Chuck Norris & Wife Sheena: If Evangelicals Stay Home This Election, The Country Is Lost

Tough ad. The "Thousand years of darkness" has obvious resonances for anyone who believes the Book of Revelation, but, as Sheena Norris cites it, the usage as a political trope comes from Ronald Reagan's 1964 "A Time for Choosing" speech.

It's all good reading, but here's the last part, containing the line. Note well the part I'm bolding.

Are you willing to spend time studying the issues, making yourself aware, and then conveying that information to family and friends? Will you resist the temptation to get a government handout for your community? Realize that the doctor's fight against socialized medicine is your fight. We can't socialize the doctors without socializing the patients. Recognize that government invasion of public power is eventually an assault upon your own business. If some among you fear taking a stand because you are afraid of reprisals from customers, clients, or even government, recognize that you are just feeding the crocodile hoping he'll eat you last.

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.

They say the world has become too complex for simple answers. They are wrong. There are no easy answers, but there are simple answers. We must have the courage to do what we know is morally right. 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."

You and I have a rendezvous with destiny. 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.

You can listen to Reagan himself speak the line here.

I didn't know about this ad until Keith Olbermann and Media Matters told me it was a "dog whistle."

I actually like the ad a lot. I guess because it's racist.

posted by Ace at 03:15 PM

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