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Angry lefty journo doesn't dispute (1) Obama equated ISIS murders to Crusades & Inquisition (2) ISIS uses same arg. https://t.co/lDVMSCBpvf — Ted Cruz (@tedcruz) November 21, 2015

Ah, nice to have you in the shebeen, Tailgunner, you five-fingered shitehawk.

And, for the record…

1) Here is the complete passage from the president's remarks at the National Prayer Breakfast.

Humanity has been grappling with these questions throughout human history. And lest we get on our high horse and think this is unique to some other place, remember that during the Crusades and the Inquisition, people committed terrible deeds in the name of Christ. In our home country, slavery and Jim Crow all too often was justified in the name of Christ. Michelle and I returned from India—an incredible, beautiful country, full of magnificent diversity—but a place where, in past years, religious faiths of all types have, on occasion, been targeted by other peoples of faith, simply due to their heritage and their beliefs—acts of intolerance that would have shocked Gandhiji, the person who helped to liberate that nation.

And here's what you said on Friday night.

"It's important to understand, number one, that President Obama today is serving as an apologist for radical Islamic terrorism. Now, what does an apologist mean, because you're right, that is a serious charge. An apologist is someone who gives a rationalization, a justification, tries to explain it. I remember last year I was at the National Prayer Breakfast, and it was the day after, you'll recall, the Jordanian pilot was lit on fire by ISIS. And President Obama stood in front of the National Prayer Breakfast and said, well, yes, ISIS has done some terrible things, but Christians and Jews have also done some bad things. And then he invokes the Crusades and the Inquisition. Now, last I checked, both of those ended hundreds and hundreds of years ago. I don't think it's asking too much to ask the president to stay in the current millennium. And that is exactly the argument the terrorists make."

Now, last I checked, the struggle against Jim Crow occurred during the last 50 years, and that's assuming it ever really disappeared, which is something with which your party has yet to come to grips. How do you know when Ted Cruz is slinging bullshit? His ellipses are moving.

2) As to repeating Daesh's arguments, well, there were seven Christians on that stage, all of whom believe that we are in a Clash Of Civilization with some tech-savvy hoodlums, and all of whom believe in the political salience of the return of the 12th Imam. And it's not the president that's turning a group of vicious thugs into the vanguard of a worldwide caliphate—which, by the way, is exactly the way they think of themselves. It's you guys.

But, as I said, it's terrific to have you as a new patron here. Somebody get the Tailgunner a pint.

Anyway, one thing that dawned on me at the Family Leader Forum the other night is that it is now a capital mistake to believe that conservative extremism is in any way incoherent or divided in the most basic articles of its faith. What once was considered beyond the pale now has set up shop in the town square. What were once backburner reactionary notions are now absolute litmus tests. And I'm not talking about individual issues, like reproductive choice or the bloated military budget, I'm talking about a fundamental philosophy of how the Republic is supposed to function. And there's no camouflage left to it.

For example, the Republican party is now a pure Tenther party. There was a time when Tentherism was a fringe movement within the party. Its devotion to states rights once was a more general attitude that was applied to specific policies and programs that were unpopular to the rising conservative mind. It was a useful tool to be used to monkeywrench certain liberal priorities at the state level. Now, there is a general agreement among the remaining presidential candidates that the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution is completely dispositive in resolving almost all of the questions regarding the role of the federal government. (That it is an unspoken truth within conservatism that the federal government is inherently inept is a theological belief that dates from Saint Ronald Reagan's First Inaugural Address.) Tangled up in this are all sorts of longtime conservative policy prescriptions, many of which, like block-granting federal money to the states, have been tried and failed. But the now-dominant Tenther philosophy is drawn from a view of the Constitution that can best be described as Lochner-Scalian—a combination of a pre-New Deal view of the federal government and the kind of convenient "strict constructionism" beloved of Antonin (Short-Time) Scalia. Indeed, as part of his stump speech, Marco Rubio regularly wishes for nine Scalias on the Court. He also denies that the Constitution is in any way a living document. It is what it says it is, although he's willing to accept the fact that the amendments count, too, including, presumably, the 13th, 14th and 15th.

On Friday night, every single candidate expressed the view that the Supreme Court's role in constitutional questions is largely an advisory one. Mike Huckabee stated flatly that a president simply should ignore Supreme Court decisions with which the president disagrees. Naturally, because this was the hay-shaking Bible-banging crowd, the discussion took place within the context of the Supreme Court's decision in favor of marriage equality earlier this year.

Rubio sidestepped a little by arguing that, "Everybody does have the right to be treated equally, but that is not the debate. The debate is how do you define a very specific institution, an institution that's been defined this way for the entire existence of human history."

(Leave aside for the moment that Rubio is simply, empirically wrong on that point.)

"This is not a debate about discrimination. This is debate about how do you define the institution of marriage, and the efforts by some to change that definition. That is not about discrimination. That is a definitional debate."

(Rather like the "definitional debate" about marriage that was argued in Loving v. Virginia, I'd imagine, or the "definitional debate" about American personhood in Dred Scott.)

But the real hash got made by Carly Fiorina.

"I think everyone on this stage would agree that government should not discriminate," she said. "When government discriminates in the bestowal of benefits, or in how it treats its citizens, that's a problem. That's a different issue from the definition of marriage, and what the Supreme Court did was say we are going to decide what the definition of marriage is. It is also true that there has been this reinterpretation, if you will, of many aspects of the Constitution. Our Founders, as Marco so eloquently said, believed that the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, the right to reach your full potential, the right to find and use your god-given gifts came from god and could not be taken away by man or government. The Constitution was written, in no small measure, as a measure of prevention of the abuse of power by government. So, many will say that the Constitution guarantees this right, or this right, or this right. It guarantees some rights, the very basic rights. But, fundamentally, the Constitution enumerates powers of government to prevent the abuse of power by government."

If you can figure out where, say, the public accommodation provisions of the various Civil Rights Acts fit into that constitutional paradigm, you're a helluva lot smarter than I am. These are no longer fringe views. They are the essence of modern Republican party political thought, and they brook no deviation from any politician who wants to succeed as a Republican. (Here's where I point out that Louisiana just elected a pro-gun-rights, anti-choice Democratic candidate to be its governor.) There is a "definitional debate" that is going on right now. What is being defined is the country itself.

Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

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