For Texas, I can really recommend J.R. Fehrenbach's "Lone Star," which chronicles Texas colonization through major ethnic groups: Anglo-Celtic, Germans, Amerinds and Spaniards.

Liberalism is a universal delusion. It existed before Christianity, but clearly Christianity influenced secular humanism, liberalism, progressivism and all other egalitarian-individualist forms of thought. I think at this point it's a mistake to regard it as anything other than signaling behavior, much how American racial/class egalitarianism is generally seen as a sign of prosperity.

Thank you for using the term "handle" and not the odious "nick." The BBS users of the 1980s thank you!

People are offended by the idea that we perceive reality differently, and some are more correct than others. 
 
For this reason, they insist that perception "equals" reality so they do not feel they are caught at the short end of the evolutionary success stick. 
 
As you note, they manipulate others by offering tokens of competitive social altruism as a result: IQ is an objective measurement, and that means that for some people what they perceive is shown to be wrong. That's not inclusive and as a result is taboo. 
 
It's for this reason that oblique metaphorical knowledge, like religion and art, exists: to communicate to the unconscious parts of the mind, because the conscious parts are drunk on socially-compelled reasoning that does not correspond well to reality.

The problem with links or emails is that they're one-dimensional; they need to be tagged or categorized before they're useful. In addition, any service with either finite resources or a desire to make money should prioritize that which is popular. However, the problem is that if you let popularity alone rule a service, you end up with lolcats and unscientific, popular "truths." I guess as in all questions human the answer is to have leaders who can tell the difference between appearance and discernible reality to sort the crap from the gold.

Rationalism -- in a philosophical context -- is separate from rationality. 
 
Rationality means figuring stuff out in reality. 
 
Rationalism means doing so in a linear, anthrocentric model.

Original use of the term phrack: 
 
http://www.phrack.org/

It seems to me that for this last season the writers have been grasping for whatever Big Concepts they can stuff into the plot. 
 
The latest Big Concepts are no different. They did best when they focused on a struggle for survival and how people adapted to it, not the drama and overblown emotion, and finally, the false sense of "epic" meaning.