PA Bill Number: HB2235
Title: Providing for regulation of the meat packing and food processing industry by creating facility health and safety committees in the workplace; ...
Description: Providing for regulation of the meat packing and food processing industry by creating facility health and safety committees in the workplace; ... ...
Last Action: Referred to LABOR AND INDUSTRY
Last Action Date: Apr 25, 2024
NPR Reporter Told to Come and Take It When He Scolds Texans for Misusing Famous Battle Cry :: 10/07/2016
A reporter for National Public Radio has stepped into a bit of a political cow patty since taking Texans to task over what he says is misusing the battle cry: "Come and Take It."
The slogan "Come and Take It" is being used in all kinds of ways right now.
It's shown on political t-shirts and banners...even by pro-choice protesters featuring a Texas longhorn uterus:
It's alluded to by the Come and Wash It Laundromat:
The phrase and the cannon symbol are so ubiquitous that you'll find them in bars:
In museums:
Image Credit: Wikipedia
And in street art:
It has even been given the Yoda treatment:
Every year, Gonzales, Texas, celebrates the Battle of Gonzales, the first battle in the War of Independence from Mexico:
Of course, there's "Come and Take It" swag:
The history of the now-controversial symbol is rather interesting.
A piece of a white wedding dress was used originally to make the famous flag featuring the bronze cannon:
Image Credit: Wikipedia
The War of Independence began after the Mexican government withdrew representation, dissolved the constitution, and cracked down on the rights of the people living in part of what we now know as Texas.
Previously, the Mexican government had given the "Texians," as they were called, a cannon to fend off the hostile tribes. But the Mexican president demanded it back after the Texians grew angry and rebellious over their rights and representation being cut off.
You can guess what the rebels told their Mexican overlords. The Texians dared them to "come and take it."
NPR reporter John Burnett, who wrote a piece critical of the way the phrase and symbol were being used, reports that the phrase was seen during the American Revolution in the state of Georgia. He noted his concern about Second Amendment rights activists now incorrectly using the imagery to make their point.
Image Credit: Erich Schlegel/Getty Images
As he reported:
"The 'Come and Take It' flag — even without an assault-style rifle — is enjoying a surge in popularity in the current political climate.
...Allen Barnes, the Gonzales city manager, is particularly exasperated with Second Amendment activists who have adopted the historic slogan and substituted an AR-15 semiautomatic rifle for the cannon. 'To me that completely changes the tone and the message of the flag,' Barnes says. 'That's no longer our flag. That is a flag created by other folks.
The people of Gonzales, Texas, urge anyone who wants to borrow their famous battle cry to at least take the time to learn the real history of 'Come and Take It.'"
And that's where reporter for The Federalist John Daniel Davidson took issue with the NPR story.
In an article entitled, "NPR Reporter Has No Idea What 'Come And Take It' Means," Davidson urged the government-funded radio reporter to follow his own advice and find out what the battle cry means:
"They are blissfully unaware that 'Come and Take It' is a quote from King Leonidas I of Sparta. At the Battle of Thermopylae in 480 BC, during the second Persian invasion of Greece, Leonidas replied to Xerxes’s demand that the Greeks surrender their arms, 'molon labe' — come and take them."
The 300 Spartans held off the invading 300,000-plus Persians for three days in a last stand.
Richard Gabriel, author of "Empires at War," called that final defensive stand "the battle that determined the course of Western Civilization and the fate of democracy. The defining clash between east and west."
The Federalist noted that the NPR reporter neglected to mention that the rights of the people had been stolen by the Mexican government, which is why, as the reporter says, "they grew restive":
"The Texian settlers had 'grown restive' because Mexican President Antonio López de Santa Anna had overturned the 1824 constitution of the Republic of Mexico, dismissed state legislatures, and disbanded militias. The Texians were restive because the terms under which they had come to Texas—at Mexico’s invitation—had been revoked. A tyrant had seized power, usurped their rights, and they were prepared to defend their lives and property as their forefathers had during the American Revolution.
All this goes unmentioned in NPR’s telling. Instead, the article says 'Come and Take It' is a phrase with a narrow historical context, and it’s been co-opted by gun rights activists who are too dumb to understand its nuanced meaning."
But as Davidson points out, the people knew tyrants when they saw them, whether they were Persian kings, British redcoats, Mexican presidents, or modern day politicians:
"It’s bad enough that NPR and the few anti-gun folks their reporter found in Gonzales are wholly ignorant of this history. That alone is a sad commentary on the state of general education in America today. But those Texian pioneers knew something more than history; they knew a tyrant when they saw one, and they knew that unalienable rights are sometimes only secured at the business end of a cannon—or a spear, or rifle."
It seems that the people have spoken by using the battle cry.
And if NPR and others "want it back," they'll just have to "Come And Take It."
