The eyes of Texas are bloodshot
The Texas Taliban Republican Party really is a hoot. Their new platform wants to set up an Inquisition, take the suffrage away from women and Nigras, send Jews to Iceland to do sumpin about that there volcano –
Okay, I’m lying. No all the platform wants to do is, for instance,
restrict citizenship to children born in the United States whose parents are citizens
That’s all – it just wants to repeal the 14th Amendment, that’s all. You know – the one that was passed in the wake of the Civil War, that undid the infamous three fifths rule in the Constitution and the equally infamous Dred Scott decision. And you know what else that particular red-hot idea would do? You do if you’ve seen the latest News item, because I spilled it there already. Look at it. It would make the current president a non-citizen according to Texas. I find that fascinating – it makes my blood run cold.
The platform would also like the reinstatement of laws banning “sodomy,” and to make gay marriage a felony. A felony! With jail time!
I’m canceling that vacation trip to Lubbock right now. I don’t think I would feel cheerful there.
I hope that this receives the coverage it deserves, although I’m not holding my breath. Such lunatic platforms from state Republican parties are not uncommon, and the demand that Congress evict the United Nations from U.S. soil and end American membership in the global body is boilerplate by now. The intent is to energize right wing activists; they really don’t want it publicized.
[…] Benson is having a giggle over the Texas Republican Party Platform, which you can download, too. It's the usual: guns, US out of the UN, immigrants must be […]
The meaning of “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” hasn’t been fully settled. You are mischaracterizing the platform, which states, “We call on the Legislative, Executive and Judicial branches of these United States to clarify Section 1 of the 14th amendment to limit citizenship by birth to those born to a citizen of the United States”.
The United States is not unique, but very few nations have citizenship based on physical birth precisely because it invites the kind of abuse seen with illegal immigrants. Repealing that one section of the 14th Amendment would hardly be the end of civil rights.
I realize Obama-style Democrats (corporatists) have abandoned any pretense of caring about working class Americans, but illegal immigration ultimately benefits people who want to exploit cheap labor and undermine an effective welfare state. Some on the American left have this ignorant perception of border control as being ‘right wing’, when the most liberal countries in the world such as the Netherlands and Sweden strictly monitor illegal immigration.
Gays are being threatened in this platform with imprisonment and carte blanche for people to discriminate against them. Women are being threatened with total loss of reproductive rights. But political correctness demands racial issues take precedence, right? So illegal immigrants come before lawful citizens of the U.S. in terms of political concern.
This sort of constitutional change was passed in Ireland a few years back after a period of Nigerian immigration whipped up the racists. I would be worried for other parts of the US constitution that have been safe until now (such as the first amendment). If the right gets used to the idea of changing parts of the constitution that it doesnt agree with then some basic elements of US life that are taken for granted (freedom of speech and religion) may not survive.
Don’t feel bad about cancelling that trip to Lubbock. After all, happiness is Lubbock in the rear-view mirror.
Sadly (and I do mean sadly), the people who wrote this platform believe every word of it.
Common bigotry, egotism, religious intolerance, xenophobia, frigidly joyless sexuality, authoritarianism, stridency, and a deep conviction that they and only they are EVER correct about any issue.
What happened to our country? Where did these people come from? Who failed them? The educational system? The parents? Culture? “God”?
Somebody sure screwed the pooch when they let these people out of the house uneducated and unguided in simple principles of common human decency.
[…] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Li_Akahi, Ophelia Benson. Ophelia Benson said: The eyes of Texas are bloodshot http://dlvr.it/1xjYx […]
Do you think they will make any law retrospective for the last few hundred years ?
Well not here, no; not right. Have you read anything here other than this one post?
I’ve written about the wage-depressing aspect of massive immigration, as a matter of fact, and I agree that much of the left ignores that. But the whole subject is full of mixed motives. Do you think the Texas Republicans wrote that part of the platform because they’re opposed to a pool of surplus labor that forces down wages? I doubt it, myself.
PZ and Ophelia are having their morbid laughs over the Texas Republican Party platform, so I might as well jump in. The first thing I noticed is that it’s really a mess: it looks like whatever idea somebody liked got pasted into the final version. I’ve seen “in popular culture” lists on Wikipedia which showed greater clarity and discernment. Look at their complaint under “pornography”:
I guess that rules out any DVD with a commentary track or a making-of featurette. . . .
National ID cards are bad, but “every Texas driver license shall indicate whether the driver is a U.S. citizen”, and “No such documentation shall be issued to anyone not legally in the country.” This is what happens when your paranoia about foreigners collides with your paranoia about GPS trackers being the Mark of the Beast.
Item the First on their list of “principles” is the following:
How do you “adhere” to a document which has no force of law, and was an erudite telling-off of King George III in the first place? And then we have the whole “we love the Constitution, except when we don’t” thing They “oppose any constitutional convention to rewrite the United States Constitution”, and they just love themselves some Tenth Amendment, but they’re willing and eager to pass laws respecting the establishment of religion.
Thomas Paine’s The Age of Reason, Ethan Allen’s Reason: The Only Oracle of Man and the Jefferson Bible for everybody!
But the comparatively safe “Morning After Pill” is great!
Recognizing that the basketball coach you’ve shanghaied into teaching ninth-grade bio is manifestly unequipped to discuss recent developments in autocatalytic RNA research, I think you’re full of it. “Objective teaching” and “equal treatment of all sides” are contradictory.
including evolution, Intelligent Design, global warming, political philosophies, and others.
Intelligent Design is not a scientific theory; it’s creationism in a stolen lab coat.
Note the classic creationist conflation of “life origins” with the history of life since its origin.
Discussing the strengths of evolution and anthropogenic climate change is what will provoke retribution, for teachers and students alike. (That basketball coach I mentioned, the one who taught my ninth-grade biology class? Yeah, he left evolution out of the curriculum because, he said, he didn’t want angry calls from parents.) Hey, Texas, the name Chris Comer ring a bell?
Sadly, I live in Texas. Recently the republicans here sent me a letter asking why I hadn’t renewed my party membership with them — a membership I terminated some 20 years ago. I was very excited to be able to explain to them that they went from “fiscally conservative and religiously neutral” to “fiscally spendthrift and hardline Dominionist.” Eagerly, I started the enclosed survey, only to find questions so loaded that I couldn’t begin to answer them. Example: “1. Do you agree with Barack Obama’s nefarious plan to turn the United States into a Communist country?”
How does one even begin to let them know how insane they really are? There wasn’t even enough space in the margins to write new questions. I settled for answering “not applicable” to all 20 questions, then shredding all their other correspondence.
Sadly, I live in Texas. Recently the republicans here sent me a letter asking why I hadn’t renewed my party membership — a membership I terminated some 20 years ago. I was very excited to be able to explain to them that they went from “fiscally conservative and religiously neutral” to “fiscally spendthrift and hardline Dominionist.” Eagerly, I started the enclosed survey, only to find questions so loaded that I couldn’t begin to answer them. Example: “1. Do you agree with Barack Obama’s nefarious plan to turn the United States into a Communist country?”
How does one even begin to let them know how insane they really are? There wasn’t even enough space in the margins to write new questions. I settled for answering “not applicable” to all 20 questions, then shredding all their other correspondence.
Sorry for the double post — touchy keyboard today.