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Contrary to popular belief, America is not a democracy, it is a Chucktatorship.

Jill

republicans

Or, why the conservative line about listening to the Founding Fathers’ views on every last issue is a little silly. From Chuck himself:

I was appalled when I read the American Family Association report that Friday, April 25, “several thousand schools across the nation will be observing ‘Day of Silence (DOS).’ DOS is a nationwide push to promote the homosexual lifestyle in public schools. … DOS is sponsored by an activist homosexual group, the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network.”

Is encouraging or teaching about homosexuality what our Founders expected for the public education system they started? Even the most liberal among them opposed it. For example, Thomas Jefferson drafted a bill concerning the criminal laws of Virginia, in which he proposed that the penalty for sexual deviance should be unique corporal punishment. Jefferson’s views were indeed representative of early America:

“Whosoever shall be guilty of Rape, Polygamy, or Sodomy with man or woman shall be punished, if a man, by castration, if a woman, by cutting thro’ the cartilage of her nose a hole of one half inch diameter at the least.” Can you imagine a statesman proposing such a law today?

Well, no, because that’s insane.

Chuck goes on to clarify that he, of course, is not “espousing such treatment” — but he does “believe that we equally and adamantly should oppose such aberrant sexual behavior from being condoned or commemorated in our public schools through textbooks or a so-called “Day of Silence.””

So we shouldn’t castrate people or cut holes in their noses, but we should do something “equally and adamantly” oppositional. How very evolved.

But it’s not just Teh Gays that are the problem — God and Guns also factor in. And Chuck suggests that we should, literally, turn back the clock:

To each of the social dilemmas in these three news stories (regarding guns, God and gays), a remedy can be found by turning back the clocks of time and consulting our Founding Fathers. They started this great experiment we call America. It seems to me their wisdom is still fit to guide us. It is, after all, upon their greatest work that public servants are called to fulfill their oath of office: “I do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States …”

It’s kinda funny to see wingnuts twist themselves in circles with arguments like this. They’re all about invading countries populated by brown people, and they justify the invasions by arguing that people in those countries do crazy stuff like stone homosexuals, riot over cartoons of God, dwell in villages run by gun-toting warlords, and limit women’s rights. Because, you know, that shit is backwards and in need of liberation at gunpoint.*

Then they want to go all 1787 on our asses, and bring us back to the good old days when castration was punishment for a blowjob, women couldn’t vote, and slavery was a cornerstone of the economy. Truly special.

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*Even though, of course, the reality on the ground is a whole lot more nuanced and complicated, and our invasions manage to set equality back a few decades.

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33 thoughts on Contrary to popular belief, America is not a democracy, it is a Chucktatorship.

  1. Nevermind the most obvious fallacy of his entire argument with regard to original intent. The Founding Fathers didn’t “start the public education system”, so I’m pretty sure they didn’t imagine anything in relationship to it.

  3. The Founding Fathers were also cool with slavery and women not having the vote. Oh yeah, let’s turn back the clock to the 18th century!

    Agreed, fundamentalism is fundamentalism, no matter who’s peddling it.

  5. You know, I’m not one of these that thinks that the Founding Fathers were infallible prophets, but I’ll point out that they didn’t, gee, put a bunch of petty shit about hating Teh Gay into the Constitution. Maybe they realized that not every single one of their opinions was important and awesome enough to found a government upon, and that it was the better part of valor to only enshrine the important stuff in the Constitution.

  7. Nevermind the most obvious fallacy of his entire argument with regard to original intent. The Founding Fathers didn’t “start the public education system”, so I’m pretty sure they didn’t imagine anything in relationship to it.

    Yeah, that actually made me laugh too.

  9. From the mission for America FAQ section

    The Day of Silence postures every person who identifies as a homosexual, bisexual or cross-dresser as a victim of ongoing, unrelenting harassment and discrimination (being ‘silenced’). While some incidents like this do occur, this event is an overwhelming exaggeration in an effort to manipulate our kids’ natural sympathies. The result ironically is that youth develop favorable views about a controversial, high risk behavior. At the same time, any disagreement,even when responsibly expressed,is viewed as “hateful”.

    Yes because heaven forbid kids actually feel empathetic towards bullied gay kids…it might turn them gay too!!!

  10. I was thinking about this implicit (or explicit as the case is here) belief that somehow civilization peaked in 1789, when the Constitution went into force the other night when I learned one of the prizes at the upcoming Public Interest Auction was lunch with either Justice Ginsburg or Justice Scalia. I caused my girlfriend to get very angry with me when I told her I’d take “Lunch With Nino” in a heartbeat.

    But this is because people who hold these beliefs fascinate me, and I would love to try to pick at the brain of the person, whom I believe makes the most convincing arguments for this Originalist wing, though I don’t buy into it. What does it say about America if we don’t have the ability to grow in any positive way? I mean, was Loving v. Virginia so bad? Should we go after Teh Miscegenators, too, Mr. Norris?

    Oh, and for what it’s worth, while the Founding Fathers certainly did not start or envision the public education system of 2008, Jefferson was committed to public education (for landholding white males) and succeeded in founding UVA, which I believe he listed as his most proud accomplishment. He was also one of Teh Miscegenators himself.

  11. I recall reading somewhere (Antonia Fraser?) that the seed of public education was planted by the Quakers and Methodists, who thought that everyone should know how to read in order to understand the Bible. When Quakers were imprisoned on a large scale in 17th Century England one of the things they did while in jail was to teach fellow prisoners how to read.

  12. The Day of Silence postures every person who identifies as a homosexual, bisexual or cross-dresser as a victim of ongoing, unrelenting harassment and discrimination (being ‘silenced’). While some incidents like this do occur, this event is an overwhelming exaggeration in an effort to manipulate our kids’ natural sympathies. The result ironically is that youth develop favorable views about a controversial, high risk behavior. At the same time, any disagreement,even when responsibly expressed,is viewed as “hateful”.

    Do you happen to know what book that is? I’m a bit off topic but I am a fan of her work and some of her older books are hard to find these days. But while I”m here I highly recommend “The Warrior Queens”

  14. What does it say about America if we don’t have the ability to grow in any positive way?

    Originalism just requires that “growth” comes out of the legislative branch. Right? So it doesn’t rule out “growth”.

  15. Huh. I wonder why Chuck wants to ignore the Founders’ very clear and explicit statements about the US not being founded on Christianity and wanting to build and maintain a secular government.

    The Founders were pretty incredible and forward-thinking for their time, but that doesn’t mean we’d consider them pillars of moral integrity today. Progress means trying to govern the nation in the spirit which they intended (upholding the timeless, universally recognisable values they espoused), without the ass-backwards beliefs they held purely as a result of the times in which they lived. And guess which category sexual “deviance” falls under?

    (Also, I am as always deeply disturbed by the conflation, historically and presently, of sodomy – a crime, and a frustratingly vague one at that [couldn’t we have two different terms?] – with your average, run-of-the-mill consensual oral and buttsecks. I’m all for sodomy being illegal, though I think it ought to just be classed as “rape” or “sexual assault.” But consensual sex? Notsomuch. Besides, as always, one gets the feeling that no heteros are going to be arrested for teh buttsecks under Chuck Norris’ iron-fisted regime.)

    ALSO: Is it just me, or is Chuck Norris’s GGG (God, guns and gays) focus kind of funny, given the pre-existing, generally accepted definition of GGG, which it seems like he would staunchly disapprove of?

  16. Jasmine – I’m assuming you meant to ask what Fraser book my post was referring to? That was “The Weaker Vessel”, about women in 17th Century Britain (the Civil War and the Restoration).

  17. Personally I had always thought of Jefferson as the more conservative founding father

    Really depends on what you mean by conservative. If you assume that conservative=racist, then absolutely. Jefferson was certainly convinced that blacks were biologically inferior to whites, and assumed that for slavery to end we would have to repatriate all the freed blacks back to Africa. He couldn’t conceive of a functioning multi-racial society. That isn’t true of many of the founders. Although I don’t know how much of a fit Jefferson would be as a conservative now. He was much more of a rural populist than any fiscal conservative, and he wasn’t religious at all. He was a military hawk to some extent though.

    The Founding Fathers were also cool with slavery and women not having the vote.

    Well, the second part is accurate enough, but I wouldn’t say the first really is. They weren’t cool with slavery so much as they couldn’t figure out how to end it and still keep the country together. Pretty much all of the founders regarded the failure to end slavery as their greatest mistake.

    What does it say about America if we don’t have the ability to grow in any positive way?

    Originalists (and I speak as one myself) don’t believe that we can’t grow, it’s that we believe that in absence of a constitutional amendment, federal government activity should be restricted to the enumerated powers, strictly interpreted. There is a mechanism for changing the government that is already in place, and that mechanism is unwieldy by design to prevent ill-advised changes without a broad base of support. Of course the states have significantly more latitude, as the damage state governments can do is localized.

    I was thinking about this implicit (or explicit as the case is here) belief that somehow civilization peaked in 1789

    I of course don’t believe that civilization peaked in 1789, but I do believe that a strong argument can be made that governmental theory and our conception of political liberty may have. The belief that it’s better to be dead than a slave, subject or pet seems to me to have been in decline since the beginning of the 20th century. The fact that there is an emphasis on oppressing everyone equally is at least somewhat of mitigating factor.

  18. How can they say it’s a victimization? When was the last time a thirteen year old was shot for BEING STRAIGHT?!

  19. Oh, and sorry to double post (lame) but of course Chuck Norris is an asshole. First off, he endorsed Mike “fucking” Huckabee. Secondly, every single project he’s ever been involved in (with the exception of a comedic cameo here and there) has been devoted exclusively to his ego. Has Chuck Norris ever been in a role where he wasn’t some sort of outlandishly unstoppable badass? I mean, I loved Invasion USA as much as the next guy, but fuck.

    Not to mention, every time I ended up watching Walker, and some Indian was on the show and he and Chuck would have some mystical connection I wanted to choke someone. Chuck, you’re pale with reddish hair, like me, and ain’t anymore Indian than I am. And more to the point, Indians aren’t fucking magic, you retard.

  20. I’m sure his African-American fans will be pleased to know that he considers them three-fifths of a person. Because, you know, if it was good enough for the Founding Fathers, it’s good enough for us!

  21. IIRC, Thomas Paine was anti-slavery. I’m not sure what his position on women’s rights was, though (I do know he was divorced). And Paine, while he believed in God and an afterlife, publicly proclaimed that he thought organized religion was A Very Bad Thing. It seems that this was the straw that broke the camel’s back – Paine was thought of as too radical even for the Founding Fathers.

  22. Now, see, this is why I totally love living in a country that started as a giant penal colony; sure as hell nobody is going to drag up our ‘founders’ to act as a moral guidance for people today.

    But the thing is, Chuck himself admits that the Founding Fathers started the ‘great experiment’ of America – well, doesn’t that sort of imply that they didn’t quite know what they were doing and was just doing their best, just like everyone else since? Shocking.

  23. I thought everyone knows that vast pandimensional beings taking the form of tiny white mice started the experiment of America Earth.

  24. I’m sure his African-American fans will be pleased to know that he considers them three-fifths of a person. Because, you know, if it was good enough for the Founding Fathers, it’s good enough for us!

    I’m not sure why that always get brought up as an example of the founders’ villainy. Three-fifths was the best the northern delegates could do. Ideally they wouldn’t have counted at all, since what we’re talking about is apportioning representatives for slave states based on a non-voting population.

  25. I brought it up because it’s a particularly sharp example of what happens when rational, “enlightened” politicians attempt to build legislation around kidnapping, rape, and murder. “Hmm, well, you think your chattel should count as people and I don’t think your chattel should count as people. Clearly, we should compromise and count your chattel as partially people. Five-eighths? No, that’ll never do.” That’s the kind of stellar leadership we got from the Founding Fathers: Morally bankrupt absurdity.

  26. I’m not sure why that always get brought up as an example of the founders’ villainy. Three-fifths was the best the northern delegates could do. Ideally they wouldn’t have counted at all, since what we’re talking about is apportioning representatives for slave states based on a non-voting population.

    I’m not sure why you think that being three-fifth of a person for the purposes of giving the men who literally owned them more power in government (and therefore more time to own them) would in any way be preferable to legally being not a person at all. And really, if only slaves had actually been considered a whole three-fifths of a person — they would have been treated a hell of a lot better.

  27. Actually a lot of the founding fathers were Deist or influenced by Deism i.e. God is the Great Watchmaker who wound up the Universe and let it go (no interference in human affairs). Which is supposedly why they wanted a separation between church and state.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deism

  28. Founding fathers conversations always remind me of a Thurgood Marshall quote that I can’t remember exactly, along the lines of “The founding fathers didn’t mean anything for me” That in reference to him not being a white male landowner, and I know they didn’t mean anything for me either. At least not in the practical at the time, perhaps in the abstract.

    Also, from what I’ve read of Jefferson, he was very conflicted about slavery and the “humanness” of blacks. Gross, I know that one can be conflicted, but he was. He almost seemed to force himself to believe they were inferior so as to justify the way they were treated and would continue to be treated in this grand new experiment. How could he believe so strongly in the absolute right to freedom for every soul? (well male soul at least) And then continue to have slaves and help create a “free” society that kept slaves. He had to try and make himself believe they were inferior, soul less, not fully human. As evident from his writing, he wasn’t very successful.

  29. True, but before the 1700s, a big majority of the colonies were puritan. I could be wrong about this, but I think that sense of ‘religion as a part of government’ has trickled down through the generations and the highly-religious still feel today that religion has a central part to play in government relations. Maybe the founding fathers themselves weren’t as religious as some say they are, but the population in America at the time certainly was.

  30. Conservatives sneer at us for having people on our side like Sean Penn and Geroge Clooney, who at least, you know, can act. Then they turn around and venerate this guy, whose only talent seems to be fake-kicking people in the head.

  31. Jasmine – I’m assuming you meant to ask what Fraser book my post was referring to? That was “The Weaker Vessel”, about women in 17th Century Britain (the Civil War and the Restoration).

    Thanks, I actually managed to track that one down on Amazon , just haven’t gotten around to starting it 🙂

  32. There should be a DSM diagnosis for people who think a Day of Silence to acknowledge victims of violence could condone immoral “lifestyles”.

  33. Yeah. So are only 3/5ths a person, right?
    And this is the SAME Thomas Jefferson that had a family with Sally Hemmings, right?

    Cause you know, if it was good enough for the founding fathers….srlsy, wtf?

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