Values Cruising with Cruz

Oh, another Values Voter Summit, a gathering of social conservatives that stands for "faith, family, and opportunity for all."  Yes, well, it's actually one that stands for a particular strand of Christian faith, a particular kind of family, and opportunity for all except for those who are G, B, L, or T, or those undocumented that do their lawns, build their roofs, or clean their hotel rooms.

Checking out the list of speakers, I saw a number of right-wing has-beens, a symptom of the Summit's growing irrelevance to national politics and the US political culture:

Rep. Michele Bachman (R-MN), under the haze of a Congressional ethics probe, is not running for re-election in 2014.   She recently made the false claim that the Obama administration is arming Al Qaeda in Syria, and added that this was a sign of the end times (yes, please, Jesus, come take her away).  Of the 59 Bachman statements Politifact evaluated, 8 were deemed mostly false, 21 false, and 16 "pants on fire." What an icon of truthiness.

Gary Bauer, head of American Values, and one of the most strident anti-gay guys in the US.  His position has becoming increasingly marginal as a growing number of Americans, even conservatives, simply don't share his homophobia (see, for example, this Pew report).

Glenn Beck, booted by Fox a couple of years ago when advertisers finally could no longer stomach his loony-tunes musings.  He continues his asinine conspiracy theorizing via his Blaze media network, reaching a smaller, but apparently more devoted audience.

Jim DeMint, a Senator (R-SC) who suddenly resigned at the beginning of this year and took the position of president at the conservative think-tank Heritage Foundation.  Evidently he prefers the well-paid bully pulpit to the harder work of governance.  Last May Heritage published a report asserting that comprehensive immigration reform would cost trillions of dollars and grant undocumented migrants that now pilloried status, "amnesty."  Critics on both the left and right panned the report's math.  They also noted that one of the authors, Jason Richwine, has regurgitated the 19th century racist theory of phrenologists who believed in a racial and ethnic hierarchy of intelligence (Hispanics and blacks are on the bottom).  As Jamelle Bouie suggests, his move to "exercise power from a different perch has backfired, and on this issue, [he is] a more marginal figure than he was in the Senate."

Allen West, a one-term Representative (R-FL) known for a host of outrageous comments that probably spelled his failed re-election bid in 2012.  Along with saying that a number of his Democratic colleagues were out and out commies (Joe McCarthy must have smiled in his grave), he said

These Planned Parenthood women, the Code Pink women, and all of these women have been neutering American men and bringing us to the point of this incredible weakness. . . .We are not going to have our men become subservient [see here for more silliness].

But other invited speakers are up-and-coming darlings of the hard right.  Ted Cruz is one.  The Values Voter Summit just anointed him in its straw poll for the 2016 presidential elections.  He took 42% of the votes, with Dr. Ben Carson (who??) in a distant second with 13%.  These straw polls have been good predictors of electoral failures.

2009 Mike Huckabee
2010 Mike Pence
2011 Ron Paul (Tony Perkins sniffed that Paul won only because he bussed in libertarian supporters)
2012 Mike Huckabee

Why do people with the right values--the rest of us have the wrong ones, don't you know--like Cruz so much?  Here's some choice lines from his Summit speech, and why they likely worked for his audience.

http://www.salon.com/2013/06/19/what_if_we_demanded_ted_cruzs_papers/

Cruz tells it like it is.  Obama has dictatorial ambitions:

This is an administration that seems bound and determined to violate every single one of our Bill of Rights.  I don't know that they have yet violated the Third Amendment, but I expect them to start quartering soldiers in peoples' homes soon.

Senator Cruz must be powerful to get around President Hussein Obama's clampdown on the First Amendment right to free speech.

Cruz is a funny guy, even while reminding of us of what we must fear:

So this afternoon President Obama has invited the Senate Republicans to the White House.  So after leaving here, I'm going to be going to the White House.  I will make a request.  If I'm never seen again, please send a search and rescue team.  I very much hope by tomorrow morning I don't wake up amidst the Syrian rebels.

Oh, please be careful Senator Cruz. You've been targeted for oppression, but you bravely accept the risks, all delivered in dark humor. What a non-subservient manly man!

Cruz mocks the French, a sure sign of fidelity to all those who truly love God and the US, and who see the two as joined at the hip:

Our foreign policy is detente, which I'm pretty sure is French for surrender.

Oh, those frigging French.  Please, Senator Cruz, give us Freedom Fries again!

http://content.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/
0,28804,2061530_2061531_2061545,00.html

Speaking of God, you should know, according to the Values Voter Summit, that a "war is raging for the soul of America."

I suspect there's only one group fighting this war, the sponsors of the Summit.  The rest of us are just hoping for reason to reign in DC.

In Honor of Columbus Day, 2013

Excerpt from the Requerimiento, a document drawn up in 1513 that the Spanish conquistadores were to read to the indigenous inhabitants upon claiming ownership (read in Spanish):

http://ows.edb.utexas.edu/site/tejano-history-
curriculum-project/alonso-álvarez-de-pineda-visuals

On the part of the King, Don Fernando, and of Doña Juana, his daughter, Queen of Castille and León, subduers of the barbarous nations, we their servants notify and make known to you. . .[that] we ask and require you that you consider what we have said to you, and that you take the time that shall be necessary to understand and deliberate upon it, and that you acknowledge the Church as the Ruler and Superior of the whole world, and the high priest called Pope, and in his name the King and Queen Doña Juana our lords, in his place, as superiors and lords and kings of these islands and this Tierra-firme by virtue of the said donation, and you consent and give place that these religious fathers should declare and preach to you the aforesaid.  If you do so, you will do well. . .But, if you do not do this, and maliciously make delay in it, I certify to you that, with the help of God, we shall powerfully enter into your country, and shall make war against you in all ways and manners that we can, and shall subject you to the yoke and obedience of the Church and of their Highnesses; we shall take you and your wives and your children, and shall make slaves of them. . . 

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

Queen Isabella's instructions to the comendador of Hispaniola, Fray Nicolás de Ovando, regarding indigenous labor, sent in 1553:

I have commanded this my letter to be issued on the matter, in which I command you, our said Governor, that beginning from the day you received my letter you will compel and force the said Indians to associate with the Christians of the island and to work on their buildings, and to gather and mine the gold and other metals, and to till the fields and produce food for the Christian inhabitants and dwellers of the said island; and you are to have each one paid on the day he works the wage and maintenance which you think he should have. . .and you are to order each cacique to take charge of a certain number of the said Indians so that you may make them work wherever necessary, and so that on feast days and such days as you think proper they may be gathered together to hear and be taught in matters of the Faith. . .This the Indians shall perform as free people, which they are, and not as slaves.  And see to it that the said Indians are well treated, those who become Christians better than the others, and do not consent or allow that any person do them any harm or oppress them.

The Dominican Friar Bartolomé de las Casas's accusations regarding Ovando's response to Queen Isabella's commands, written sometime between 1553 and before de las Casas died  in 1566:

http://floridamemory.com/items/
show/146229

1. I have already said and I repeat, the truth is that in the nine years the comendador governed the island, no measures were taken for the conversion of Indians and no more was done about the matter nor any more thought given to it than if the Indians were sticks, stones, cats or dogs. . .

2. He [Ovando] disrupted villages and distributed Indians at his pleasure, giving fifty to one and a hundred to another, according to his preferences, and these numbers included children, old people, pregnant women and nursing mothers, families of high rank as well as common people. . . 

3. The men were sent out to the mines as far as eighty leagues away while their wives remained to work the soil. . .Thus husbands and wives were together only once every eight or ten months and when they met they were so exhausted and depressed on both sides that they had no mind for marital communication and in this way they ceased to procreate.  As for the newly born, they died early because their mothers, overworked and famished, had no milk to nurse them, and for this reason, while I was in Cuba, 7,000 children died in three months. . .

7 I believe the above clearly demonstrates that the Indians were totally deprived of their freedom and were put in the harshest, fiercest, most horrible servitude and captivity which no one who has not seen it can understand. Even beasts enjoy more freedom when they are allowed to graze in the fields. . .