More Republican madness, courtesy of Matthew Cobb, who found this on Twi**er. I do NOT think it’s a joke; have a look at his other tw**ts and judge for yourself:
That reminds me of the old quote, “If English was good enough for Jesus, it’s good enough for me,” variously attributed to the benighted (including Michele Bachmann); but the quote is fabricated.
In case you’re wondering who old Grover is, he has a long Wikipedia page detailing his conservative politics (in case you hadn’t guessed he’s a Republican), PuffHo has called him “The most hated man in Washington D.C.,” and here’s his Twi**er descriptor:
I don’t doubt Norquist is a gun rights guy, but I think the tweet is meant to be taken ironically.
Yes, even conservatives have a sense of humor.
Considering he also wrote another similar in tone (https://twitter.com/GroverNorquist/status/683643762791321600), it’s probably the right interpretation.
“I don’t doubt Norquist is a gun rights guy, but I think the tweet is meant to be taken ironically.”
Can we guess what percentage of the likes, and retw**ts recognized the irony? I guess 25%.
There’s a bumper sticker I’ve seen that reads:
If you can read this, thank a teacher. If you can read this in English, thank a soldier.
WTF??? WHAT??? Are we supposed to think that, if our soldiers were not busy invading other countries, THEY would be invading US and passing laws requiring us to all speak Farsi or Korean like some bad Red Dawn dsytopia???
It is likely referring to the World Wars.
The alternative would be reading it in Nahuatl, Cree or Washo?
Agree with your sentiment overall, but to be fair, if we had no soldiers at all, we might be speaking Canadian. 😉
Which we all know is a dialect of French 😉
cr
Only in Quebec
🙂
When I was taking French evening classes we had a standing joke (usually relating to importations like ‘le weekend’ or ‘le football’) – “except in Canada”.
cr
“like some bad Red Dawn dsytopia???”
Is there any such thing as a “good” Red Dawn dystopia? 😉
To be fair, they do say we are two nations separated by a common language.
However, his comment that an armed people is a free people seems to me to be the exact opposite of reality. I daresay the following is based on perception only, but I would be nervous living in a society where everyone passing me in the street has a right to be carrying a concealed weapon, where almost all criminals carry guns, where mass murders by gun are a daily occurrence. And so on…
That isn’t freedom, rather shackles.
They also say that “an armed society is a polite society.”
2 Concealed Carry Holders Kill Each Other In Road Rage Incident
hat tip PZ.
Actually, I’ve always believed an “armed society” is a terrified society. Still do.
Sadly a “terrified society” describes modern America all too well.
And they are terrified because of the daily misinformation doled out to them by the Right Wing Media such as Fox not News and the Repugnants in congress not forgetting that Beacon of Rationality the NRA
Apparently, an armed society is a dead society.
“An armed society is a polite society. Manners are good when one may have to back up his acts with his life.” – Robert A. Heinlein
Just in case you are curious about where this quote originated.
Yes, I think I knew that. I know Heinlein and his wife were very kind to Philip K. Dick, which is nice (though Dick didn’t share Heinlein’s philosophy). But Heinlein was still a libertarian idiot.
Did you ever read his novel ‘Beyond This Horizon’? A libertarian “utopia” in which everyone carries a gun all the time (except for those who wear a “peace brassard” instead to show that they are unwilling to take part in duels); with smaller guns, capable of fewer shots, for the ladies. There is even a gunfight in a restaurant to which the other diners “urbanely” pay no attention.
I read it when I was in my teens, and was puzzled as to why anyone would want to live in a society where carrying a lethal weapon was the norm, and shoot-outs could take place in restaurants without anyone batting an eyelid. Then I encountered the word “libertarianism”…
“smaller guns, capable of fewer shots, for the ladies.”
Heaven forbid that the ladies should ever be able to outgun the men!
(And I thought one of the arguments for guns was that they were the equaliser. Ah well, another romantic idea bites the dust…)
cr
As I recall (it’s been many years since I read the book) the guns were some kind of laser; big macho men carried guns that were good for twenty or thirty discharges, whereas women carried smaller, more refined “ladies’ guns” in their purses that were good for only six discharges.
The hero of the novel upset the applecart by going back to using a Colt .45 with real bullets that actually made holes in people – it was considered most unsporting by his opponents!
Didn’t Nancy Reagan carry a “little bitty” gun in her purse?
So the laser guns didn’t actually kill people – or did they?
cr
There’s a difference between being polite because of respect for others and being polite due to fear of death.
And this is a bad thing?
[/cynicism]
cr
I’ve always been of the opinion that being rude is not justification for others to blow your head off.
The incident referred to in the PZ Myers post is actually more than two years old, but it does illustrate the problem with people carrying guns: if two people with guns have an argument and the situation escalates, somebody’s gonna die.
Actually, that applies if only one person has a gun. About the same time, there was an incident in a cinema where a person with a gun complained about another person who was texting on his mobile phone before the film started. The texter refused to back down, so the man with a gun shot him dead.
http://edition.cnn.com/2014/01/13/justice/florida-movie-theater-shooting/
Love this shit. Here’s my fave creationist quote since the ‘how come there’s still murnkees…'(though this one obviously made up by some wag):
“If the earth’s 4.5 billion years old, then how come it’s only 2016, huh?”
I like “If God made us out of dust, why is there still dust?”
And then there’s the important question, when god said ‘let there be light’ who was he speaking to?
The lighting tech’.
Edison ?
Thor?
If god made women out of men’s ribs, how are men still able to breathe.
There’s a joke about suffocating Jewish mothers in there, struggling to get out.
If Jesus died and went to heaven, how come he’s mowing my lawn tomorrow?
From his Wikipedia page;
“In 2004, at age 48, he married a Palestinian Muslim[64] named Samah Alrayyes”.
Now I’ll be not that surprised to learn that his Wiki page has been vandalised, but if this is true, Mr. Norquist certainly doesn’t tick all the wing nut boxes.
Norquist is about as an arch conservative as you can find. For a time his anti-tax crusade was so powerful that almost all Republican politicians had to kiss his feet. But his deviation from conservative orthodoxy by marrying a Muslim has earned him the wrath of the kookiest collection of right-wingers around. See this article from right wing watch.
http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/grover-norquist-secret-muslim-brotherhood-agent-conspiracy-returns-just-time-cpac
Keep in mind that the people described in this article would most likely have influence in a future Republican administration. This is quite scary.
I have a sister-in-law who thinks Grover is a mole for the Muslim Brotherhood. She also thinks Anthony Weiner, married to Huma Abedin, is a mole for the MB. How you get there I’ll never know.
Relatives are the best, aren’t they?
I didn’t think I’d ever get to travel to another planet, but then I visited my relatives over the holidays.
Your rellies are Klingons?
cr
“…if this is true, Mr. Norquist certainly doesn’t tick all the wing nut boxes.”
True. But when you think about it, a sincere Muslim woman, taught to be polite, subservient to men, and seen but not heard, is just the sort of woman many conservative Christians aspire to either marry (if they’re men) or be (if they’re women).
I laughed so hard my chest felt like I got punched by GGG. And to think he is and has been the most important person in the United States for 20 odd years and why we cant have nice things.
Absolutely shocking. ‘An armed people is a free people.’ From one grammar Nazi to the genuine article. x
Proof the Americans actually don’t speak English?! 🙂
As for Norquist, he’s a fu*kwit from way back. He’s the guy who got all the Republican candidates to sign a “no tax increase” pledge in the run up to the 2008 election. He made some pretty serious political threats against those who didn’t sign if I remember correctly.
I’ve seen him on both CNN and Fox, though not for a while. He’s nasty. If he’s the most hated man in Washington, I’d say it’s well deserved.
I thought Garrison Keillor wrote Grover Norquist. Isn’t he an anagram? x
Perhaps you were thinking of Governor Squirt?
V. good! You beat me, hands down! x
Hilarious!
“People,” of course, as a collective noun, may be treated as either singular or plural.
Yeah, the “are” sounds better to me, but then the singular article “a” messes it up in the original tweet.
I would probably rewrite the sentence.
PuffHo has called him “The most hated man in Washington D.C.,”
Eh. I would think Ted Cruz is giving him some competition. Everybody hates Ted Cruz: The most unpopular man in Congress!
Up to now, Norquist has had one thing Cruz doesn’t: Actual power. I don’t think that will change after the next election, either.
Heh. I watched an episode of Cheers last night in which Woody assumed that we must have lost a war, otherwise why were we speaking English.
I remember the Daily Show segment where Norquist revealed that he came up with his tax pledge idea when he was in 7th grade.
This is hilarious for so many reasons, not least of which is that we were “armed” in the form of militias, which, after all, is all that the Second Amendment is about. As Garry Wills pointed out, the British didn’t march on the homes of brave individuals hoarding guns. They marched on the armories of Lexington and Williamsburg, where the militias’ arms were stored.
Though I wonder if Norquit’s aware that the national language was nearly French, not English. Somehow, I doubt he is.
Or, had history deigned it so, we all could be speaking Spanish or Russian or, maybe, Scandinavian, or one or more of any number of native American languages.
conservatives have a very limited sense of humour and are unable to laugh at themselves
religion hampers intelligence and mental health
lack of humour is not only a social skill deficit but a sign of mental illness
He seems more of a libertarian than a republican especially when considering a quote like: “I don’t want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub.”
Either way, he’s a dick.
“He seems more of a libertarian than a republican…”
The Libertarian Party has never been large enough to have any influence, and the Republican Party invited in the most wacko form of Libertarians in their “Tea Party” gambit, so that the distinction is not a clear one.
An autocrat it seems, give or take a joke or two, poor young “ladies”. :-/
Oh my Darwin… there is just no end to stupid.
Right On, Robin
Shhhh, don’t give them ideas!
Norquist’s claim to fame is to having almost all the Republican congress-critters’ nuts in a lockbox with his “no-tax pledge.” He’s not primarily known as a gun nut, but that shouldn’t surprise us either.
I’ve used the “we’d all be speaking English” line myself, in terms of what would have happened if Lafayette hadn’t have had George Washington’s back at Yorktown (as a play off the crack you hear from some Americans about the French speaking German if the US hadn’t entered War 2).
I’ve got to think Norquist was using the line ironically, too. Not even your average rightwinger is that flat-out dumb.
“…the crack you hear from some Americans about the French speaking German if the US hadn’t entered War 2”
I am reminded of John Oliver, who added to that, reminding us Americans that “if it wasn’t for the French, you’d still be speaking English. PROPERLY.”
Ah to think, if Gen. Cornwallis hadn’t screwed the pooch, we’d all be speaking with posh Jeremy Irons-style accents now …
Referring to the Norman invasion?
He may have meant we’d be speaking English instead of “American” which I’ve heard it called by many.
I think you are correct on this one. Norguist and his breed would say that we Yanks speak American here in the colonies while over in the U.K. they speak British. Wonder what those Native Americans were saying besides please give me a gun.
No, in the UK they speak *English*. I have no idea what ‘British’ is. 😉
cr
An armed people is a people prepared for civil war.
Sub
Norquist has tweeted essentially the same thing about Americans speaking English at least twice before– on May 18 and November 21 of last year. I gather he considers it some sort of witticism, as the historical error in has claim has been pointed out to him repeatedly. I’m not sure what the intended humor is.