Keith Self Is Brave Enough to Fear Muslims, but Not Brave Enough to Debate Evan Hunt
The congressman protecting Collin County from halal mortgages apparently needs protection from a microphone
Evan Hunt has issued a simple challenge to Congressman Keith Self: stop hiding and debate him in front of the people of Texas’ 3rd Congressional District.
Hunt is not some random internet heckler. He is a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel, a combat aviator and a decorated twenty-year veteran now running against Self as the Democratic nominee. While Hunt has been holding public town halls and inviting questions, he says Self has dodged a debate for more than a year.
This is strange because Keith Self is usually not shy.
He is not shy when the subject is Muslims. He is not shy when immigrants can be described as an “invasion.” He was certainly not shy when he deliberately called Representative Sarah McBride “Mr. McBride” during a congressional hearing, repeated it after being challenged, and then slammed the gavel and adjourned the meeting.
A retired Green Beret defeated by a pronoun.
Self also co-founded the “Sharia-Free America Caucus,” because apparently Congress had finished dealing with health care, housing prices, infrastructure, veterans’ benefits and everything else.
The caucus has grown to sixty-eight members. Self says “Christian values form the foundation of our nation” and portrays Sharia as a growing threat to the Constitution. His earlier announcement described the caucus as a mission to “save Western Civilization.”
Save it from what, exactly?
Muslims praying five times a day? Giving to charity? Avoiding interest? Eating halal chicken with alarming constitutional intent?
Sharia is the broad religious and moral path Muslims use to guide prayer, fasting, charity, family life, business ethics and personal conduct. American law remains American law. Reuters found no evidence that any mainstream Muslim organization is trying to replace the Constitution with Islamic law.
Keith Self is defending America from Muslims obeying the Constitution.
It is like forming a Kosher-Free America Caucus because someone saw a rabbi checking the ingredients on a hot dog and assumed the Talmud was about to annex Plano.
Self’s latest contribution to limited government was demanding that the IRS and Justice Department investigate the East Plano Islamic Center based on allegations contained in an Oversight Project report. This comes after the Justice Department already closed an earlier civil-rights investigation of the development associated with EPIC without filing charges or a lawsuit. Developers have repeatedly said the community will welcome people of every faith and comply with state and federal law.
Nothing says “religious freedom” like asking federal agencies to crawl through a mosque’s records until somebody finds a suspicious falafel receipt.
Then there is Keith Self’s unusual relationship with Joseph Goebbels quotations.
To be fair, Self was not praising Goebbels when he quoted the Nazi propaganda minister during a 2025 congressional hearing. He was using the quote to accuse someone else of authoritarian thinking. Context matters.
Unfortunately, it was not his first Goebbels recital.
Back in 2010, while campaigning as Collin County judge, Self also opened a political message with a quotation attributed to Goebbels and defended the decision when criticized.
Most politicians manage to complete their entire careers without developing a recurring Joseph Goebbels citation habit.
At this point, Self’s staff should install a warning on his computer:
You appear to be quoting a Nazi again. Would you like to reconsider?
This is the deeper problem with Keith Self’s politics. Fear is easy to sell. The frightened ego loves an enemy because an enemy allows it to feel righteous without becoming just. Muslims become a threat. Immigrants become an invading army. A transgender colleague becomes a target for humiliation. Every human difference becomes another emergency requiring Keith Self to appear on television and save Western civilization before lunch.
But put him on a stage with another veteran, give the audience access to both microphones and allow constituents to ask follow-up questions?
Suddenly General Courage has entered witness protection.
Texas’ 3rd District has been held by Republicans since 1968. That history should make a public debate more important, not less. No congressional seat belongs permanently to one party, one politician or one frightened religious faction.
Hunt has asked for a venue holding more than 250 people so Self can hear how loudly the crowd responds. I suggest 500 seats, two lecterns, independent fact-checking and no emergency gavel within Keith’s reach.
Congressman Self, you found time to establish a national caucus against your Muslim neighbors. You found time to summon the IRS and Justice Department against their mosque. You found time to insult a colleague and quote Joseph Goebbels twice.
Surely you can find ninety minutes to defend your record before the people paying your salary.
Debate Evan Hunt.
Or rename the campaign Keith Self-Preservation.
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Keith Self seems very comfortable confronting imaginary threats and remarkably uncomfortable confronting an actual opponent. That is usually how fear-based politics works: create enemies who cannot answer back, call cruelty courage, and avoid any setting where facts might interrupt the performance. A public debate would give voters the chance to compare records, judgment, and character without the safety of slogans or a gavel. If Self truly believes Muslims, immigrants, and transgender Americans are the great dangers facing Collin County, he should be willing to defend that claim in front of the people he represents.
Well he can’t very well rebrand the campaign as “Keith Self-Awareness” now, can he?
For the non-racists in the audience, “Western” = “White”. But since you can’t say that anymore without people getting all uppity about it, they had to encode the message so that it’s not obvious to anyone without the Captain Amerikkka Decoder Ring. But once you have that cipher key, everything else they’d say starts to make sense. Okay, “make sense” may be overstating it, but at least you can discern the intent.
We’ve been through a Sharia Scare™ before when Sarah Palin was still trying to be relevant, and this reboot doesn’t really offer anything new. In fact *nothing* about the underlying racism, xenophobia and misogyny is actually new — Trump just cranked the volume to eleven and tore off the knob. And tore down all the guardrails that used to (kinda) keep the country between the ditches.
This is how I get through my workouts on days when I’d rather not. I remind myself that we’ve seen all of this before, but it’s going to require a lot more strength to fight back this time. And MAGA doesn’t care if you’re tired, or your shoulder hurts or you’d rather be doing something else at 5:30 in the morning. They’re not going to stop, so you can’t either. Because you’re not going to get Nixon back. That was amateur hour.