New Braunfels taxpayers need to understand that we’re being used.

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In the City’s most recent accounting, approximately $43 million in outstanding debt relates to EDC activities. Some of that debt has funded speculative land deals that wound up as subsidies to favored real estate developments. And if the EDC has its way, a lot more debt will be piled up doing similar deals.

City officials have repeatedly emphasized that all such debt is paid from sales-tax revenues flowing into the New Braunfels Economic Development Corporation, including sales taxes generated by visitors and tourists.

That’s the plan. But it’s not the whole story. Paid from sales taxes isn’t the same as secured only by sales taxes.

The City of New Braunfels is the obligor on this debt, not the EDC. The City’s full faith and credit stands behind the obligation. It’s not limited to sales taxes expected from tourists. It includes the City’s full taxing authority, including its property-tax base.

That part hasn’t been explained candidly enough.

A simple analogy may help. Suppose you borrow money and tell the bank you expect to make the monthly payments from your salary. That doesn’t mean the bank has recourse only to your paycheck. If you lose your job and your salary goes away, the lender still has a claim against you. Your savings. The equity in your house and cars. They’re all fair game to repay a debt you owe.

The same principle applies here. The EDC’s sales-tax revenues may be the expected source of repayment. But if the City is legally responsible for the debt, the obligation doesn’t disappear if those revenues prove insufficient.

We property taxpayers may never be asked to make a debt-service payment. But we are nevertheless providing something of value: our collective credit. That credit allows the EDC to borrow a lot more money – and more cheaply – than it could on the strength of its own revenues and assets.

Access to a stronger organization’s creditworthiness has real value. The market assesses the difference between a borrower standing on its own and one supported by a stronger guarantor, and prices it in. Like when your dad co-signed your first car note.

So, what do New Braunfels property taxpayers receive in return for providing valuable credit support? Not a direct ownership interest. Not a guaranteed return. Not a claim on the assets being financed. Not even a fee for the value of the credit support we’re providing.

We’ve been subsidizing the subsidizers.

But charging the EDC a fee wouldn’t solve the underlying problem. It still leaves us all standing behind the EDC’s investments. The EDC would still have access to the City’s stronger credit. It could still borrow more money, and more cheaply, than its own credit would justify.

The answer isn’t to negotiate a market price for our guarantee. The answer is to stop providing the guarantee. There are well-established municipal-finance instruments that would allow the EDC to borrow against its own revenues and pledged assets. They have been used in other Texas communities.

Opponents will protest that such financing may cost the EDC significantly more than getting “Dad” to guarantee the note.

Good! That’s precisely the point. The higher cost of capital would impose real discipline on the EDC’s borrowing and investment decisions, limiting its ability to leverage itself beyond what it can prudently support.

Insiders will also complain about the fact that stand-alone borrowing would bring the complication of more outside scrutiny.

Also good! That kind of scrutiny is badly needed. To establish and maintain its own creditworthiness, the EDC would need to provide detailed financial information to independent auditors, rating agencies, underwriters and investors. Its revenues, reserves, debt levels, financial policies and investments would face examination beyond the cozy confines of a city council of non-financial volunteers.

If City Council believes a project is important enough to the entire city to commit the full faith and credit of the City, then let it make that decision openly, and explain why all New Braunfels taxpayers should assume that obligation.

But the EDC is different. If its board wants to borrow money for its next subsidized project, let it. What it shouldn’t receive is access to the credit of New Braunfels property taxpayers. That should be reserved for the basics of municipal government: public safety, good roads, clean parks, and timely trash pickup.

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The EDC has its own dedicated source of revenue: a stream of sales tax dollars. So here is a simple question: Why should the EDC be allowed to leverage the City of New Braunfels, and ultimately its property taxpayers, in order to borrow more money?

Going forward, the EDC should be made to finance itself on a stand-alone basis. It can issue Sales Tax Revenue Bonds, borrowing against the EDC’s own sales-tax revenues. It can pool projects and assets, manage its own balance sheet, and borrow to finance its activities. But its debts would stop there. Property taxpayers would no longer be on the hook for the EDC’s activities.

Yes, that may mean higher borrowing costs.

That is precisely the point. If the EDC is forced to use a hurdle rate consistent with its true cost of capital, it will, or at least should, be more disciplined in its activities.

And yes, that will also mean real constraints on the EDC’s ability to borrow and invest taxpayer dollars in speculative real estate projects.

That is also precisely the point. The EDC should live within the borrowing capacity of the revenue stream specifically dedicated to it, rather than using the City’s credit and property taxpayers as a backstop.

This idea is nothing new. In Texas alone, Mansfield, Pasadena, Rockwall and Round Rock have issued Sales Tax Revenue Bonds secured by EDC revenues rather than the general credit of their cities.

Those bonds come with market discipline. The EDC must establish its own creditworthiness. It will undoubtedly receive a lower credit rating than the City, pay a higher interest rate, be forced to maintain reserves, satisfy debt-service coverage requirements, and open its financial books to the scrutiny of rating agencies and investors. That means answering uncomfortable questions about revenues, debt, spending policies and the assets being acquired.

It will almost certainly require an annual audit of the EDC on a stand-alone basis, meaning outside auditors will be looking at EDC contracts, financial policies and operations in a far more detailed way than is currently done.

Those are precisely the kind of capital-markets disciplines that are currently lacking at the NBEDC.

City leaders who favor ever more growth, funded with ever more taxpayer leverage, won’t like this. Of course they won’t like it. All the more reason for citizens to demand it.

Sales taxes are taxes. The EDC has its own. Let it stand on its own credit worthiness. No more free-ride on the backs of property taxpayers.

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True humility, however, is not the absence of ambition; it is the presence of an expansive capacity to see others, even when the world is screaming at you to look only at yourself. A story from a Saturday morning in November 2011 offers a remarkable illustration of that idea.

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To the sports world, that day belonged to a singular narrative. ESPN’s College GameDay had descended upon Palo Alto, where Andrew Luck, the quarterback for the #3-ranked Stanford Cardinal, was preparing for a monumental, top-ten showdown against the #6 Oregon Ducks. Andrew was an athlete whose generational greatness was already anticipated to impact heavily on the NFL, perched securely at the very top of the college football pyramid. The day’s stakes were as high as amateur athletics allow: a path to the National Championship, a berth in the Rose Bowl, and the apex of a high-pressure Heisman Trophy campaign.

For virtually any human being trapped in that crucible, the universe would understandably shrink to the boundaries of the locker room. Self-preservation would demand total concentration on the task immediately ahead. But the fame-game has a curious way of creating secondary characters.

Half a continent away in Indiana, a young man named Will, who had spent his entire college career at DePauw University as a backup quarterback, had been thrust into the starting lineup for the final stretch of his senior year because of injuries to others. He was preparing to play in the Monon Bell Classic, a fierce and historic Division III rivalry, monumental to those who play in it but largely invisible to the broader football world.

Will had spent much of his football life in the shadows. Years earlier, at Stratford High School in Houston, he had been Andrew Luck’s backup quarterback. He then went on to DePauw, continuing to play the game he loved despite years of sitting behind other quarterbacks. There was dignity in that journey. There was perseverance in it. It was an odyssey.

And there was something else: camaraderie. For many athletes, that may be the part of sports that matters most, the friendships formed in locker rooms, the fun times, the pranks and inside jokes, and the shared suffering. It’s a peculiar bond that develops among people who have spent years pursuing something that matters deeply to them, even when nobody else is watching.

But the sports-media machine wasn’t particularly interested in that story.

The Indianapolis Colts were enduring a dismal NFL season that fans had dubbed the “Suck for Luck” campaign, and an Indianapolis Star writer decided to interview Will. The connection was obvious: here was a young quarterback who had once been Andrew Luck’s backup and could offer firsthand insight into the player who had undisputedly become the most coveted quarterback in America.

That was an understandable journalistic decision. The problem wasn’t that the reporter wanted to talk to Will about Andrew. The problem was what the fame-game did to Will once Andrew became the subject. The article’s lead-in noted that while Will was half a continent away from Luck in miles, he was “light-years away in talent”. And the story spent most of its attention on the question everyone wanted Will to answer: What kind of quarterback and person was Andrew Luck, and what would the Colts be getting if they drafted him?

Will’s own story became largely incidental.

The article stung Will deeply. It wasn’t simply the “light-years” line, although that certainly hurt. It was the reduction of his own football odyssey to a footnote in somebody else’s story. Here was a young man playing the biggest game of his life, after years of patiently working his way through depth charts, enduring the disappointment of being a backup, and continuing to play because he loved the game and the camaraderie. And yes, he shared the burning desire felt by all DePauw Tigers to beat Wabash. Now, on the day before the biggest game of his life, all of that had been pushed aside, and Will was being defined almost entirely by the fact that he had once backed up Andrew Luck.

That doesn’t make the reporter a villain. The article was simply a symptom of the fame-game. When one person becomes enormously important, everyone around him can become interesting only insofar as they provide a connection to him. The reporter was following the gravitational pull of the story. The irony is that Andrew himself was about to do something completely different.

Hours before kickoff, Will’s phone rang. It was Andrew.

Andrew had no idea yesterday’s newspaper article existed, nor how effusively Will had praised him in it. He was famously uninterested in reading his own press clippings, much less keeping up with the sports pages of the Midwest. He had no idea that the article had stung his old teammate. And Will wasn’t Andrew’s best friend. They were former teammates whose lives had moved in very different directions. They were friends, but there was no deep, familial obligation requiring Andrew to make that call.

Yet he did.

He found a quiet moment in the middle of the circus surrounding one of the biggest games of his college career, stepped away from the cameras and reporters and the deafening noise surrounding his own destiny, and called an old teammate simply to wish him well. He knew what the Monon Bell meant. He had empathy for the unique anxiety of a backup suddenly being asked to step into the fire, because he had seen Will do exactly that at Stratford. They talked about football, they talked about the game ahead, and they wished each other luck.

It was a small thing, a phone call between two young men who had once shared a football field. But the contrast was striking. The fame-game had pulled everyone’s attention toward Andrew Luck. The newspaper reporter had done what sports reporters are trained to do: find the connection to the star, then use that connection to tell the larger story.

Andrew himself did something entirely different.

While the professional writer was looking at Will through the lens of Andrew’s fame, Andrew looked at Will through the lens of their shared experience. The reporter saw a useful connection to a star. Andrew saw an old teammate whose own moment mattered, too.

From the standpoint of utility, the phone call made no sense. It did not help Stanford beat Oregon. It did not improve Andrew’s draft stock. It did not gain him any Heisman votes. It wasn’t going to make SportsCenter. It was an act entirely devoid of transactional value.

And that’s precisely why it matters.

The quality behind it might be called others-centeredness.

Others-centeredness isn’t self-denial. It doesn’t require anyone to abandon ambition, ignore personal responsibilities or pretend that one’s own life doesn’t matter. It’s something subtler: the capacity to remain genuinely interested in the lives of other people when one’s own life has become so large that the world gives every excuse to stop seeing them.

That may be the true test of humility. When a person’s own world expands to a global scale, can the capacity to value the smaller, anonymous worlds of the people around him remain intact?

Andrew was standing at the summit of the college football world that morning. Will was playing his biggest game at a small Division III university in Indiana. Andrew could have looked down from that mountain and never noticed. Instead, he reached back across the miles and the years, not because Will could help him, not because anyone was watching, and not because there was anything in it for him. He did it because he remembered a friend.

Writing about virtue is a dangerous exercise. The act of praising goodness can easily become an attempt to associate oneself with it. But some actions are so quietly illustrative of what it means to be a decent human being that they deserve to be remembered. They remind us that moral character isn’t always found in grand public statements of philosophy. Sometimes it’s found in small choices made when the world puts someone in the spotlight and gives every reason to look only at oneself.

Sometimes greatness is simply the ability to look away from the spotlight long enough to see someone else’s need.

Author’s Note: The young man named Will in this story is my son. I wasn’t present for the phone call; Will told me about it afterward. What I did witness was how deeply the newspaper article had stung him. And as a father, I wished the article would have shown Will’s own story as being worthy of a bit more respect.

I share this not to center our family in Andrew’s orbit, but because hearing about that phone call, and seeing what it meant to Will, illustrated beautifully what genuine humility can look like in practice.

For the record, both DePauw and Stanford lost their big games that day.

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That says less about the Court than it does about Americans’ misunderstanding of it.

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I don’t doubt the sincerity of those responses. But I do question whether Americans are judging the Court by the right standard. And, as always, we must consider where most Americans are getting their information.

Our political coverage has become relentlessly conflict-centric, and Donald Trump has been the central character in that conflict for nearly a decade. Love him or hate him, he generates headlines. As a result, even institutions that are not inherently political are increasingly covered through a political lens. It makes for better TV to frame things in a pro/con Trump argument than to explain the machinations of constitutional law.

The Court, on the other hand, is only a player in the drama when his actions – or those of his harshest opponents – pose constitutional questions.

Most of us consume Supreme Court news through the same lens we use for Congress and the White House. Every major decision is reported as a victory for Republicans or Democrats. Headlines proclaim that conservatives “handed Trump a win” or liberals “suffered a defeat.” Before long, we begin to think of the Court as simply another political institution.

But it isn’t.

Congress decides what policies the country should adopt. The president executes the laws duly passed by Congress, and as a unitary executive has the strongest bully-pulpit.

But the Supreme Court exists to answer a different question entirely: Does the Constitution permit those policies?

That distinction is easy to forget because the media has little incentive to remind us of it. Conflict drives ratings. Consensus does not. There is an argument to be made that the Age of Trump has resulted in a dumbed-down electorate. Or, perhaps more to the point, the acceleration of a pre-existing dumbing-down trend.

But facts are stubborn things. Nearly half of the Court’s decisions are unanimous. Many more are decided 7-2 or 8-1. Those cases rarely become headlines because there is no political drama to report. Instead, the media focuses on the controversial cases each year that divide the justices. Imagine judging an entire baseball season by watching only the disputed calls in the ninth inning. You would conclude that umpires spend every game arguing. In reality, you simply weren’t shown the other 250 pitches.

Even the controversial cases often tell a more nuanced story than the headlines suggest.

Consider this year’s tariff case. The popular narrative was simple: President Trump sought broad authority to impose tariffs, and the Supreme Court pushed back. But the more interesting story was who joined the opinion. Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for a six-justice majority that included all three Democratic appointees, along with Justices Neil Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett.

That is neither a Republican nor a Democratic coalition.

It is a legal coalition formed around a particular interpretation of a federal statute and the limits Congress placed on presidential authority.

Those shifting alliances are far more common than most Americans realize. Justice Gorsuch has authored opinions joined by Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson. In another recent case, Gorsuch and Jackson found themselves together in dissent, while Sotomayor and Kagan joined the majority. Such combinations make zero sense if the justices are simply voting as Republicans and Democrats. They make perfect sense if nine intelligent lawyers are applying different judicial philosophies to different legal questions.

That doesn’t mean ideology plays no role. Judges are human beings. Their experiences and interpretive philosophies inevitably shape how they approach difficult constitutional questions.

But there is a world of difference between having a judicial philosophy and acting as a partisan politician.

The current Court reflects that distinction quite well. Some justices emphasize constitutional text and original public meaning. Others give greater weight to precedent or evolving standards of scrutiny. Still others focus more on the practical outcome that a ruling might create. The debates are real, often vigorous, and occasionally produce sharp dissents. Yet the Court repeatedly demonstrates a willingness to disappoint both political parties when the law points in that direction.

That is exactly what an independent judiciary is supposed to do.

Americans should absolutely scrutinize the Supreme Court. Healthy skepticism is a virtue in a constitutional republic. But our criticism should be based on the quality of the Court’s legal reasoning, not on whether our preferred political team won the latest case.

The Framers never intended the judiciary to mirror public opinion. They designed it to preserve constitutional government when public opinion becomes most passionate.

If the Supreme Court occasionally frustrates Republicans, Democrats, presidents, activists, and editorial boards alike, that may not be evidence that it has failed.

It may be evidence that it is succeeding in defending the Constitution.

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“If you get elected, why should we trust you any more than any other politician?”

My answer caught him by surprise: “You absolutely shouldn’t.”

That wasn’t false modesty. Nor was it cynicism. It was my understanding of the American system of government.

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The Framers of our Constitution did not build a republic on trust. They built it on accountability. They divided authority. They put limits on power. They established checks and balances. Most importantly, they preserved the people’s authority to question their leaders and, when necessary, replace them.

James Madison famously observed that if men were angels, no government would be necessary. Because we are not angels, neither are those who hold public office. Some are capable of wisdom and integrity; but all are capable of ambition, self-interest, and the natural tendency to believe they know what’s best for everyone else. Some, as we have seen, are capable of worse.

That’s why liberty requires more than good intentions. It requires vigilant citizens.

This principle is easy to embrace when we’re talking about Washington. Majorities of Americans distrust politicians of both major parties, and want them to be scrutinized. We expect journalists to investigate. We demand transparency. The media delivers adversarial pushback.

Curiously, we often suspend that instinct when it comes to local government.

Perhaps it’s because city politics gets relatively little media attention. We won’t hear about it on talk radio, see it on cable TV, or read about it in the major newspapers. It gets some coverage in our local paper, but if we want real engagement, we have to go looking for it on local blogs or social media. It’s not “in the air” like it is with national issues.

Or perhaps it’s because city officials are often our neighbors. We might know them from church, civic organizations, or Little League. Many are genuinely good people. That familiarity can create an understandable tendency to extend trust where we should instead extend respectful skepticism.

New Braunfels is entering a different political era.

For many years, our small town government operated with relatively little organized opposition. Today in our now-larger city, major decisions are receiving closer examination. Votes are more often contested. Citizens are asking harder questions. Meetings are longer. Debates are sharper, and sometimes more shrill. Depending on your temperament, all of that may seem exasperating or invigorating.

I don’t particularly enjoy overheated political rhetoric. Personal attacks and manufactured outrage rarely persuade anyone, and public discourse is healthier when we remember that those with whom we disagree are still our neighbors.

But there’s another side to this new reality: competition disciplines politics just as it disciplines markets.

Officials who know their decisions will be examined tend to explain them more carefully. Policies become stronger when challenged by informed critics. Citizens become more engaged when they realize their questions matter, and might actually affect an outcome.

What looks messy can actually be democracy working as intended.

As a libertarian, I begin with a healthy skepticism of concentrated authority. That skepticism isn’t rooted in the belief that government officials are always bad people. It’s rooted in the belief that all institutions, if left insufficiently questioned, naturally accumulate power and become less accountable over time. History teaches that lesson repeatedly.

English historian and politician Lord Acton famously wrote that “power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely”. Citizens should remember this bit of wisdom. It doesn’t only apply to kings and dictators. It also applies to those entrenched in governing roles for decades, be they presidents, governors, legislators, bureaucrats, city managers, mayors, city council members, or even civic board members and commissioners.

In a healthy free society, citizens do not fear their government. It’s really vice versa. If scrutiny makes those in power uncomfortable, that’s unfortunate. It’s also healthy.

And that isn’t automatically hostility. It’s citizenship.

Public confidence should never rest on the assumption that elected officials possess superior wisdom. Free societies flourish because millions of citizens, each with limited knowledge, collectively see more than a handful of people gathered around a dais at City Hall.

Public confidence should be earned by their willingness to answer difficult questions, to justify difficult decisions, and to welcome the scrutiny that comes with holding the public’s trust.

Some people find our city’s more competitive political environment uncomfortable. I suggest that continued complacency is far more dangerous.

Free societies are not weakened by citizens asking too many questions. They are weakened when hard questions aren’t asked.

So if someone were to ask me again whether they should trust politicians, my answer would be exactly the same.

You absolutely shouldn’t.

Instead, watch them. Question them. Hold them accountable.

That’s not a sign that our constitutional republic is failing. It’s a necessary element of its success.

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Chinese civilization teaches the value of learning, discipline, and an orderly society. Indian civilization explores humanity’s deepest philosophical and spiritual questions. Islamic civilization preserved and expanded much of the world’s scientific and mathematical knowledge during a pivotal chapter of history. The Orthodox Slavic world has given us profound literature, music, and reflections on faith and human endurance.

Our own Western civilization, which includes not only most of Europe and all of the Americas, has contributed extraordinary achievements in science, medicine, literature, commerce, and technology.

Yet I would argue that the West’s greatest contribution is the assertion that liberty belongs to every person by virtue of being created by God. And therefore, that government’s true purpose is to protect those rights, not to grant them.

That simple proposition changed the world.

From the Greek pursuit of reason, to Roman law, to the Bible’s affirmation of the inherent worth of every person, to Magna Carta, the English common law, and ultimately America’s Declaration of Independence and Constitution, Western civilization gradually developed a political philosophy unlike any the world had previously known. It drew its moral compass from the Judeo-Christian tradition while protecting both faith and government from domination by the other. It has championed a form of government that derives its just powers from the consent of the governed, making clear that our rights come from our Creator, not from kings, legislatures, or bureaucracies.

No civilization has lived up to its ideals perfectly, including our own. The West has its share of grievous sins, from slavery to persecution and conquest, and none should be excused or forgotten. And the explosion of bureaucracy in the past century has pushed back on individual liberties.

Governments can be judged by their adherence to the norms that evolve from their civilizations, but civilizations themselves should be judged by the ideals toward which they aspire.

And I’m an ardent fan of our ideals. I’m not suggesting that China should become America, or that India, the Islamic world, or Russia should abandon the traditions that have shaped them. Every civilization must ultimately choose its own path.

But those of us who inherited the Western tradition have an obligation of our own. We should never be embarrassed to preserve the civilization entrusted to us.

That conviction should also shape how we think about immigration.

America has never been defined by ancestry. Ronald Reagan famously observed that almost anyone can become an American in a way that one cannot simply become French, German, or Japanese. America is, above all, a constitutional nation.

That means our immigration system should never ask whether an applicant comes from the “right” country, race, or culture. It should ask whether that person sincerely wishes to become an American by embracing the constitutional principles that have defined this republic for nearly 250 years. Because no interview can perfectly discern a person’s intentions, that commitment should also be demonstrated during the years leading to citizenship. Citizenship is more than legal status. It is a pledge of loyalty to the Constitution and the liberties it protects.

Jesus Christ commands us to love our neighbors and to show compassion to the stranger. Every immigrant deserves to be treated with dignity because every human being bears the image of God. That commandment should shape our hearts and our conduct.

But Christ’s command to love the stranger is not a command for every nation to accept every applicant. A people also has a responsibility to preserve the constitutional order that protects liberty for future generations.

These are not contradictory obligations. They are complementary ones.

Our system can accept those who sincerely desire to become Americans, while expecting them to embrace the constitutional inheritance that has made America exceptional. And as individuals, we are called to be the Body of Christ, welcoming every immigrant whom our laws have invited to become our neighbors. That is not xenophobia. It is Christian stewardship.

Just as I want Texas to remain Texas, I want America to remain America. The civilization we inherited is now our responsibility. If we fail to preserve it, no one else will do it for us.

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Most Texans are football people. Here, Friday nights belong to our high schools, Saturdays to our universities, and Sundays to the NFL. In some circles, it’s fashionable to look down on fútbol, and on people who get excited by a match that may well end in a 0-0 draw.

Yet every four years, the rest of the world reminds us that it experiences “the beautiful game” a bit differently.

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Our benchmark is the Super Bowl, with roughly 126 million viewers. The 2022 World Cup Final drew about 1.5 billion worldwide, and this year’s final will likely attract even more. Nothing else comes close.

And that’s just the final. This World Cup is a 39-day festival spanning 104 matches in sixteen stadiums across Canada, Mexico, and the United States. Nearly seven million fans have packed those stadiums, filling every seat of every game. Imagine a month-long tournament of Super Bowls and their fan fests. That’s what the World Cup is.

Stay with me. This piece isn’t about sports.

Anyone who’s spent an autumn Saturday in Baton Rouge knows the event begins long before kickoff. Huge vats of gumbo are simmering, playful taunts are exchanged, and chants too colorful for a family newspaper start early and echo into the night.

If you show up wearing the visiting team’s colors, you’re going to hear about it – early, often and in no uncertain terms. The real question is how you respond.

If you’re defensive, let alone combative, you’re in for a long and unpleasant day.

But if you smile, laugh and give a little back, you’ll love every minute of it. Do that, and someone in purple will hand you a beer and a bowl of jambalaya, and invite you to hang out. That’s the unwritten code, and it plays out at every SEC campus.

It’s a code that also exists at the World Cup.

The best way I can describe the World Cup to a Texan is this: imagine the international spirit of the Olympics combined with the emotional intensity of SEC football.

Watching England play Mexico at Estadio Azteca was a very familiar experience to an SEC fan. The language changed, but human nature didn’t.

The chants were in Spanish, not Cajun accents. The food was tacos, not barbecue. The flags were different, but the emotions weren’t. Mexico City’s centro historico became one enormous, joyous tailgate party, except it was English and Mexican supporters singing, laughing, teasing one another, and posing for photos together.

That night, Azteca pulsed with energy. 80,000 fans, tightly packed, teased one another relentlessly. Everyone stood for the entire game. Rival chants rolled across the stands. Beer flew into the air after big moments.

If that sounds like your idea of a miserable night, you need a different hobby.

But if you embrace the moment, laugh with the people around you, and don’t take yourself too seriously, you’ll probably leave with new friends, a dozen selfies, and stories you’ll be telling years later.

That’s what strikes me most.

Not the game. The people.

The countless videos of English fans praising Mexican hospitality, and of Argentines marveling at the friendliness of Kansas City, told the same story: North America welcomed the world.

For a month, millions of visitors traveled to the US, Canada, and Mexico. Countries aren’t experienced through headlines. They’re experienced through ordinary people.

Likewise, millions of North Americans met Argentines, Aussies, Colombians, Dutch, French, Moroccans, Norwegians, Scots and many others, not as stereotypes but as fellow travelers and fellow fans. No one will forget the image of Japanese fans cleaning the stadiums in Dallas, Monterrey and Houston before departing.

Even the English fans seemed not only to be behaving themselves, but to be among the tournament’s ambassadors of good cheer.

Of course, not every moment was perfect. Passion, alcohol, and crowds occasionally produce ugliness. That’s true on SEC Saturdays, too. But what makes the tournament remarkable is how it usually brings out the best in people.

For one month, fierce rivals sang against one another, argued over controversial decisions, celebrated (or despaired over) every goal, and then walked into the same restaurants, shared the same trains, posed for photos together, and wished each other safe travels home.

Maybe there’s a lesson in that. We can compete passionately without deciding the other side is undeserving of basic courtesy and respect.

Hosting the World Cup has been a gift to North America, not simply because it filled hotels or restaurants, but because it has reminded the world who we are. For one remarkable month, we’ve shared the privilege of welcoming the world. The best ambassadors for any nation aren’t politicians or celebrities. They’re ordinary people welcoming strangers, sharing a meal, and sending visitors home wanting to one day return.

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I was getting acquainted with a new friend at New Braunfels Coffee on Main Plaza this morning when our conversation turned to the heart transplant that saved his life a little more than two years ago. I had noticed a passing reference on his Facebook page and asked about it. He was happy to tell the story, not because he enjoys talking about himself, but because he never lets the opportunity pass without encouraging someone to check the box on their driver’s license to become an organ donor. I told him I already had. He thanked me.

Then he said something I haven’t been able to stop thinking about.

“A new heart gave me a new life, so I feel I’m on a mission not to squander it.”

He went on to describe the carefully managed process through which a transplant recipient may communicate with a donor’s family. Every Christmas since his transplant, he has written a letter expressing his gratitude and assuring the family that their loved one remains in his prayers. The letters are sent through an intermediary. He has never received a reply.

I told him I hoped he would never stop writing them.

Not because the family necessarily needed to hear from him, though they very well might. Nor because he might someday receive a response, though I hope he does. I encouraged him to keep writing for a more selfish reason: gratitude changes the grateful person.

Those letters honor the memory of an unknown woman whose final gift became a man’s second chance. Whether anyone ever writes him back, the simple act of expressing thanks keeps that gift alive and new in his life.

As we talked, I told my new friend about another story, one that his experience brought to mind.

Near the end of 1943, German fighter pilot Franz Stigler caught up with a badly damaged American B-17 bomber over Germany. He could see the dead and wounded aboard. Military duty gave him every reason to finish what others had begun. Instead, he chose mercy. Rather than taking the kill shot, Stigler escorted the crippled bomber toward safety before turning away. Decades later, Stigler and the American pilot, Charlie Brown, found one another and became close friends.

The stories are separated by war, by generations, and by circumstance. Yet they are bound together by a simple truth.

In both cases, one stranger gave life to another. Not because anyone required it. Because someone chose to.

Most of life’s greatest blessings arrive in exactly the same way. They aren’t earned. They aren’t demanded. They aren’t compelled. They’re gifts.

Society needs laws. The good ones protect us from one another’s worst impulses and establish the boundaries of justice. But no law has ever been the source of our finest moments. Compliance may satisfy an obligation. Generosity begins only after obligation has ended.

The greatest blessings in life usually come because someone freely chooses to do something they didn’t have to do. A parent who sacrifices. A coach who believes. A friend who reaches out at just the right moment. A stranger whose simple act of kindness changes the course of a tough day.

Those gifts can never be repaid. Maybe they aren’t meant to be. Maybe they are meant to be passed along.

The gift of a second chance on life is extraordinary. My new friend doesn’t want to squander the gift he was given.

I don’t want to squander mine, either. So I ask myself a harder question: What unearned gift can I freely choose to give today?

If I keep asking that question, perhaps I’ll become a little quicker to notice the lonely, the hurting, the overlooked, and the forgotten. And perhaps, in some way, I can bring a blessing to someone else’s life.

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A close friend of mine recently had a decades-long friendship collapse almost overnight. There was no betrayal, no dishonesty, no sudden change in character. They simply reached the point where one’s political views became intolerable to the other. What began as disagreements over national politics soon pulled spouses and mutual friends into conflict until an entire web of relationships fractured.

Unfortunately, this is a familiar story across America. Circles of friends, even families, are breaking up.

Author David French recently captured the problem perfectly on the Advisory Opinions podcast:

“We’ve reached this strange point... this notion that I can only like a person or respect an institution if they always agree with me. And if they don’t – because I’m so obviously correct all the time – that’s evidence of a character flaw, or corruption, or that they’re evil.”

That observation reaches far beyond politics. It describes a culture that confuses conviction with certainty and disagreement with immorality. When we become convinced that our own views are not merely reasonable but unquestionably correct, anyone who reaches a different conclusion must, almost by definition, be ignorant, corrupt, or malicious.

The consequences are showing up everywhere.

Churches that once found unity in shared faith now struggle under political pressures from both the right and the left. In some congregations, Christian Nationalism has blurred the distinction between religious conviction and political identity. In others, progressive ideological expectations have become their own tests of belonging. Universities, businesses, civic organizations, and even extended families increasingly sort themselves according to political tribe. The particulars vary, but the underlying disease is the same: disagreement is treated as evidence of moral failure rather than honest differences in judgment.

As a result, politicized citizens are increasingly self-segregating along political lines. Many progressives would never think of moving to the South. And many conservatives would be loath to live in the Pacific Northwest. Here in Texas, the left is drawn to Austin, while the right is fleeing it.

Our national exhaustion is visible in the remarkably subdued celebration of America’s 250th birthday. Those of us who remember the Bicentennial in 1976 recall a year-long civic celebration that transcended party lines. The semiquincentennial should inspire a similar spirit of shared gratitude. Instead, it arrives with surprisingly little enthusiasm. Some wrap patriotism around their own political movement, while others refuse to participate for fear that celebration signals endorsement. Patriotism takes a back seat to partisanship, and an anniversary that should unite Americans becomes another casualty of our polarized age.

A similar dynamic occurred locally during the recent mayoral election here in New Braunfels. The disagreement wasn’t simply about growth policy, infrastructure, or development. It gradually became a referendum on identity. Were you an “insider” or an “outsider”? Did you truly belong, or were your motives suspect? Once those questions replaced policy discussions, every disagreement became evidence of hidden agendas instead of differing priorities. It gave license to insults, mockery and ridicule. It’s still going on.

That’s the true cost of certainty. It transforms ordinary policy disagreements into contests over moral legitimacy. Once we believe that only one side is acting in good faith, compromise becomes surrender, and cross-partisan friendship becomes betrayal.

The answer isn’t to stop talking about politics. Artificial silence simply allows resentment to grow while leaving public debate to angry and shrill voices. The better answer is to recover the humility to recognize that thoughtful, decent people can honestly weigh the same facts and arrive at different conclusions.

A neighbor who views immigration, taxation, public spending, crime, growth, or education through a different philosophical lens is not automatically a threat to our values. He or she may simply have different experiences, different priorities, or different assumptions about how best to achieve the same goals.

If we continue demanding complete ideological conformity from everyone around us, we’ll eventually find ourselves surrounded only by people who think exactly as we do. That may feel comfortable, but it’s neither healthy nor free. Our republican democracy was built on the humility to live with disagreement.

We can debate passionately. We can campaign vigorously. We can vote differently. What we shouldn’t do is conflate disagreement with evil. Our friendships, our churches, our civic institutions, and ultimately the Republic depend on remembering the difference.

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1. Tujague’s (The Historic Landmark)

Established in 1856 by French immigrants Guillaume and Marie Tujague, Tujague’s Restaurant stands proud as the second-oldest dining institution in New Orleans and a pillar of the French Quarter’s culinary identity. Originally opened to feed hungry Mississippi River port workers, this legendary eatery is famously credited as the global birthplace of brunch—evolving from its mid-19th-century “butcher’s breakfasts”—and the home of the iconic, mint-green Grasshopper cocktail. While it successfully relocated a few blocks upriver to a spacious, multi-story location at 429 Decatur Street in 2020, it preserved its deeply ingrained traditions and storied lore. Unlike some of its grand, ultra-formal Creole contemporaries, Tujague’s maintains a more communal, neighborhood-centric atmosphere. Its cuisine remains a masterful showcase of traditional French-Creole comfort food. Diners can opt for their expanded à la carte menu or participate in the historic five-course table d’hôte dinner.

Grasshopper: We will start with a minty, creamy green cocktail invented at this bar more than 100 years ago by owner Philip Guichet for a prestigious New York cocktail competition, where it secured a second-place finish. This vibrant, mint-green classic is expertly shaken with equal parts green crème de menthe, white crème de cacao, and fresh heavy cream, then served with a decadent splash of brandy floated on top. If you love the refreshing, creamy flavor of mint-chocolate chip ice cream, you will absolutely adore a Grasshopper cocktail! It tastes exactly like a melted, grown-up version of the classic dessert. Who said you can’t have dessert first?

Seafood Gumbo: Built on a rich shrimp stock base and features a deeply flavorful, medium-dark roux packed with the “holy trinity” of onions, celery, and green bell peppers. Rather than using okra, the kitchen thickens the broth with filé powder (ground sassafras root) before loading the pot with a premium bounty of fresh Gulf shrimp, blue claw crabmeat, oysters, and sliced smoked sausage.

Across the state, gumbo is universally considered the most important food offering in Louisiana because it serves as a delicious, edible timeline of the region’s complex cultural history. By harmoniously combining French culinary technique (roux), West African ingredients (okra), Native American seasoning (filé), and Spanish or German influences (peppers and sausage), a single bowl represents the diverse communities that built the state’s identity. You can’t go to Louisiana without having a bowl of gumbo, and Tujague’s is as good a place as any to experience it.

Snapper Orleans: “Étouffée” literally means “smothered.” It’s a sauce featuring crawfish tails simmered down in a rich, buttery, blonde roux-based sauce packed with onions, celery, and bell pepper. Served over a locally caught fillet of red snapper that is pan-seared to achieve a beautifully crisp skin while keeping the wild-caught flesh remarkably sweet, flaky, and tender. This premium catch provides the perfect canvas for a truly indulgent culinary combination, as the kitchen generously ladles a rich, buttery crawfish étouffée directly over the hot fish. Every bite allows you to seamlessly sample two Louisiana classics at once, balancing the clean, delicate flavors of the fresh snapper with the deeply savory, spiced, and seafood-forward notes of the classic étouffée sauce. This harmonious dish perfectly pairs the freshness of the Gulf with the soul-warming comfort of traditional Creole cooking.

2. Mother’s Restaurant (The Working-Man’s Feast)

Opened in 1938 by Simon and Mary “Mother” Landry, Mother’s Restaurant at 401 Poydras Street has evolved from a humble working-class cafeteria into one of the most widely recognized, down-home dining icons in New Orleans. Situated on the edge of the Central Business District, it originally fed local longshoremen, laborers, and newspapermen. Acquired in 1986 by brothers Jerry and John Amato, who doubled the menu while maintaining its strictly no-frills, counter-service atmosphere, the restaurant is universally recognized by the permanent, bustling line of locals, tourists, and politicians snaking down the sidewalk. Beyond the po-boy sandwiches, the kitchen dishes out massive portions of soul-warming favorites, including rich seafood gumbo, scratch-made jambalaya, spicy shrimp Creole, and red beans and rice enhanced by a secret addition of rich ham-trimming fat.

Ferdi Special Sandwich: The Ferdi Special at Mother’s is a legendary, mountain-sized po’ boy sandwich that stands as one of the most famous culinary creations in New Orleans. This iconic sandwich is loaded with their signature slow-cooked baked ham and tender roast beef, all piled high onto a crusty, locally baked French bread loaf. It is uniquely elevated by a generous drenching of “debris”—the intensely flavorful, gravy-soaked roast beef bits that fall to the bottom of the pan—and finished “dressed” with shredded cabbage, pickles, mayo, and yellow mustard.

Barq’s Root Beer: An essential local pairing. Barq’s was founded on the Gulf Coast and is famously sharp because it contains caffeine—unlike most other root beers—cutting perfectly through the richness and fat content of the Ferdi Special.

3. Commander’s Palace (The Pinnacle of Creole Cooking)

Originally established in 1893 by Emile Commander as a modest neighborhood saloon, Commander’s Palace at 1403 Washington Avenue has grown into the undisputed crown jewel of New Orleans fine dining. Located in the heart of the historic, tree-lined Garden District directly across from Lafayette Cemetery, this iconic Victorian-style mansion—instantly recognizable by its distinctive, striped “Commander’s Blue” exterior—became a true culinary empire after being acquired by the legendary Brennan family in 1974. It has served as a critical launching pad for American gastronomy, catapulting legendary chefs like Paul Prudhomme and Emeril Lagasse to international superstardom. Routinely in consideration for the title of best restaurant in the USA and renowned for world-class hospitality and lively jazz brunches, the restaurant sets the gold standard for high-end Haute Creole cuisine. Unlike the more casual, rustic spots downtown, dining here is a theatrical, upscale affair that seamlessly blends strict old-world traditions with avant-garde culinary creativity.

Turtle Soup: The legendary Turtle Soup at Commander’s Palace is a rich, dark masterpiece that takes a full three days to meticulously prepare from scratch. This highly complex dish features a velvety, deeply savory broth built from a rich veal stock base, abundant snap turtle meat, finely minced hard-boiled eggs, and a distinct blend of Creole spices. The true highlight of the culinary performance occurs at your table, where servers artfully swirl a generous splash of aged dry sherry directly into the steaming bowl. Widely considered the definitive benchmark for the dish across New Orleans, it remains a mandatory, non-negotiable first course for any definitive fine-dining experience in the Garden District.

Pecan Crusted Redfish: A definitive Haute Creole masterpiece that features a delicate, locally caught redfish fillet dusted with a spiced, crunchy crust of locally grown pecans. The fish is then pan-roasted and dynamically elevated by a luxurious, whiskey-spiked crushed corn cream sauce alongside Prosecco-poached Louisiana jumbo lump crabmeat, roasted corn, and grilled kale.

Bread Pudding Soufflé: Widely considered one of the single greatest desserts in America, the famous Creole Bread Pudding Soufflé at Commander’s Palace is widely celebrated as the city’s ultimate signature dessert and a triumph of New Orleans pastry arts.This theatrical masterpiece transforms a dense, rustic bread pudding into an incredibly light, airy, and puffed-up soufflé that requires guests to order it at the very beginning of their meal. (They take about an hour to make from beginning to end, and you want it delivered hot out of the oven) Right at the table, your server pierces the delicate, golden-brown crust to pour in a rich, warm, and boozy whiskey cream sauce that dramatically collapses into the center.

4. Cafe du Monde (OF COURSE We Are Going!)

Established in 1862 at the upriver edge of the historic French Market, Café du Monde at 800 serves as the ultimate open-air cultural anchor of the French Quarter. Situated directly across from Jackson Square, this timeless coffee stand—instantly recognized by its iconic green-and-white striped awning—stands as a monument to the city’s French colonial roots and vibrant, communal street life. Operating nearly 24 hours a day and closing only for Christmas or passing hurricanes, it has evolved into a mandatory rite of passage and an enduring bucket-list destination. The bustling, lively terrace occupies a unique space in New Orleans tourism, acting as a sensory-filled crossroads where late-night revelers, early-morning tourists, and local street jazz musicians all converge over small marble tables.

Café au Lait: a rich, dark-roasted coffee blend that is uniquely enhanced by roasted, ground chicory root. This historic addition—originally used by French colonists during wartime shortages—adds a distinct, bittersweet depth and a smooth, earthy body that naturally tempers the coffee’s harshness. The beverage is traditionally brewed strong and poured simultaneously with equal parts of steaming-hot, creamy whole milk to create a perfectly balanced, velvety morning ritual. Once you taste it, you are probably going to want to bring a can of this coffee home with you.

Beignets: Delectable, pillow-shaped squares of fried yeast dough that arrive at your table piping-hot and buried under a mountain of powdered sugar. Fried to order in bubbling cottonseed oil, these pastries boast a crisp, golden exterior and a wonderfully light, airy, and slightly chewy center. While copying the basic recipe seems simple, no other bakeries or restaurants can truly replicate their iconic taste, which relies on the highly specific, high-turnover freshness of their specific frying oil and the humid, salty Mississippi River air wafting through the open-air stand. This combination of local climate, massive volume, and centuries of muscle memory creates a singular pastry experience that makes every imitation pale in comparison.

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I’ve always been a collector of friends. Once someone finds a place in my life, I’m loath to let them disappear from it. I don’t expect every friendship to stay equally close. Life has a way of scattering us. But I do try to send the occasional text, make the phone call, or find time for coffee so our paths will keep crossing. That’s just the way I’m wired.

So when I think about my friends, I don’t really picture names. I picture faces … usually standing in a place where our paths once crossed. Collectively, they form the atlas of my life.

Gonzalo, for example, lives in Tampa. But not in my mind. There, he’s in Del Rio, where, after an extraordinary journey from Havana in search of the American dream, he and his wife climbed into my car with temporary asylum status for a three-hour ride to the San Antonio airport. Three years later, we’re still connected.

Ana lives with her parents in a quiet neighborhood outside of Guanajuato, Mexico. But I see her standing outside of Teatro Juarez in the bustling city center, selling cheesecake slices from a shopping cart. I’ve been there enough times now that she knows me by name.

My sixty-five high school football teammates live all over America. But I see us together in a still-shiny Astrodome. For five unforgettable weeks we battled side by side and won a state championship. Time moved on. My atlas didn’t.

Julie doesn’t belong to one page of the atlas. After four decades of marriage, she occupies entire chapters. East Dallas, where she planted flower bulbs outside my first home and somehow transformed a bachelor’s house into the beginning of a family. Birmingham, Michigan, where we buried her father and, three days later, stood before the same altar to begin our own marriage. Atop the Zugspitze in the Bavarian Alps. A quaint bed and breakfast in Christchurch, New Zealand. Graduation ceremonies in Indiana.

Hundreds of roads, restaurants, churches, hotels, and quiet moments would mean very little to anyone else, but together they form the geographic web of our lives.

The atlas works in both directions. Not only can the idea of a friend trigger a memory of a place, the opposite occurs.

If I drive by St. Luke’s Hospital in Houston, I see two newborn sons.

If I think of Buenos Aires, my mind flashes to my friend and colleague Ronnie, who was my project partner on a year’s worth of business trips to Argentina.

Hamilton, Montana and Alexandria, Louisiana invoke memories of grandparents.

And my mother... She belongs to a lifetime of memories in Dallas and Houston, long before we moved her to New Braunfels. But I already know that someday, after she’s gone, an assisted living facility on top of a hill here will become one of those places I can never drive past without seeing her again.

I suspect I’m not the only one carrying an atlas like that. Perhaps yours includes a fishing dock where your father taught you patience. A church where you were married. A classroom where a teacher changed your life. A baseball field. A neighborhood. A hospital room. A family kitchen. The places themselves aren’t what we remember. We remember the people who gave those places meaning.

One of my favorite ideas from the movie Coco is that people are never truly gone as long as someone remembers them. It’s part theology and part beautiful storytelling. I know this: every time an ordinary place quietly brings someone back to mind, a little of that person’s story continues in ours.

Lately, I’ve found myself asking a different question.

Not “Who belongs in my atlas?”

Instead, “In whose atlas do I appear?”

I can’t know for sure.

But I hope that years from now, someone will pass through an ordinary place, smile for just a moment, and remember something we shared.

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Most occupations reward the opposite. Successful attorneys attract more clients. A thriving restaurant expands to serve more customers. Top salesmen exceed their quotas. Success usually means becoming more in demand.

A few exceptions might come to mind. A consultant may claim success when an organization no longer requires outside help. A therapist hopes clients eventually stop scheduling appointments. A teacher wants students to master material well enough to move on.

Even in those professions, obsolescence isn’t the goal. Old clients are replaced by new clients.

The answer to the riddle occurred to me during a reflective Sunday afternoon.

For decades, one of my annual traditions was watching the final round of the U.S. Open golf tournament. Every June, Father’s Day and the U.S. Open arrived together. The ritual became so ingrained that my family knew to be elsewhere between 2pm and 6pm.

This year, we cut the cable, so I discovered that watching the tournament required yet another streaming subscription. In an act of consumer defiance, I decided to do without. My boycott was noble. What surprised me wasn’t missing the golf. It was what filled the void.

Without four hours of living vicariously through the world’s finest golfers being tortured by narrow fairways, deep rough, punishing wind, and terrifying downhill putts, I found myself thinking about the passage of time.

That can be dangerous. Especially at that magic age that qualifies us for Medicare.

As we age, we notice that certain holidays carry more emotional weight than they once did. Christmas is the obvious example. The large extended family gatherings no longer exist. Grandparents pass away. Fathers die. Mothers remain, but perhaps not fully present. Children establish lives hundreds of miles away.

The holiday still arrives right on schedule. The people who once defined it don’t.

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Over the years, I’ve developed ways to navigate those emotions. Gratitude, faith and perspective all help. This year, however, it wasn’t Christmas that caught me off guard. It was Father’s Day. At some point during the afternoon, I found myself thinking about my dad.

He belonged to a generation of men who rarely expressed affection in words. He was an ex-Marine, a bank president, and a football official. And like most fathers of his era, he was more comfortable demonstrating devotion than discussing it.

Later in life I began to appreciate how much effort was hidden behind his steadiness. It took me becoming a father myself to realize that most parents are improvising far more than their children suspect.

That’s when the answer to the riddle occurred to me.

Parenting. The job is to make yourself unnecessary.

For more than twenty years, parents are indispensable. We teach, advise, encourage, discipline, protect, transport, finance, and impart wisdom.

Then one day the entire objective changes. Success is no longer measured by how much your children need you, but by how little they do. The phone rings less often. Advice is requested less frequently. Problems are solved without your involvement. Their needs shift elsewhere.

If we’re not careful, we can misinterpret that. We can mistake evidence of success for evidence of failure. The better we perform the role, the less intensive the role becomes.

Perhaps that’s why Father’s Day felt different today. The day invites us to look in two directions at once. We think about the people who raised us. We think about the people we raised. We find ourselves standing in the middle of a story that began before us and, with any luck, will continue after us.

Today I understand my father differently than I did at twenty-five. Back then, I evaluated him so I could emulate him. Now I recognize the worries he carried, the sacrifices he made, and the uncertainty he felt. I suspect he spent at least a few Father’s Days wondering whether he had gotten it right.

Like most worthwhile questions in life, that one never receives a final answer.

What we do receive are clues. Two sons who call. A family that continues, even as it gathers less often. A relationship that endures even after its necessity fades.

Perhaps that’s the real performance metric. It’s not whether we are needed, it’s whether we are connected.

The goal was never to be needed forever. The goal was to prepare someone to thrive without us, while preserving a bond strong enough that they still want us around.

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No, not that Mayor Neal Linnartz was defeated in yesterday’s runoff election. That outcome had become increasingly anticipated as the campaign entered its final weeks.

The shock was the margin.

Linnartz was not merely defeated. He was defeated by approximately twenty-five points in a runoff election that drew substantially more voters than the May election. In political terms, that’s a Richter-scale event.

Michael French takes office on the shoulders of a new coalition of voters who have grown increasingly dissatisfied with the cumulative effects of decades of pro-growth policies. The resulting strains on traffic, water supplies, public safety, and infrastructure were the predictable consequences of a city that has grown by more than five percent annually since 2000, and by more than six percent annually since 2020.

Many residents moved to New Braunfels from Houston, Dallas, Austin, and beyond seeking relief from the very problems associated with large metropolitan areas. Instead, they found themselves sitting in worsening traffic, worrying about the long-term adequacy of water supplies, and discovering that New Braunfels staffs its police department well below statewide averages while higher-crime big cities continue expanding toward us.

They watched the bulldozing of nature in the Edwards Aquifer recharge zone for increasingly dense development, while city leadership failed to use available policy tools, or even its bully pulpit, to advocate restraint in environmentally sensitive areas.

They watched beloved local businesses disappear while national chains steadily replaced them.

They watched NBU seek and receive rate increases with relatively little scrutiny while simultaneously breaking ground on a new headquarters project costing approximately $180 million.

During the runoff campaign itself, they witnessed the highly publicized spill of roughly half a million gallons of untreated sewage into the Guadalupe River. For many, the symbolism was impossible to ignore. While local institutions continued assuring residents that infrastructure was keeping pace with growth, a major infrastructure failure was unfolding in plain sight.

They watched taxpayer resources directed toward projects such as Costco, Topgolf, a luxury residential development, and boutique hotels. Whether each individual project was wise or unwise became almost beside the point. Many voters concluded that City Hall’s priorities were increasingly aligned with accelerating growth rather than protecting quality of life.

They endured a botched May election that revealed the city had been operating outside constitutional requirements, followed by what many viewed as a hasty effort to unfairly pin the responsibility on a single city attorney.

Perhaps most importantly, voters increasingly came to believe that major decisions affecting New Braunfels were being shaped by overlapping circles of developers, Chamber of Commerce leaders, city staff, economic development officials, and other political insiders whose interests were not always aligned with those of the broader community. A culture of permissiveness toward conflicts of interest became increasingly difficult to ignore. Once voters began noticing it, they started seeing it everywhere.

Voters also saw something else at the end. Desperation.

They saw the city’s institutional leadership circle the wagons around a mayor whose governing style had become increasingly unpopular. They witnessed the doxing of a private citizen who dared challenge the prevailing power structure. They watched attacks on French’s military service that outraged veterans, and that many residents considered well beneath the standards of local politics.

How did that strategy work out?

The Linnartz campaign enjoyed overwhelming financial advantages. It raised and spent many times more money than the French campaign. Yet despite every institutional advantage, the political machine was ultimately hoisted by its own petard.

The very growth policies championed by the city’s establishment created an electorate that proved increasingly independent of that establishment’s influence. The irony is difficult to miss: had growth been managed more deliberately over the past quarter century, last night’s political earthquake might never have occurred.

Another irony: it could be argued that newcomers to New Braunfels expressed more concern about protecting the natural beauty of the Hill Country than did the leadership, which boasted of its long term roots in the city as a reason for their re-election.

French’s victory was not an isolated result. Nikki Shaw, another military veteran, decisively defeated Chamber-backed incumbent April Ryan for a city council seat in the same run-off. The transformation was nearly even more dramatic in May, when Chase Taylor fell just thirteen votes short of defeating incumbent Mary Ann Labowski in what remains the city’s strongest pro-Linnartz city council district.

The results suggest something much larger than dissatisfaction with a single mayor. They suggest the emergence of a new governing coalition, not organized around ideology, but around a hope for good governance.

Looking ahead, New Braunfels is likely to experience two immediate changes.

First, the tone at city council meetings will improve. Citizens can reasonably expect to be treated with civility, attentiveness, and respect when they approach the microphone. French made that commitment a centerpiece of his campaign, and it requires no council majority to implement.

Second, the public should expect more debate to occur in public view. Issues that many residents believe have historically been resolved through executive sessions, private conversations, and insider negotiations will increasingly be discussed openly. Meetings may become longer and more reliably conducted with proper rules of procedure. Deliberations may become messier. Open and even protracted debate among council members may become more the norm.

That should be viewed not as a problem, but as the price of transparency and self-government.

The larger challenges will take longer.

Applying meaningful brakes to growth will take time. So will addressing the overlapping relationships among developers, major campaign donors, economic development organizations, public boards and commissions, and elected officials that have led many citizens to question whose interests are being represented at City Hall.

Equally important, voters appear to be demanding a reordering of priorities.

For years, New Braunfels has devoted enormous energy and public resources toward recruiting commercial projects, subsidizing private developments, expanding the tax base, and accelerating economic growth. Last night’s results suggest that many citizens would prefer greater emphasis on public safety, water security, traffic relief, environmental stewardship, parkland preservation, and neighborhood quality of life.

This election was not a rejection of growth. New Braunfels will continue to grow. It was a rejection of the idea that growth itself should remain the city’s highest objective.

That distinction matters. The Chamber’s historic mission of promoting economic development helped create the prosperity that New Braunfels enjoys today. But institutions that succeed in one era must evolve to remain relevant in the next. The challenge now isn’t whether growth should continue, but whether growth can be balanced with the protection of the very qualities that attracted people to New Braunfels in the first place.

So the old leadership circle faces a choice. It can interpret these results as a temporary populist backlash and continue the confrontational politics that characterized much of this campaign. Or it can recognize that voters haven’t rejected prosperity, they simply feel it has overwhelmed what has made New Braunfels attractive. This is an enduring change. And failure to get the message won’t help them retain the city council seats they do have.

The four remaining council members elected under the previous governing consensus, Capizzi, Edwards, Spradley, and Labowski, have now heard the voters speak twice in rapid succession. They can choose to view these results as a temporary political disturbance, and resist change for another year. Or they can recognize that something fundamental has shifted in New Braunfels politics, and begin adapting to it. The tone of the next year is really more in their hands than in French’s.

Michael French’s victory may ultimately be remembered as the beginning of a new political era.

For decades, the central question facing New Braunfels was “how fast can we grow?” As of last night, the question has changed to “what kind of community do we want to become?”

The answer to that question will shape New Braunfels long after the excitement of this election has faded.

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Stacy’s Friend

The waiting room of “Bayview Obstetrics & Gynecology” smelled faintly of lavender and high-end air purifiers.

Rachel—known to an entire generation of the neighbor’s kids simply as Stacy’s Mom—sat in a plush leather chair, smoothing down her designer wrap dress. At 56, she was still an utter knockout. Her highlights were immaculate, her gym routine was religious, and she carried herself with the casual grace of a woman who knew she was the blueprint. But today, she was just a patient overdue for her annual exam, slightly annoyed that her usual physician, Dr. Gable, had retired.

“Rachel?” a nurse called out. “Dr. Miller will see you in Exam Room 3.”

Rachel stood, slung her Chanel bag over her shoulder, and followed the nurse. She hopped onto the examination table, the butcher paper crinkling loudly beneath her, and waited.

A sharp knock echoed on the door. It swung open, and in walked Dr. Chris Miller.

He was 36, tall, with sharp jawlines, a Rolex subtly peeking from beneath his white lab coat, and the exact same swagger he possessed when he was a scrawny 13-year-old mowing her lawn in cargo shorts.

Chris looked down at the chart, then looked up. The professional smile on his face froze. His eyes widened. The universe, in its infinite, hilarious wisdom, had finally delivered.

“Rachel?” Chris breathed. The re-phrasing to “Ms. Harrison” completely died before reaching his throat.

Rachel squinted at him. The boyish grin, the ridiculous, unblinking self-confidence radiating off him in waves. It took her exactly three seconds.

“Oh my God,” Rachel gasped, her hand flying to her mouth. “Chris? From down the street? Stacy’s little friend?”

“The very same,” Chris said. He didn’t look away. He didn’t even blink. He leaned against the counter, crossed his arms, and let out a low whistle. “And if I may violate every single HR policy in the medical handbook... you haven’t changed a bit. You’ve still got it going on.”

Rachel let out a loud, shocked laugh, a blush creeping up her neck. “Chris! You can’t say that to a patient. Especially not one sitting in the exam room.”

“I’m an independent practitioner, Rachel. I say what I want,” Chris said, his voice dropping an octave into a smooth, practiced baritone. He stepped closer, leaning one hand on the edge of the examination table, completely invading her personal space with the absolute certainty of a man who had waited 23 years for this moment. “I told you back then. I knew you were looking at me. I knew your marriage was over. I was just ahead of my time.”

“You were thirteen!” Rachel shrieked, though she was secretly flattered. “You used to wash my car in your underwear!”

“And it worked, didn’t it? You remember,” Chris countered, flashing a devastating, white-toothed smile. He reached over and picked up a pair of sterile latex gloves, snapping one onto his right hand with a sound that felt aggressively loaded given the context. “I told you I was cut out for better things than mowing lawns. I went to Stanford, Rachel. Top of my class. I specialize in women’s health now. I dedicated my entire life’s work to understanding women. Specifically, women like you.”

Rachel’s eyes darted from his confident smile down to the snapped latex glove. The sheer, unmitigated audacity of the boy had grown exponentially into adulthood. He wasn’t awkward. He wasn’t embarrassed. He was looking at her like he was about to conquer a mountain he’d been scoping out since middle school.

“Chris,” Rachel said, her voice trembling slightly between amusement and genuine panic. “Are you... are you hitting on me during my annual checkup?”

“Rachel, I have loved you since the summer of 2003,” Chris said, his eyes locking onto hers with terrifying, beautiful intensity. “But I’m also a professional. So here is what’s going to happen. We are going to reschedule this medical exam with my colleague, Dr. Evans, for next Tuesday.”

He ripped the latex glove off with a dramatic flair and tossed it into the biohazard bin.

“And tonight,” Chris continued, pulling a sleek black smartphone from his pocket, “I am taking you to that new French place downtown. You’re going to let me buy you a very expensive bottle of wine, and we are going to finally talk about what happens now that I’m old enough.”

Rachel stared at him, completely captivated by the monster of pure confidence she had inadvertently created more than two decades ago. She looked at the white coat, the Rolex, and the lingering glint of the horny teenager who used to stare at her through the kitchen window.

She let out a slow exhale, a wicked smile finally breaking across her face.

“You know, Chris,” Rachel said, sliding off the examination table and smoothing her dress. “Stacy always said you were an idiot.”

“Stacy never had good taste,” Chris replied, holding the door open for her with a wink.

“Clearly,” Rachel murmured, walking past him. “Pick me up at eight. And Chris? Don’t wear the cargo shorts.”

The French restaurant, L’Aube, was entirely illuminated by candlelight, which suited Rachel perfectly. She had spent nearly two hours in front of her vanity mirror, oscillating between “I am a mature, independent woman having a harmless laugh” and “I am actively participating in a psychological thriller.”

But the moment Chris sat across from her, the reluctance evaporated into pure curiosity.

He didn’t slouch. He didn’t do the nervous over-talking typical of younger men trying to impress an older woman. He simply navigated the evening with the smooth, clinical precision of a surgeon and the unwavering charm of a man who had rehearsed this night in his head for 23 years. When the sommelier arrived, Chris effortlessly ordered a vintage Bordeaux, conversing in fluent, casual French.

“Medical school elective in Paris,” Chris explained with a quick wink. “I told myself it would come in handy one day.”

As the night wore on, Rachel found herself falling. It wasn’t just that he was handsome—though the sharp jawline and the way his tailored shirt hugged his chest certainly helped. It was his absolute attentiveness. Chris understood women. Professionally, he spent his days listening to them, decoding their anatomy, and mastering the subtleties of their comfort. Socially, that translated into an almost preternatural ability to read her body language. He knew exactly when she was cold (he signaled the waiter to adjust the AC before she could ask), he knew exactly how to make her laugh, and his touch—a lingering hand on the small of her back as they left the restaurant—sent a jolt through her that she hadn’t felt in a decade.

Date one ended with a devastatingly polite, agonizingly hot kiss on her front porch. No consummation. Chris was playing the long game.

Date two, three days later at his sleek, minimalist penthouse, shattered that restraint. Rachel discovered that a man who graduated top of his class in gynecology and possessed a lifelong obsession with her was, predictably, an absolute godsend in the bedroom. It was effortless. It was worshipful.

It was also a total disaster, because by week three, Rachel realized the unthinkable: she was completely, hopelessly in love with Stacy’s childhood friend.

The morning after she admitted this to herself, Rachel sat on her living room sofa, clutching a mug of coffee with trembling hands. Her cell phone sat on the coffee table like a live grenade.

How was she going to tell Stacy? She tried to play it out in her mind, imagining her daughter’s pure, unadulterated horror. Stacy was happily married now, sure, but discovering that the neighborhood kid who broke Stacy’s heart was now dating her mother—and managing her reproductive health—would cause psychological damage that no amount of therapy could fix.

Rachel stared at the phone, completely stuck. There was no gentle way to spin this.

She imagined several different explanations, several different tactics for opening this impossible conversation with Stacy. None seemed adequate to the task.

Suddenly, a memory flashed in her mind. She remembered the early 2000s. She remembered a ridiculous, catchy pop-punk song by a one-hit wonder that all the kids used to blast in the cul-de-sac. It was a song born from the very same energy that Chris had carried with him for 23 years.

A brilliant, chaotic idea struck her. She couldn’t just say it. She had to sing it. She would let the rhythm of a campy but familiar tune break the news for her.

Rachel gripped the phone, dialed her daughter, took a deep breath, and her mezzo-soprano voice took over.

Stacy’s Friend 🎜🎝🎜🎝

[Intro]

Stacy’s friend has won me in the end

Stacy’s friend has won me in the end

[Verse 1]

Stacy, can I come over to your place?

I really need to see you face-to-face

Remember your friend Chris? He was such a trip

Well I’ve got news that’s gonna make you flip

[Pre-Chorus]

You know, he’s not the little boy that he used to be

He’s all grown up now

And he’s such a hot MD

[Chorus]

Stacy’s friend has won me in the end

He’s all I want

‘Cause he’s such a perfect ten

Stacy, hear me please

You’re just not the one he needs

I know he was your friend but Chris has won me in the end

Stacy’s friend has won me in the end

Stacy’s friend has won me in the end

[Verse 2]

Stacy, do you remember when he mowed our lawn?

Well, now he’s got a white doctor’s coat on

I could tell he liked me when he took a seat

And pretty soon we were both feelin’ the heat

[Pre-Chorus]

And I know your gonna think that I’m way out on a limb

But now he’s not your friend

He’s my OB-GYN!

[Chorus]

Stacy’s friend has won me in the end

He’s all I want

‘Cause he’s such a perfect ten

Stacy, hear me please

You’re just not the one he needs

I know he was your friend but Chris has won me in the end

[Final Chorus & Outro]

Stacy’s friend has won me in the end (He won me in the end!)

He’s all I want and he’s such a perfect ten (a perfect ten!)

Stacy, hear me please

You’re just not the one he needs

I know he was your friend but Chris has won me in the end!

Stacy’s friend has won me in the end (He’s such a perfect ten!)

He’s all I want and I’ve waited for so long (He’s my OB-GYN!)

Stacy, hear me please

You’re just not the one he needs

I know he was your friend, oh, oh (He was your friend!)

But Chris has won me in the end, oh, oh (Wait a minute!)

Stacy, hear me please

You’re just not the one he needs

I know he was your friend but Chris has won me in the end!

—---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Final heavy drum hit. Echoing feedback. The line goes dead silent as Stacy stares at her phone in absolute dismay.

A libertine seeks freedom from moral restraint. A libertarian believes adults should be legally free to make their own choices and bear the consequences. The distinction matters because it raises a larger question: How do free human beings learn to live well?

Many people assume that if something is unwise, it should be illegal. I don’t.

For example, I believe marijuana should be legal for adults. That doesn’t mean I would have tolerated its use by my teenage sons. Parents govern children differently than governments should govern adults. Children are still learning judgment. It’s not something that gets handed to them on their sixteenth birthday.

The same principle applies to adults. There are behaviors I personally consider unwise but wouldn’t criminalize. Sports betting is a good example. The explosion of gambling apps worries me. What was once an occasional trip to Las Vegas has become a casino in every pocket. I suspect we’re creating a generation of habitual gamblers. Yet concern doesn’t automatically translate into prohibition.

Why should adults be free to make bad choices at all? Because judgment is learned by exercising judgment.

Years ago, I made the mistake of drinking entirely too much tequila the night before a deep-sea fishing trip. The next day was comically miserable. I spent hours on a rolling Gulf regretting the previous evening’s decisions. Fortunately, I didn’t drive. Nobody else was harmed. The consequences fell where they belonged: on me.

The lesson stuck. Nobody had to arrest me. Nobody had to create a government program to protect me from my own stupidity. Experience was teacher enough. In fact, hangovers are better deterrents to over-consumption than prohibition ever was.

That doesn’t mean every behavior should be tolerated. A civilized society has every right to draw lines when conduct threatens others. Fraud, theft, drunk driving, and pollution all impose costs on others. As the old saying goes, your right to swing your fist ends where my nose begins.

But within those boundaries, freedom must include the freedom to make mistakes. That’s a truth we’ve become uncomfortable with in modern America. We increasingly expect institutions to remove risks, prevent failures, and cushion consequences. As parents, we often feel the same temptation.

When my sons were growing up, my wife and I found ourselves swimming against the tide of helicopter parenting. Not because we had some grand theory of child-rearing, but because we understood the larger goal. We weren’t managing children. We were raising future adults.

The question led me to Thomas Jefferson and the other Founders. They replaced subjects of a monarchy with citizens of a republic, a system that depends on ordinary people exercising judgment. Benjamin Franklin famously observed that the Constitutional Convention had given Americans “a republic, if you can keep it.”

We can’t govern ourselves collectively if we can’t govern ourselves individually.

A republic depends on citizens capable of self-government, and self-government develops through trial and error, success and failure, good decisions and bad ones. Character isn’t the absence of mistakes. It’s built through experience, accountability, and the determination to learn from them.

Character is higher than the absence of sin.

A person who has never faced risk can’t summon courage. A person who has never had the freedom to choose can’t exercise responsibility. Virtue isn’t created by removing every opportunity for failure. It’s developed by experiencing failure, learning from it, and choosing better the next time.

The libertine seeks freedom from consequences. The libertarian accepts consequences as the price of freedom. And a republic survives only when enough of its citizens do the same.

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Back home in Houston, my 1974 baby-blue Pontiac Ventura with a white vinyl top had been a perfectly respectable high school car. At SMU, it looked decidedly tacky parked among the BMWs, Mercedes, and occasional Porsches that filled the campus lots. The girls were more intentional about their looks, their clothes, and they seemed to have considerably higher expectations than the girls I had known in high school.

Academically, I wasn’t intimidated. I knew I could hold my own in the classroom. Socially was another matter.

During my first semester on the Hilltop, I spent Thursday and Friday nights attending freshman mixers and happy hours up and down Greenville Avenue, meeting people and trying to figure out where I fit. Things changed dramatically in January when I joined a fraternity. Suddenly there was structure to the social calendar. There were brothers to hang out with, parties to attend, football games to travel to, and, perhaps most importantly, a steady supply of reasons to find a date for Saturday night.

By sophomore year, the fraternity house became home. About fifty of us lived there, representing about a third of the chapter. The seniors mostly lived off campus, and the freshmen pledges were usually still in the dorms. The house itself was a large Georgian structure that matched the architecture of the university. Ivy climbed the front walls, and a baby grand piano sat in a large bay window facing the street.

It also had a smell.

To this day, every Lambda Chi from that era knows exactly what I mean by “the Lambda Smell.” No one ever identified its source. It wasn’t stale beer. The common areas were cleaned every Sunday, and the parquet floors were polished regularly. Yet the musty odor persisted. We carried it around in our clothes and probably in our cars. Years later, after entirely new wardrobes had replaced the old ones, the smell at last disappeared.

Living with fifty other guys was an education all its own. We learned which rooms were suitable for studying and which rooms would be filled with marijuana smoke. We knew who was meticulous and who lived like a pig. We shared a handful of showers, bathroom sinks and toilets, one washing machine, and one dryer. More importantly, we learned how to get along with people we never would have selected as friends in high school.

Most of the old haunts are gone now: Cardinal Puff’s, Tango, Old Church, Andrew’s, Greenville Avenue Country Club, Strictly Tabú. A few survivors remain. Campisi’s seems immortal. Snuffer’s and Milo Butterfinger’s somehow endure.

At the time, we thought we were learning how to have fun. Looking back, we were learning how to be adults.

The social world we inhabited would be unrecognizable to today’s students. The drinking age was eighteen. We had no cell phones, no social media, no GPS, and no internet. The most important technology in our lives was a decent automobile.

If you wanted to find your friends, you went and looked for them. Female companionship required dating etiquette. “Hooking up” wasn’t a thing then.

Every weekend seemed to hold the possibility of adventure. In the summers, SMU hosted a series of camps for cheerleaders, drill teams, and aspiring models. As the male students quickly discovered, the campers rotated every couple of weeks, creating a constantly renewing and impressive talent pool in need of nightlife guidance.

One summer, while I was taking classes and living in the house, I met one of the modeling campers, and she seemed interested in spending part of her brief stay in Dallas with me. There was a complication: she had an equally stunning roommate who needed a date as well. I recruited a fraternity brother as my wingman, and we arranged an evening of dinner followed by two-stepping at Cowboy.

We were convinced we had engineered one of the greatest opportunities in the history of college dating, and with a pair of 9+ specimens.

The evening got better and better as the night wore on.

And then, around 1am, reality set in. Let’s just say it ended abruptly and disappointingly from a male perspective. Yet another example of completely miscalculating the odds.

Forty years later, what strikes me is not the outcome but the process. There were no dating apps, no social media profiles, and no texting beforehand. Everything happened face-to-face. If you wanted to meet someone, you had to introduce yourself. If you wanted a date, you had to ask. If you wanted romance, you had to put in the work and accept the inevitable failures.

Life was analog. Sometimes that led to adventures of a different sort.

Before graduating, I decided I needed a sign from a Highland Park street that happened to share the name of my Houston high school. This seemed entirely reasonable to my college-aged brain.

A brother with a pickup truck agreed to assist. Around two in the morning, armed with tools and overconfidence, we launched our operation.

The plan was simple. Remove the sign and leave.

The plan failed immediately when the bolts would not budge.

Instead of removing the sign, we ended up uprooting the entire post – including two feet of buried cement – and loading all ten plus feet of it into the back of the truck before making our escape.

Today, that stunt would be recorded by security cameras, license plate readers, doorbell cameras, and cell phones. In 1982, there was only darkness and luck.

One of my sons, who later attended the same high school, now possesses the sign.

Not all of our adventures ended so successfully. One year an overzealous pledge trainer in our tight web of friends decided that a group of pledges should harvest bamboo to decorate a fraternity luau. Dressed in fatigues and carrying machetes, they set out in the middle of the night. Instead of gathering bamboo from a deserted park, they targeted the landscaping of a business in Oak Lawn.

The operation ended when a falling bamboo stalk struck a building and triggered a silent alarm. Dallas police arrived soon after to find a collection of young men dressed like commandos and armed. The arrests were made at gunpoint.

The story made the rounds on campus, but what mattered most is what happened afterward.

The fraternity didn’t abandon them. We acknowledged that what they had done was foolish. We helped make restitution. We helped pay fines. We accepted responsibility where responsibility was due. We all got punished.

Nobody pretended the behavior was acceptable. But nobody pretended the offenders were strangers either. That lesson stayed with me long after the details of the incident faded.

Football Saturdays provided their own adventures. SMU played its home games at Texas Stadium in Irving, requiring a bus ride from campus. Our buses often stopped at a convenience store on Greenville to load kegs before heading west.

More than once we spent so much time socializing, drinking beer, and flirting that we asked the driver to circle the stadium until the second quarter.

The football was excellent. During my years at SMU, we experienced the fruition of Mustang Mania and the glory days of the Pony Express. By my final year, SMU won the Southwest Conference and the Cotton Bowl.

Yet most memorable were the road trips to Austin.

Twice we upset Texas in Austin. Twice my date was a UT student I had known from high school. The celebrations afterward were epic. Austin was still a college town then, not yet transformed into the sprawling city it would become. Every trip was an adventure. Every weekend delivered great stories.

In 1980, twelve of us created this new thing called a fantasy football league. There were no computers, no internet. There was certainly no fantasy football industry. Someone had to obtain a Monday morning newspaper before dawn and manually calculate the scores. Weekly updates were handwritten and posted on a bulletin board.

Nearly half a century later, the league still exists. The twelve young men became bankers, lawyers, business owners, professors, counselors, executives, and one fellow whose profession remains something of a mystery. We have married, raised children, built careers, retired, and endured losses. Yet somehow the league survives today.

The bars we frequented are mostly gone. Texas Stadium is gone. Much of the Dallas we knew has disappeared or changed beyond recognition.

The cars, the bars, the parties, the girls and the football victories seemed terribly important at the time. Looking back, they were mostly scenery.

But the friendships remain.

When I return to campus now, nostalgia arrives in waves. The campus looks different, but the memories are still there. What I miss most is not a particular hangout, football game, or party.

I miss the feeling that every weekend held unlimited possibilities. That life was still ahead of us rather than mostly behind us. That if I handled my classes responsibly, everything else would somehow work out.

Most of all, I miss living in a world that was unscripted and unrecorded.

We had no idea we were living near the end of an era. We were simply living it.

The stories survived because we remembered them. More than forty years later we’re still telling them.

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If you scored a touchdown or recovered a fumble, you were expected to hand the ball to the referee and jog back to the sideline. No spiking the ball. No taunting. No choreography. No chest-thumping performance for the crowd.

“Act like you’ve been there before,” the coaches would say.

What they meant was this: success should be handled with dignity. Confidence needs no adulation. Character reveals itself not merely in how we endure and recover from adversity, but also in how we handle success.

Healthy communities depend upon people who live that way.

Not the celebrities. Not the influencers. Not the people constantly demanding recognition. Just ordinary citizens who quietly assume responsibility for serving others, because they were raised to believe this was simply what adults do.

Every town has them. You can probably put a name to each of these people:

The church widow. She somehow knows exactly who needs help before anyone else does. She senses which elderly man has stopped showing up after his wife died. She catalogues that a family just brought home a baby, a teenager is being bullied, or which neighbor lost his job. She organizes casseroles, rides, phone calls and prayer chains without ever turning her compassion into a public performance. Most people never notice how much loneliness she intercepts before it hardens into despair.

The storm neighbor. He may be a rancher, a contractor, a mechanic, or just a fellow with a trailer and a chainsaw. After a flood or windstorm, he simply appears. Fence down? He helps fix it. Tree through a roof? He shows up with equipment. Somebody stranded? He is already on the road. He doesn’t first ask about politics, religion, or whether helping will benefit him personally. He was simply raised to believe that if you are able to help, then you help.

The small businessman. He may own a feed store, insurance office, restaurant, plumbing company, or hardware store. He sponsors Little League teams and livestock auction projects. He quietly advances money to an employee going through a divorce. He buys meals for police and firefighters without announcing it online afterward. Most residents would never see the accumulated weight of these small acts, but the town would feel colder without them.

The perpetual volunteer. She simply shows up to help. She’s behind the counter at the concession stand on Friday night. She places flags at veterans’ graves. She delivers hot meals to elderly citizens. She donates platelets regularly. She stacks the folding chairs after everyone else has gone home. She opens her wallet to every fundraiser and buys more Girl Scout cookies than she will ever eat. The community depends heavily on her, and few outside her family and a small circle of friends even know her name.

Of course, there are many more such archetypes in every town.

None of these people are powerful in the formal sense. Most will never hold office, sit on boards, or speak regularly at microphones. Yet communities would unravel without them.

And when such people feel compelled to speak about the direction of their town, their voices deserve respect, not because of titles or resumés, but because they have invested themselves in the life of the community in ways that aren’t enshrined on the city’s official website.

A healthy town cannot be sustained by government alone. Laws, elections and leaders matter, as we have all recently seen. But the deeper strength of a community comes from ordinary citizens who quietly accept responsibility for the place and the people around them.

Old football coaches understood something that feels increasingly rare in modern America. Not every good deed requires applause. Not every accomplishment needs self-promotion. The strongest communities are built by people who serve steadily, competently and humbly.

People who act like they’ve been there before.

They won’t feel the need to be celebrated. But they should always be respected.

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Think about that number for a moment: half a million gallons of filth into the Guadalupe. A river we drink from, play in, and economically depend upon. A river that defines New Braunfels culturally, financially, and environmentally.

And yet, judging by the muted reaction from officials, we are apparently expected to treat this as little more than an unfortunate operational hiccup. “Move along. Nothing to see here.”

We should not.

This incident raises serious questions about infrastructure resilience, regulatory oversight, and whether our city’s growth has outpaced our ability to safely support it.

Infrastructure failures can happen anywhere. Storms occur. Equipment fails. To quote Forrest Gump, “It happens.”

But half a million gallons? I suspect this is close to unprecedented for New Braunfels.

And the deeper concern isn’t simply the spill itself. It’s the apparent vulnerability of critical wastewater infrastructure to a predictable storm-related power outage, especially when the utility involved is not just a wastewater operator, but also the electric utility itself.

Residents deserve answers to some important questions:

• Did the affected facility have backup generators?

• If so, did they fail? If they failed, why?

• If there were no backup generators, why not?

• How can a critical wastewater facility adjacent to the Guadalupe River lose containment because of a power interruption during a storm event forecast well in advance?

• Why did it reportedly take three hours to stop the discharge?

• And perhaps most importantly: what happens during a real flood?

Because let’s be honest: a roughly 2-inch rain event in Central Texas is not extraordinary. This is the Hill Country, one of the most flood-prone regions in America. If our systems are this vulnerable during a relatively ordinary storm event, one we all knew was coming many hours in advance, what does that say about the strain being placed on infrastructure by relentless growth?

That question matters because concerns about overdevelopment are routinely dismissed as exaggeration, obstructionism, or political hyperventilation.

Well, this week we received a very tangible reminder that those concerns may not be exaggerated at all.

This increasingly feels like a build-it-first-and-deal-with-the-infrastructure-later kind of town.

And this incident also exposes a larger structural problem in how oversight works, or doesn’t work, in New Braunfels.

NBU is not regulated by the Texas Public Utility Commission like investor-owned utilities are. Its primary oversight comes from a City Council that has every incentive to make stories like this disappear as quickly as possible.

And does anyone honestly believe this City Council is willing to conduct a truly independent, probing and public examination of what happened here?

Meanwhile, the TCEQ has long been criticized for taking a permissive approach toward environmental enforcement unless public pressure becomes impossible to ignore. That means meaningful accountability from Austin depends on citizens paying attention and asking difficult questions.

Not because anyone wants political theater. Not because anyone wants to attack NBU employees or leadership. I have met Ryan Kelso, and he strikes me as a capable and decent man trying to manage the consequences of extraordinary growth pressures and infrastructure demands. Nobody is asking for him to meet Valeria Acevedo’s fate.

But transparency matters.

If aging infrastructure can no longer safely support the pace of growth being approved in this community, then citizens deserve honesty about that reality before the next failure occurs. And if growth is outpacing infrastructure, then perhaps it’s time to reconsider how fast we are approving and enabling expansion in the first place.

This spill should not simply become yesterday’s news because it occurred inconveniently close to a municipal election.

It should be a part of the much larger public conversation about growth, infrastructure, accountability, and whether New Braunfels is expanding faster than its systems can responsibly sustain.

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I’m here tonight to discuss something less dramatic than the firing of a city attorney, but ultimately more important to the integrity of this council: procedure.

On May 11, Councilmembers Spradley and Capizzi made and seconded a motion to terminate City Attorney Valeria Acevedo. Under both Robert’s Rules of Order, which were formally adopted under New Braunfels Ordinance 2021-29, §2-36(e), and more specifically in the same ordinance, §2-38(a)(3), once a motion is properly before the body, the motion is debated until no one seeks recognition. And §2-38(c)(6) stipulates that a two-thirds majority is required to proceed to a vote while members are still seeking recognition (known as calling the previous question).

Yet Councilwomen Labowski and Ryan were rudely – and I must say, illegally, according to Ordinance 2021-29 – denied the opportunity to speak before the vote was called. This despite Ms. Labowski’s vocal protests to the contrary.

No motion to call the question was made. No second was taken. No two-thirds vote occurred to end debate.

On a seven-member council, that requires five votes. Not four. And certainly debate does not end at the unilateral discretion of the mayor.

=================================================

Now, I understand the meeting had gone long. I understand emotions were elevated. But none of that suspends the rules. Suspending the rules requires a 2/3 vote also. And nobody motioned to suspend the rules.

And candidly, this was not an inexperienced presiding officer struggling through an obscure procedural issue.

Mayor Linnartz is an attorney. He has served in this office for three years. For him to so blatantly breach procedure is hard to explain without attaching ulterior motives.

Perhaps it can be said that he was operating without a Parliamentarian – but only because he was so hell-bent on firing her.

=============================================

Most of us learned “Parliamentary Procedure 101” years ago – in civic organizations, church committees, or even college fraternities and sororities.

Once a motion is made and seconded, members THEN begin to debate the merits of the motion. If someone wishes to cut off debate, there is a specific super-majority process for doing so.

That is elementary deliberative procedure. Which makes what happened here more troubling, not less.

Why? Because the mayor was not merely an uninvolved referee presiding over somebody else’s controversy.

The underlying dispute involved the city’s handling of a politically sensitive matter, one in which the mayor was personally involved and due to which he directly benefited.

Now, perhaps reasonable people can disagree about whether that circumstance required his recusal as a matter of law. Morally, there is no question – he should have recused himself. After all, a significant effect of this vote throwing Ms. Acevedo under the bus was to cast blame away from him.

But, perhaps, he had no technical legal requirement to do so. That one is above my pay grade.

However, surely no reasonable person can dispute that the situation imposed upon the mayor an even greater obligation to conduct the proceedings with scrupulous neutrality and procedural fairness.

Instead, debate was unilaterally cut off, two council members were denied the opportunity to speak, and then the mayor cast the deciding vote.

That sequence, following Mr. Spradley’s pre-prepared statement, produced the clear appearance of a process being managed toward a predetermined outcome, in hopes of minimizing the political blow-back on this mayor.

Appearances matter. Especially in government.

========================================

The irony is that this part of Robert’s Rules isn’t that complicated.

Procedural rules aren’t mere technicalities. They are safeguards designed to protect the participation rights of ALL elected representatives, including those in the minority. In this case, Ms. Labowski and Ms. Ryan.

That protection failed, for all to see, on May 11. And this one can’t be blamed on Ms. Acevedo. This one is on the mayor, and on him alone.

So tonight I would simply urge this mayor, as a gentleman, to publicly apologize to the councilwomen who were denied the opportunity to speak, and to the citizens for his failure to follow the City Ordinance in conducting the meeting.

If he refuses to apologize, this Council should publicly reprimand him for his poor stewardship of the chair.

I would also urge this council – and the one that is soon to follow under a new mayor – to recommit itself to scrupulously following both the Ordinance and, more generally, to basic parliamentary procedure, and especially during contentious matters where public confidence has unraveled.

Because the legitimacy of government depends not merely on outcomes, but on a fairly administered process. Thank you.

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Her 12-year-old son Erik, who calls me “Bot”, avoids eye contact when I first arrive.

I met Gaby fifteen years ago at a language school in Guanajuato. I went there to improve my Spanish because I was running a job search ministry in Houston, with many Hispanic clients. Of the several teachers at the school, Gaby was my favorite: intelligent, patient, encouraging, and able to make my clumsy Spanish feel less embarrassing.

We stayed in touch after I returned home. Guanajuato has since become an annual trip for me. But almost immediately, Gaby and I began weekly lessons online. It helps me maintain my Spanish, and it gives Gaby a way to earn income from home. That became especially important after Erik was born. His special needs made outside employment impossible for her, even as medical bills and therapies added new financial burdens to the family.

Erik was diagnosed with Fragile-X Syndrome, a chromosomal disorder often associated with autism. Erik now has the gawky build of a pre-teen, a cheerful streak that can quickly turn to frustration when he is not understood, and a language deficit that still makes communication difficult for anyone outside his family.

Difficult, but not impossible.

When I visit Guanajuato, Erik knows I am coming long before I arrive. His family says he asks about me for weeks. I bring gifts for everyone, usually things that are hard to find locally. For Erik, it is often a larger pair of Crocs and some toy that captures his imagination. One year it was a rubber superhero doll he called his “mono,” which became inseparable from him for months.

Still, when I first walk through the door, Erik responds shyly. His autism makes social interaction difficult, even with someone he has known since toddlerhood. At first he will barely look at me.

So I speak to him in my imperfect Spanish. And slowly, over a few hours, the walls begin to come down.

By the end of the visit, Erik will usually look me in the eye. Sometimes we make funny faces at each other across the dinner table. Occasionally he laughs at my Spanish mistakes, which tells me his understanding of the world is a lot deeper than many people assume.

And when I leave, we part with a fist bump. Someday, I hope, maybe I will earn a hug from my little amiguito.

What strikes me most about Erik’s family is not their devotion, though it is extraordinary. Gaby and her husband Edgar have organized their lives around a child who will likely never be fully independent. Gaby worries constantly about his future, about how cruel middle-school children can be, and about what happens to Erik when she no longer has the strength to care for him.

No, what strikes me most is their patience.

In that home above Guanajuato, people slow down enough to understand one another.

They patiently interpret Erik’s words for outsiders. They show enormous calm with his occasional tantrums. Of course, they have seen them many times and they understand what they mean.

Similarly, they patiently listen to my broken Spanish. With both Erik and me, they absorb frustration, repetition and misunderstanding without treating the person on the other side of those struggles as somehow lesser.

That kind of patience feels increasingly rare in modern life.

We live in a culture that has a short attention span. It prizes confidence, performance, and instant reactions. We judge people by how fluently they speak, how quickly they respond, and how forcefully they assert themselves.

But some human beings require more effort from us. Some communicate slowly. Some imperfectly. Some need us to quiet ourselves long enough to truly hear them.

Real listening isn’t merely waiting for your turn to speak. It’s the patience to understand.

Every year when I leave Guanajuato, I’m physically tired from walking up those steep hills, and mentally tired from operating for days in a language that isn’t my own. But I also leave overwhelmed by the love and acceptance of a family that long ago stopped treating me as a visitor. On Día de Muertos, for example, they place photos of my deceased loved ones on their ofrenda alongside their own family members. That gesture still moves me more than I can say.

Somewhere along the way, amid the mole, the fireworks, my broken Spanish, and the fist bumps, this family taught me something important: understanding another human being usually takes patience.

And people like Erik deserve it.

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P.S. If you are so inclined, there is an opportunity for you to help me support the medical costs of this family. Read more at https://www.gofundme.com/manage/help-for-erik-miranda.