of the acts don't disappear with the years. We need to know and recognize their sacrifice, even if the motivations for their actions was flawed. The story needs to stay in the books. And retained in our memories.
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