Bill Moyers speaking at the 50th an­niver­sary of The Texas Observer:

Mc­Carthy­ism was a raging plague in the 1950s and the virus rampaged across Texas like tum­ble­weeds in a wind storm. … The low point, said Maverick, came when the state Senate passed a bill to remove all books from public libraries which “ad­verse­ly” reflected on American and Texas history, the family and religion. Even the state teachers as­so­ci­a­tion endorsed the bill, in exchange for a pay raise. …

That was the lay of the land in the 1950s. And Democrats were in charge, remember? That’s right: Texas was a one-party state; Re­pub­li­cans were as scarce in high office as Democrats are today. No matter the players, one-party government is a conspiracy in disguise.

…

Everything President George W. Bush knows, he learned here [in Texas], as the product of a system rigged to assure the political progeny needed to perpetuate itself with minimum in­ter­fer­ence from the nuisances of liberal democracy. … With the election of 2000, he and his cohorts arrived in Washington like atheists taking over the Vatican; they had come to run a government they don’t believe in.