Josh Horwitz: NRA Get Out the Vote Campaign Features Proponents of Political Violence
filed in Daily Buzz News on Feb.22, 2012
“Anyone who has thought about it realizes that liberty and equality are antithetical concepts … Equality is biologically impossible, and liberty is only obtainable in homogeneous populations very thinly spread.” – Former NRA Board Member (and ardent insurrectionist) Jeff Cooper
Last week, the National Rifle Association (NRA) launched its “Trigger the Vote” campaign, a superficially non-partisan get-out-the vote effort. The ad campaign features two men who sit on the organization’s Board of Directors: aging hard-rocker Ted Nugent and actor R. Lee Ermey of “Full Metal Jacket” fame; and NRA celebrity spokesman and martial artist/actor Chuck Norris. Both Norris and Nugent have publicly endorsed Republican candidates for the 2012 presidential elections (Newt Gingrich and Rick Perry, respectively).
There’s nothing more American than a voter registration campaign. “Trigger the Vote,” however, is marred by the violent and insurrectionist rhetoric its three spokespersons have trumpeted since the election of Democratic President Barack Obama in 2008. The process of voting as a catalyst for peaceful change in public policy is sacrosanct to how our representative democracy operates. Ermey, Nugent and Norris have all made statements contrary to these ideals, however, going so far as to suggest that if ballots don’t work, bullets will. They have also made it clear that their political tent is only open to certain Americans, and that others should stay clear.
