Why We Won’t Drop the Word Nationalist: A Midweek Coffee Talk on Identity, Process, and the Long Game

Daniel Miller opened this midweek coffee talk by handing the hour over to the audience, and the questions ran straight at the hard parts of the argument. The throughline was identity. When a longtime member wrote in to say the left has done a good job vilifying the word nationalist and asked whether the movement should rename itself, Miller refused. The name was chosen deliberately during the two years of work before the TNM launched in 2005, and it says exactly what it means. A Texas nationalist is someone who believes in their nation, that nation happens to be called Texas, and they believe in its independence. If people are afraid of the word, he argued, that is their problem to wrestle with, not a reason to abandon who you are.

Much of the night was spent sharpening the vocabulary of the cause. Miller drew a hard line between TEXIT the vote and TEXIT the process, insisting that independence is a state of being and the referendum is only one milestone on a path that began in November 2005. He made the same careful distinction on secession, arguing that because Texas never surrendered its sovereign character under Article 1, Section 1 of its constitution, withdrawing from the union is no more a secession than Britain leaving the EU or the United States walking away from NATO. The right of self-determination, he stressed, is not a Texas-only privilege. It belongs to every state, which is why he is happy to resource and encourage independence movements elsewhere without ever voting in someone else’s referendum for them.

The practical questions got practical answers. On federal benefits, Miller pushed back on a supporter who wanted that argument dropped, clarifying that the movement only ever points to existing policy on earned federal pensions and that sanctioning Texas would punish Washington far more than a state that already overpays into the union. On the rural-urban divide and the lack of an electoral college, he pointed to the 31 senate districts and the counties Texas already has rather than carving the state into pieces. Along the way he revisited the 1846 annexation fight, Abraham Lincoln’s opposition to admitting Texas, and the deserters who nearly cost the revolution, with a reminder that the people who quit at the first sign of pressure are not the ones who finish the job.

Questions answered in this episode

• Should the TNM change its name now that the word nationalist is being weaponized against it?
• Is TEXIT the same thing as the independence vote, or is it something larger, and will it happen in our lifetime?
• How do you explain that TEXIT is not secession?
• Would Texas independence spur other states to follow, and will the TNM support movements outside Texas?
• Should continued federal benefits really be a main talking point, given no one can guarantee them?
• Without an electoral college, won’t candidates for president of the republic just campaign in Houston, Dallas, and San Antonio?
• How many Texas state representatives are actually on board with the movement?
• Would the TNM back a measure barring anyone who voted to stay in the union from holding office in an independent Texas?
• Texas was its own nation for nine years. Who pushed to make it a state, and on what grounds?
• Should local governments and counties pass their own formal TEXIT resolutions?
• Whatever happened to the man who no-showed that first 1996 meeting after his employer threatened his job?
• And the lighthearted one: how can you drink coffee this close to bedtime?