Early in Ted Cruz's campaign for the U.S. Senate, he released a campaign ad featuring an idyllic shot of him and his father walking on a sun-dappled path shaded by live oaks. His father, young Cruz explains in a voiceover, escaped torture in Cuba by fleeing to Texas, where he came to embody the American Dream that his son now hopes to protect.

The real Rafael Cruz -- the one who regaled young Ted with dinner-table tales of his time in Cuba and the one who delivered a veritable call to revolution Saturday at the Family Leadership Summit in Ames, Iowa -- isn't nearly so serene.

Cruz's speech was a fiery one that began by tracing parallels between President Barack Obama and the early days of Fidel Castro ("That same man that had been talking bout 'hope' and 'change,' now he was talking about how the rich were evil, how they oppressed the poor, and about the need to redistribute the wealth."). It went on to explain that the Pilgrims survived only because they abandoned their misguided communist scheme in favor of a free enterprise system, then blasted the Superme Court's decision to remove prayer from schools. "As a result, teen pregnancy skyrocketed, promiscuity skyrocketed, vandalism skyrocketed, dropout rates of high school skyrocketed."

Which brought him to the Obama administration.

When you hear this attack on religion, it's not really an attack on religion. The fundamental basis is this: socialism requires that government becomes your God. That's why they have to destroy the concept of God. They have to destroy all loyalties except loyalty to the government. That's what's behind homosexual marriage. It's really more about the destruction of the traditional family than about exalting homosexuality because you need to destroy also loyalty to the family. Our lives are under attack We already saw what is happening with abortion. The same thing is happening on the other end with Obamacare. Obamacare is going to destroy the elderly by denying care by even perhaps denying treatment to people who are in catastrophic sicknesses.

But Rafael wasn't done yet. He warned his audience that the Obama administration "has both their hands in your pocket. They're going to take everything you have and the money in your wallet is worth less and less and less every day, so your treasure is going to be evaporated."

He then urged them to take an oath. It sounded a lot like a call to armed revolt:

I pledge my life. I pledge my fortune. I pledge my sacred honor. to do everything I humanly can to restore this country to that shining city on the hill.

You can see where the younger Cruz gets it. Watch the father's full speech below, via The Iowa Republican: