Saturday, July 28, 2012

Chicken Sandwiches and Jackboots

The recent dust-up over comments by the CEO of Chick-fil-A on gay marriage have provided a good test case regarding the type society we are vs. the type society some would wish us to be.  Liberals constantly crow about "tolerance" and "diversity", but their walk almost never keeps pace with their talk.  After Truett Cathy surprised absolutely no one who knows anything about him by saying he believes marriage to be defined as one man/one woman, the left went into high hysteria with a few mayors suggested that Chick-fil-A not even look at their cities for possible expansion.  That those mayors can be supported by anyone should be frightening, but in this age of speech codes, it isn't. 

Last I checked, Cathy had a Constitutional right to his opinion.  There is no corresponding right that forces me to agree with him, nor is there one that inoculates him from potential backlash.  In this case, 'backlash' means anyone offended by his remarks can stop buying Chick-fil-A's products.  In a free society, it does not - or should not - mean that elected officials get to use veiled threats of govt action in order to force businesses into ideological compliance.  If a city has the legal authority to stop a business from building because its CEO opposes gay marriage, then nothing can stop another city from similar sanctions against a CEO who, say, opposes abortion or favors gun control.  And, that's the thing about the left.

Liberals believe that diversity is a group of folks who look different but march in ideological lockstep, and tolerance is everyone agreeing with even the stupidest ideas.  Wrong on both counts.  Diversity means accepting that individuals are different and and will have varying opinions on a range of topics.  Tolerance means understanding that not everyone has to agree with you and that a person having a different viewpoint is not inherently evil or motivated by sinister forces.  It just means that person has his/her own opinion.

We get into (potentially) serious trouble when govt believes that its role is mandating thought and what the mayors of Boston, Chicago, and San Francisco, among others, are doing is exactly that.  Each has said that Chick-fil-A may not be allowed to build in their cities because some elected official - that would be a person who works for us - does not like what a CEO believes.  To call this a slippery slope insults the term; it is a steep precipice that can only produce bad results.

There are some in this country, okay there are many, who hate the concept of individual liberty or of individual anything, for that matter.  They would prefer that we become a Borg-like collective where everyone is assigned a specific set of thoughts and then does what our betters dictate.  That sort of approach has been tried in numerous places, always with bad outcomes.  Liberty means the freedom to think and act for yourself, and to understate that statements can have consequences.  Some folks may boycott Chick-fil-A just as surely as folks who agree with Cathy may double down on doing business with the chain.  That is how a free society works.   

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