Ted Cruz's Fundie Dad Thinks God Did Bang-Up Job Writing U.S. Constitution

And that's how America was made!

As we all know, Ted Cruz is running to be America's Top Preacherman, explaining how he'll save American Christians from being sent to jail for saying Jesus's name, and he'll also protect all the Jewish churches from homosexuals, too. He'll even uphold the Biblical value of killing people, unlike that wimp the pope. And as you probably also know, Ted Cruz's daddy, Rafael Cruz Sr., is quite the celebrity among the Bible-beating set all on his own, and received direct word from the Almighty that Ted was destined to be president. For whatever that's worth -- God has a habit of telling several people to run every four years, and we think He just doesn't keep track. People pray and ask Him if they should run, and He mutters, "Yeah, sure, whatever," while looking through the JC Whitney catalog for parts for His '58 Impala.

What we're getting at here is that at long last, Rafael Cruz pere has published a book of his very own sincerely held beliefs about God, America, and why God's America has to be more Godly. Titled  A Time for Action: Empowering the Faithful to Reclaim America,  it sounds like a wonderfully insane bit of Dominionist propaganda about making the United States the theocracy its founders never intended, but since there's no cheap e-book edition, we won't be reading the whole darn thing. Happily, the nice folks at RightWingWatch have bought a copy from WND books (who else would you want publishing it?), and shared some highlights with us. It sounds like a really exciting read, from the generic fundamentalist title (possibly generated at random) to its creative interpretations of the Constitution, which of course was divinely inspired and only one step below holy writ, except when the Supreme Court interprets it all wrong and lets homos get married.

For starters, it's got an introduction by Glenn Beck, which ought to be good for huge sales already, in which Beck praises Rafael Cruz as "one of the greatest freedom fighters of his generation” and a man who "will do anything to protect and preserve freedom” (but he won't do that ).

The text of the book sounds like pretty standard Culture Wars fare, with the usual claims that the Democratic party "promotes an ungodly socialist agenda that is destroying America" and a warning that far too many Republicans are willing to go along with all that America-destroying, which, if you're reading Wonkette, you're already soaking in. Along the way, Cruz also treats us to a possibly fanciful account of his days as a resistance fighter against Fulgencio Batista in the '50s, a personal history that the New York Times reports may be more tall tale than memoir, according to those who knew him back in Cuba. That might give us some insight into young Ted's talent for drama and self-aggrandizement, at least.

There's also a lot of America Is A Christian Nation stuff, like this insight that Cruz reached, apparently without consulting any actual histories of the Constitutional Convention:

I believe without a shadow of a doubt that the reason the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States have lasted over two centuries is that they were divinely inspired and then written by men who had spent time on their knees. These were men of God seeking revelation from God, and that’s what He gave them. Of course, these two documents aren’t equivalent to the Word of God, but God certainly directed the men who crafted them.

[contextly_sidebar id="9lG2OKkAwRppRm1tHQCtMMk5AXvg5gZ2"]We'll confess, we're really a sucker for that "on their knees" stuff, because we have the mind of a snickering 14-year-old. That's another favorite phrase of Ted, who said at Kevin Swanson's Kill-the-Gays evangelical wackofest that "any president who doesn’t begin every day on his knees isn’t fit to be commander-in-chief of this country." So either a devout Christian or someone who starts the day by giving a beej.

When it comes to the place of religion in public life, Cruz is in favor of total Christian control, since how can we have a Godly country if it's not enforced?

In no way, shape, or form was Jefferson implying that the church should be restricted from exerting an influence upon society. On the contrary, the Bible tells us that we are the salt of the earth and light of the world…Doesn’t that suggest that our influence should touch every area of society – our families, the media, sports, arts and entertainment, education, business, and government?

We like that seamless transition from Jefferson to the Bible there. That's some pretty impressive logic, as Obi-Wan always told us. Not only were Jefferson and the Bible best buds (Cruz presumably glosses over the minor detail that Jefferson rewrote the New Testament to take out all the miracles and godstuff), we also learn that TJ was perfectly cool with theocracy, as long as there was no single established church. His "Wall of Separation" between church and state, Cruz insists, "was only referring to a one-way wall." If Jefferson had really meant that, wouldn't he have called it a valve, not a wall?

There's a lot more in the book, like how every Democratic president ever reminds Rafael of Fidel Castro, as well as an appendix that explains how net neutrality and progressive taxation come straight from the Communist Manifesto, but our brain is still trying to figure out how a "one-way wall" would work, and we're worried that Donald Trump may try to build one.

[ RightWingWatch via Joe. My. God. / NYT ]