Chuck Norris Has More Than Just Flexible Pants

Remember all those hilarious one liners about TV tough guy, and supernaturally be-gingered ghost grandpa, Chuck Norris? "Chuck Norris doesn't sleep, he waits," for example. How we laughed at those! I remember that one actor's deft karate pantomimes from my childhood, we'd say.

We had him pegged with the wrong superlative it turns out. It should've been something more like Chuck Norris doesn't sleep, he drools in the corner wondering why the grandkids never call.

"Chuck Norris died 20 years ago, Death just hasn't had the courage to tell him yet." More like, well, ok, that one still reads.

"When he goes to bed every night the Boogeyman checks his closet for Chuck Norris."

You sure about that one? The central premise of the conceit, that Chuck Norris isn't scared of anything is precisely the opposite of the truth we see from videos like this one above. Like most elderly people and Republicans, Chuck Norris is scared of every fucking thing.

Probably tops on that list is his Stepford Wife Gena, who is quoted here from what I'm assuming are the awkward first take cuts from a forthcoming, much-less-embarrassing political video.

"We are here to talk about a growing concern we all share," Chuck Norris explains. "If we look to history, our great country and freedom are under attack. We're at a tipping point and, quite possibly, our country as we know it may be lost forever if we don't change the course in which our country is headed."

What aspect of it exactly will be lost forever, and to who, you might ask, if you don't puke in fear when you see your own shadow.

You can probably imagine where it goes from there. Crossroads this, crucial decisions that, the defense of liberty, Christians, I don't know, fucking evil microwaves stealing our souls when you don't flip the light switch on and off three times to represent faith in the Holy Trinity.

The video gets interesting toward the end, however, where old boy starts quoting -- you're never going to guess who -- Reagan, the president last time Norris got a non government-assisted erection.

"Our great president, Ronald Reagan said, 'Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn't pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected and handed on for them to do the same.'"

Like HPV, you might say.

Likewise, Gena noted, "President Reagan went on to say that 'You and I have a rendezvous with destiny. We will preserve for our children this last best hope of man on earth, or we will sentence them to take the first step into a thousand years of darkness. If we fail, at least let our children, and our children's children, say of us we justified our brief moment here. We did all that could be done.'"

Wait, a thousand years of darkness? If we re-elect the same guy we've got running the show now? Seems like kind of a stretch, but alright, this lady seems pretty serious about it so maybe I better listen up.

The speech in question they're referencing here is Reagan's famed "A Time for Choosing", which he delivered in 1964 in support of Republican candidate for president Barry Goldwater. It was, by most accounts, a masterful piece of speechifying, and the performance that launched Reagan's political career. There are a few different versions of it floating around, but you can read one here, and a longer version here. This is literally the Bible of politics for people whom think the Bible is a legitimate topic of discussion when it comes to politics. It's the Sgt. Peppers and Pet Sounds and Paid In Full and London Calling of conservatism.

The thing I find most interesting about the connections between this video from Norris, which is basically a primer in contemporary conservative code language fear-mongering, is that over fifty years later these whiny personal responsibility phonies are complaining about the exact same stuff, which, being fluent in conservative horseshit, I will translate for you in part below:

This idea? that government was beholden to the people, that it had no other source of power is still the newest, most unique idea in all the long history of man's relation to man. This is the issue of this election: Whether we believe in our capacity for self-government or whether we abandon the American Revolution and confess that a little intellectual elite in a far-distant capital can plan our lives for us better than we can plan them ourselves.

THE COUNTRY IS AT A CROSSROADS. VOTING FOR A DEMOCRATIC PRESIDENT WILL LITERALLY DESCEND US INTO CHAOS.

My favorite part here is how he takes a swipe at Washington D.C. itself. Dude, that's where you wanted to send your boy Goldwater. It's not far from everywhere by the way, unless we're speaking metaphorically about "the real America" which only seems far because it takes an imaginary commute to a magical land of dreams.  Also weird to see that being an intellectual elite has been such a drawback for this long in politics. I had sort of assumed that was a relatively new development in our newer, dumber era.

You and I are told we must choose between a left or right, but I suggest there is no such thing as a left or right.

So then it's cool if I just go ahead and vote for the non Jesus-y candidate who seems like he can pull his pants on without croaking about the tax-code based battle against the army of darkness?

There is only an up or down. Up to man's age-old dream-the maximum of individual freedom consistent with order or down to the ant heap of totalitarianism.

Here we go, here's the good stuff here. Liberals=totalitarianism. The only reason Regan gets off the hook a little bit here is because at least they had a literal communist super power to contend with at the time. When Chuck Norris and his ilk say this kind of thing today they are literally suggesting that Obama, our current president, is the equivalent to a giant communist country of insane drunk people who die of old age at 35.

Regardless of their sincerity, their humanitarian motives, those who would sacrifice freedom for security have embarked on this downward path.

Unless we get a really bad terrorist attack on U.S. soil some day in which case security trumps the shit out of freedom, he probably should've added

Plutarch warned, "The real destroyer of the liberties of the people is he who spreads among them bounties, donations and benefits."

Like Jesus, you mean? But hold a minute. Imagine having the balls to say something like this? The destroyer of liberties is the one who helps people? Asking for government money to help people is a grave sin, unless you're Paul Ryan looking to get a sweet slice of that Obamacare paper.

Public servants say, always with the best of intentions, "What greater service we could render if only we had a little more money and a little more power." But the truth is that outside of its legitimate function, government does nothing as well or as economically as the private sector.

Which is why me and people like me are always campaigning so desperately to be a part of it.

We need true tax reform that will at least make a start toward restoring for our children the American Dream that wealth is denied to no one, that each individual has the right to fly as high as his strength and ability will take him…. But we can not have such reform while our tax policy is engineered by people who view the tax as a means of achieving changes in our social structure….

Right, because why would you want taxes collected from the people to go back into doing things that aid the people?

Have we the courage and the will to face up to the immorality and discrimination of the progressive tax, and demand a return to traditional proportionate taxation? . . . Today in our country the tax collector's share is 37 cents of -very dollar earned. Freedom has never been so fragile, so close to slipping from our grasp.

LOL at these scared-shitless pussies. Freedom has never been so fragile?  Why, just because you pay a few more cents on the dollar than you'd want to, freedom -- no, Freeedom -- is literally going to crumble? Bunch of sniveling drama queens. It gets worse though:

If all of this seems like a great deal of trouble, think what's at stake. We are faced with the most evil enemy mankind has known in his long climb from the swamp to the stars. There can be no security anywhere in the free world if there is no fiscal and economic stability within the United States. Those who ask us to trade our freedom for the soup kitchen of the welfare state are architects of a policy of accommodation.

If you think that Chuck Norris and your dad and whatever other old idiot you can think of doesn't read something like this silently nodding and thinking about President Obama in the context of a speech about the country we almost went to nuclear war with thereby destroying the entire globe, then you don't realize the depth of their frightened petulance. I know Obama hasn't really changed too much in the four years he's been around, but I got a feeling he was just biding his time for the second term when he's realllly going to fuck shit up.

Now here's the part Norris' wife got into below:

You and I have a rendezvous with destiny.

Kind of wouldn't mind hearing her say that to me under different circumstances, but ok let's skip that for now.

We will preserve for our children this, the last best hope of man on earth, or we will sentence them to take the first step into a thousand years of darkness. If we fail, at least let our children and our children's children say of us we justified our brief moment here. We did all that could be done.

Long story short, the one black dude is going to steal your money.

Reagan digs in a little more into the Soviet threat in the longer version:

And what then? When Nikita Khrushchev has told his people he knows what our answer will be? He has told them that we are retreating under the pressure of the Cold War, and someday when the time comes to deliver the ultimatum, our surrender will be voluntary because by that time we will have weakened from within spiritually, morally, and economically. He believes this because from our side he has heard voices pleading for "peace at any price" or "better Red than dead," or as one commentator put it, he would rather "live on his knees than die on his feet." And therein lies the road to war, because those voices don't speak for the rest of us.

Those liberals want to avoid a nuclear war. Bunch of fairies.

You and I know and do not believe that life is so dear and peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery. If nothing in life is worth dying for, when did this begin--just in the face of this enemy? Or should Moses have told the children of Israel to live in slavery under the pharaohs? Should Christ have refused the cross? Should the patriots at Concord Bridge have thrown down their guns and refused to fire the shot heard 'round the world? The martyrs of history were not fools, and our honored dead who gave their lives to stop the advance of the Nazis didn't die in vain. Where, then, is the road to peace? Well, it's a simple answer after all.

You and I have the courage to say to our enemies, "There is a price we will not pay." There is a point beyond which they must not advance. This is the meaning in the phrase of Barry Goldwater's "peace through strength." Winston Churchill said that "the destiny of man is not measured by material computation. When great forces are on the move in the world, we learn we are spirits--not animals." And he said, "There is something going on in time and space, and beyond time and space, which, whether we like it or not, spells duty."

All of that if you elect a guy who wants rich people to pay a little more in taxes to help poor people? Seems like kind of an overreaction to me, but then again I'm not literally a greedy walking ball of shit with pokey little shit arms and a little greedy shit head with dollar signs for eyes and shoes made from the leathery hides of an orphan's skin meat.

Goldwater, as you'll no doubt recall, went on to lose by one of the largest margins in presidential election history. Also, slightly more importantly, the world didn't end, metaphorically, or literally speaking, which it kind of seemed like it might at the time.  In fact it got a lot better. Keep that in mind when you hear clueless ninnies like Norris trotting out this apocalyptic doom and gloom shit. A vote against socialism is a vote for Freedom, or else you are all literally going to die, or at best be enslaved, and not the good old kind. THIS TIME WE REALLY MEAN IT.

@lukeoneil47