Chuck Norris

After railing against Obama’s purported attempts to wean Christianity out of public life, Chuck Norris now is warning of the supposed threat of religious involvement in government. Of course, in this case the threat comes from Islam. In his WorldNetDaily column “Holy Week, Holy Sharia? Part 1,” Norris begins his investigation into “creeping Sharia law.” He recommends the book Muslim Mafia, which alleges that radical Muslims are infiltrating the government through the congressional internship program, and says he plans to write at least four more articles as part of his exposé into the menace of Sharia.

Norris’s only evidence of creeping Sharia is a Florida judge’s ruling upholding a religious arbitration scheme (make sure to read Sarah Posner’s thorough debunking), an Alabama bill to ban Sharia law whose chief sponsor admits that he doesn’t even know what Sharia law is, and an Obama adviser’s statements on misconceptions about Sharia law:

The main point here is this: Where Muslim religion and culture has spread, Shariah law has shortly followed.

Of course, many Americans watch on video a Middle Eastern woman allegedly caught in adultery, buried in the ground up to her head and being stoned to death, and think, "That could never happen in America." But they fail to see how Shariah law has already been enabled and subtly invoked in our country, and that any such induction like it is brought about by understated lukewarm changes, like a frog boiled in a kettle by a slow simmer.

For those who don't believe in that Shariah simmer, consider in just the past few months that:

• A Florida judge ruled that a dispute between Muslim parties could proceed under Shariah law. "This case," the judge wrote, "will proceed under Ecclesiastical Islamic Law."

• Alabama is joining a growing list of states that are considering outlawing the use of foreign and religious laws, specifically Muslim Shariah law, in their courts.

• President Barack Obama's adviser on Muslim affairs, Dalia Mogahed, appeared on a British television show hosted by a member of an extremist group to talk about Shariah law. Miss Mogahed said the Western view of Shariah was "oversimplified" and that the majority of women around the world associate it with "gender justice." Does she really think that Shariah is the ideological bastion of gender equality?

In the end, it seems to me we have a choice to believe that Shariah law is, or is not, a pro-Islamic system of civic, religious, moral and social laws, which is being used to run other countries and governments but is not being (nor ever will be) invoked to run ours, based upon the belief that our constitutional republic and Bill of Rights is inferior.

• The following sentence appeared in an FRC fundraising email opposing the DISCLOSE Act and I have no idea what it is supposed to mean: "Too often, such tactics are used to intimidate donors. We saw this in the sixties during the civil rights struggles." 
• Mike Huckabee is now a daily talk show host.
• Tom Tancredo and his massive ego have decided to run for Governor in Colorado.
• Newt Gingrich will decide by early next year whether he is going to run for president. I can hardly wait.
• Joseph Farah says Tea Party activists cannot listen to those who advocate focusing the movement solely on economic issues.
• Peter LaBarbera appears to be launching a one-man boycott of McDonalds.
• Chuck Norris has written part one of series on Obama's U.S. assassination program. I guarantee you that part two will claim Obama is going to start killing conservatives.
• Finally, the quote of the day from Al Mohler, via Twitter: "In recent days I have seen evidence of tremendous activity among Jehovah's Witnesses & Mormons in our area. Are we as committed as they are?"

While scrolling through my RSS feeds this morning, I noticed a trend developing in that just about every right-wing column on the tragic killings at Fort Hood seemed to lay the ultimate blame on "political correctness."

Martha Zoeller - Human Events:

Ralph Peters, a retired Army officer and military analyst, said, “It's not a question of security per se, but of political correctness gone haywire. Had Major Hasan been a white Christian or Jew, his butt would've been out on the street years ago. But Muslims are a protected species in our military.” Peters went on to say, “Radical Muslim chaplains? Still on duty. Muslim psychiatrist (of all things) praises suicide bombers on the web and tries to convert his patients to Islam? Hush-hush. And so we have 51 patriots (not merely 44, as previously reported) gunned down, with 13 dead. And our president and his generals won't even use the word "terror," let alone the phrase "Islamist terror." Political correctness killed those Americans at Ft. Hood as surely as did the Muslim fanatic who pulled the trigger.”

Rowan Scarborough - Human Events:

The FBI failed to intercede against Fort Hood terrorist Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan as a result of its politically correct strategy of reaching out to suspect Islamic groups and clerics instead of combating head-on the Muslim radicalization movement in the United States.

Cal Thomas - World Magazine:

If you were an enemy of America, not only would you fight overseas and develop nuclear weapons (Iran), you would also engage in an even more effective strategy by striking at America’s underbelly. This is our most vulnerable region because we now tolerate virtually everything, indulge in political correctness, and subscribe to a bogus belief that if radical Islamists can see we mean them no harm, they will mean us no harm.

National Review Symposium:

Is the Fort Hood massacre a deadly example of political correctness run amok? National Review Online asked a few of our experts for their observations on how the shooting happened and what we can do to prevent similar incidents in the future.

National Review Editorial:

We see the operation of the same political correctness that cocooned Major Hasan in his Army career. Fellow soldiers noticed his strident and unbalanced behavior, but did not report him, lest they discriminate against him (or — their more likely fear — be rebuked for discrimination). He was invited to attend a conference of the Homeland Security Policy Institute at George Washington University in 2008. (Major Hasan, as it turned out, had a lot to say — not that he would have said it all, or that his plump-minded peers would have listened, even if he had.) We should not be surprised that journalists and pundits are no smarter than our defense and security bureaucracies.

David Limbaugh - WorldNetDaily:

Even as more and more realize oppressive political correctness is damaging our nation and killing our people, we still hold ourselves hostage to it. We can't criticize Obama on his policy agenda without absurd accusations of racism, and now our authorities' first instinct after the mass murder at Fort Hood is to victimize the identified shooter – Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan – rather than to protect our soldiers.

The military is the last place we should expect political correctness to flourish. We recognize, after all, that our armed forces exist primarily to safeguard our national security, not as a laboratory for social experimentation. Or do we?

Dennis Prager - WorldNetDaily:

Another classmate told the AP that he complained to five officers and two civilian faculty members at the university. He also wrote to Pentagon officials that fear in the military of being seen as politically incorrect prevented an "intellectually honest discussion of Islamic ideology" in the ranks.

David Kupelian - WorldNetDaily:

"Political correctness" – which is basically a low-grade Stockholm syndrome playing out on a broad societal stage – is actually a subtle form of brainwashing. Even establishment mouthpiece Newsweek, in its famous Dec. 24, 1990, cover story on the then-new phenomenon of political correctness on college campuses (titled "Thought Police") conceded this truth when it reported: "PC is, strictly speaking, a totalitarian philosophy."

...

This inordinate fear, implanted in us by the lords of politically correct attitude, the subtle brainwashers of modern, secular society, is to blame. ... The evil of "political correctness" – the totalitarian manipulation of thought, foisted on us by twisted elitist sociopaths who hate America and everything our soldiers have fought and died for over the last two centuries, and continue to fight and die for – has to end. Now. It's over. This nation must rise up and defy the insane thought control that is destroying our country right before our eyes.

Chuck Norris - Town Hall:

And the questions that keep coming to my mind are: Have we become so tolerant and politically correct that we can't see or confront a rotten apple when it's right in front of our eyes? When our fear of discrimination enables our enemies, can't we see something is grimly amiss? ... Why would the commander in chief even take up his precious media time immediately after this brutal rampage to encourage tolerance and political correctness concerning this psychotic killer? As a veteran of the Air Force and honorary Marine, I am appalled.

It didn't work for Mike Huckabee, but maybe Roy Moore will have better luck:

Chuck Norris, internationally known martial arts expert, actor, and media personality has endorsed Judge Roy Moore for Governor of Alabama. Norris believes Judge Moore is the strongest, best qualified candidate in the race for Alabama's gubernatorial leader, the person who can best lead the state forward in the difficult times ahead.

Judge Moore and Chuck Norris have much in common in addition to their strong conservative beliefs, including their martial arts skills and their service in our nation's armed forces. Mr. Norris has won numerous martial arts tournaments around the world. As described in Judge Moore's book, So Help Me God. Jude Moore fought professionally as a kick-boxer in both the U.S. and Australia, and is known for his strong leadership as a judge and as an Army company commander in Vietnam.

Judge Moore's campaign is based on his defense of our individual rights, his plan for creating new jobs through the proven economic principles of Supply Side economics ("Reaganomics") which brought our nation and state out of a severe recession in the 1980's-by cutting taxes and reducing the size of government. He also has a strong plan to eliminate waste and corruption in state government. Judge Moore is well known for keeping his promises.

Moore, for those who may not remember, was tossed off the Alabama Supreme Court back in 2003 for defying a federal judge's order to move a Ten Commandments monument from the state Supreme Court building.

• Bob McDonnell, former attorney general for Virginia and Republican candidate for Virginia governor, made a special appearance at Liberty University’s Monday convocation.
• Speaking of Liberty, it looks like standout freshman basketball player Seth Curry is leaving the school to seek a higher level of competition.
• It seems that some in the GOP would prefer it if Dick Cheney went back into hiding and stopped harming the party's efforts to move on from his catastrophic time in office.
• Pat Mahoney, Operation Rescue president Troy Newman, TheCall founder Lou Engle, members of the Survivors of the Abortion Holocaust, and others have descended on Wichita, Kansas for a prayer vigil outside the trial of George Tiller.
• Richard Land: Friend of Coal.
• Chuck Norris is set to receive an award from former president George H.W. Bush.
• Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. signed three abortion-related bills on Friday and the Alliance Defense Fund offered to help defend them in court, only to see the offer immediately rejected the state's Attorney General.
• Newt Gingrich and David Barton really are becoming close allies, judging by the fact that Gingrich even showed up on Barton's radio program yesterday.

Mike Huckabee is hoping to pick up Fred Thompson’s leftovers, but that doesn’t seem to be going so well. Aside from Gary Bauer and other religious-right leaders who still don’t like Huckabee, a number of Thompson’s backers have switched to Mitt Romney. And now an embittered former Thompson staffer has started his own campaign hitting Huckabee where it hurts most: his sidekick, Chuck Norris.

Huckabee may joke about his action-hero endorsement, but as we’ve noted before, he’s made Norris a very serious part of his campaign. And not just in terms of livening up his stage shows: Norris is aggressively raising money, hoping to provide $10 million for the cash-strapped candidate (one recent fundraiser netted $250,000).

Dennis Ng, founder of BoycottChuckNorris.com, says that makes Norris “fair game”:

Saying he's 'kicking Chuck Norris where it hurts – his wallet,' Ng explains he's starting the boycott because Norris endorsed a presidential candidate and supports ideas "far out of the mainstream."

Ng singles out Norris' endorsement of Huckabee – "a candidate who says that he does not believe in evolution," and "who called for the isolation of AIDS patients – long after the Centers for Disease Control determined that the virus was not spread by casual contact." …

Ng is asking visitors to his site to join him in boycotting products Norris endorses and companies that purchase advertising on reruns of his long-running CBS television series, "Walker, Texas Ranger." In the first category, Ng lists exercise-equipment manufacturer Total Gym, endorsed by the actor. Sponsors listed are KFC, Payless Shoes, Nutrisystem, Tylenol and Geico Insurance.

“Republicans long decried celebrities telling us how to vote,” says Ng. So, uh, is that why Ng’s own candidate, famous actor Fred Dalton Thompson, had to drop out?

Mike Huckabee just keeps racking up endorsements from fringe right-wing activists and leaders.  In addition to the support of “celebrities” like Chuck Norris and Ric Flair, Huckabee has also won over second-tier Religious Right leaders such as Janet Folger, Rick Scarborough, and Don Wildmon - and now you can add Tim and Beverly LaHaye to that list:

Mike Huckabee, the Republican presidential candidate and former Southern Baptist minister, is getting help from Tim LaHaye, the Christian conservative organizer and co-author of the apocalyptic “Left Behind” novels.

“America and our Judeo-Christian heritage are under attack by a force that is more destructive than any America has faced” since Hitler, Dr. LaHaye and his wife, Beverly, wrote in letters sent to lists of conservative Christians in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina. “Defeating the radical jihadists will require renewed resolve and spiritual rearmament by the evangelical pastors in America.”

The letters were distributed in part through an e-mail list maintained by Mrs. LaHaye’s organization, Concerned Women for America, to encourage pastors to attend two-day conferences held in each state (free, including meals and a hotel room). Mr. Huckabee, a former Arkansas governor, is the only candidate speaking.

Ms. LaHaye just happens to believe that “Christian values should dominate our government. The test of those values is the Bible. Politicians who do not use the Bible to guide their public and private lives do not belong in office.” Which probably explains why they are backing Huckabee who, with his most recent ad, portrays himself as a “Christian Leader” who says his “Faith doesn’t just influence me; it really defines me”:

In his latest column, Chuck Norris launches into a familiar gripe of the Right, warning parents that college campuses today into hotbeds of “liberal bias” and “indoctrination.” One example employed by the Right is the recent failure of an Iowa State professor to be granted tenure, supposedly due to his advocacy of “Intelligent Design” creationism. (That’s leaving aside a more obvious explanation: Perhaps if he spent more time on astronomy than creationism, he would have been able to bring in more outside grant money.)

It seems at least one creationist is fighting back – and apparently threatening to use Chuck Norris methods.

An anti-evolution activist who has been targeting biology professors at the University of Colorado at Boulder is implicated in distributing threatening letters two weeks ago, calling teachers of evolution “child molesters” and “terrorists” and repeating the line “every true Christian should be ready and willing to take up arms to kill the enemies of Christian society”:

Last weekend more than a dozen envelopes bearing the image of skull and crossbones and containing letters threatening the lives of CU-Boulder evolutionary biology professors were slipped under the doors of CU-Boulder buildings. …

“EBIO (evolutionary biology) professors are terrorists against America and … intellectual and spiritual child abusers of their young and impressionable students … the EBIO department not only blasphemes God, who is invisible, but it blasphemes His Only Begotten Son and our Messiah, Jesus Christ, which is more unforgivable … for all these reason all God-fearing and Truth-loving persons must say, They must go!”

The evolution blog Panda’s Thumb has more information, including excerpts from the letters.