Chuck Norris Should Shut Up About Hate Crimes

by Michael Jones · 2009-05-20 09:24:00 UTC
Topics:

Chuck Norris

Chuck Norris may grind his coffee with his teeth and boil the water with his own rage, but the man doesn't know a thing about hate crimes.  Which is why he should really stop talking about them.

It's one thing to be against expanded federal hate crimes legislation protecting sexual orientation and gender identity.  It's another thing to completely lie and spread misinformation about federal hate crimes legislation, which is exactly what Walker Texas Ranger is doing.  As Media Matters for America points out, Norris wrote two columns in the past month, falsely claiming that federal hate crimes legislation would protect pedophiles.  It's a scare tactic that lots of people are using to fight back against the Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act (at one point in time called the Matthew Shepard Act), but it's a line that's totally false and dangerous.

But Norris didn't stop there.  He actually made the argument that if Congress passes expanded hate crimes legislation, and President Obama signs it, then the U.S. will be comparable to Iraq under Saddam Hussein's rule. Per MM :

Norris wrote in his May 19 column that Saddam Hussein punished "people who merely spoke out against him, his rule or his politics" and later added: "Offensive speech being punishable by law? But it might not be that far off for America, especially if the course of free speech continues on its present track -- a path of progressive restrictions, both from our government and our culture."

Maybe Norris found success hitting these "culture war" issues while he was campaigning for Mike Huckabee in 2008.  But now Norris is really going off the deep end.  It should have been a lesson that someone as conservative as Huckabee couldn't win the GOP primary in 2008.  And with hate crimes, Norris is going to be on the wrong side of history on this issue.

Michael Jones is a Change.org Editor. He has worked in the field of human rights communications for a decade, most recently for Harvard Law School.
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