Opinion: Boy am I glad that I didn’t grow up a Chuck Norris fan!
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Otherwise, I’d be undergoing the trauma associated with discovering that your man-of-steel childhood hero is really a blathering hack. First, there was his light-hearted TV spot endorsing Republican Mike Huckabee that played on Norris’ martial arts cred. Now we have his most recent rambling column on illegal immigration, which reads as if Norris were a guest on Art Bell’s paranormal-themed radio show (for a real treat, skip down to his assertion that the federal government’s shoot-to-kill security for Area 51 provides a decent model for patrolling the 2,000-mile U.S.-Mexico border).
Finding an excerpt from Norris’ column that best encapsulates the paranoid wing of the restrictionist movement is a tall order, as every paragraph is a pretty good candidate. This one, however, needs no summary:
Unfortunately, illegal transport of immigrants, terrorists and other contraband is only going to worsen, especially with the possible creation of a North American Union (with Canada and Mexico) and the so-called NAFTA Superhighways. Unless of course we stop it! (How is it that we can militarily overthrow a government like Iraq, yet we can’t militarily keep illegalities from crossing our borders?) As Mike Huckabee still says, ‘If the government can’t track illegals, then let’s outsource the job to UPS or Fed-Ex.’
You couldn’t write a better caricature of the anti-immigrant Chicken Littles. Of course, Norris is dead serious.