Attempt to Bully Wegman's Grocery Chain Into Dropping Trump Wine from Racks Backfires: Wine Sells Out, and Wegman's Stands Up to Bullies

Corporations always seem to think these pressure-groups are powerful dragons.

They're not. They're shadow-puppets on the wall, made by small, weak hands.

The most important political idea that no one's exploring is forming a 501(c)(3) which would have three missions:

1. To spread the idea that tolerance for ideas you don't like is itself brave and virtuous and absolutely fundamental to a free and functioning republic;

2. To criticize and condemn the social justice bullies who wish to bully people into shutting up or ostracizing others; and

3. To stick up for and praise people, institutions, and business that stand up for the right of citizens and businesses alike to go about their daily lives without being bullied every five seconds.

When the bullies go after institutions and companies, there's usually no one on the side arguing "A person shouldn't be fired just because he has political views some pressure group doesn't like" or "A company's first business is just serving its clientele's commercial needs, not pandering to the manifold needs of cultural and political affirmation."

It's not that there are so many people who are zealous bullies. There's a number of them, but this number is not overwhelming.

It's just that there is no damn organized resistance to them.

If ten weaklings show up to pick a fight and there's no one else there to fight back against them, then the ten weaklings win the fight.

You can't beat something with nothing.

This 501(c)(3) would have to be bipartisan and defend left-wingers whose scalps are hunted by right-wing mobs as well as those harassed by the left-wing mobs. However, this is no terrible thing because:

1. People with truth on their side should have no need of coercing people into accepting it, and

2. Rightwingers just don't do this as much as leftwingers, which is probably because

3. This almost never works for the rightwing scalp-hunters anyway, because the entire leftwing media rises up to defend the targets of rightwing scalp-hunters.

So we're giving away nothing at all, even for those people who like the idea of hunting leftwing scalps. You never win in your scalp-hunts; wouldn't it at least be nice to have an organization providing a defense against scalp-hunters, as leftwings do from their friends (and lovers) in the media?

By the way, this always comes up, so let me say it again: Yes, of course private businesses have the right to fire whoever they like, and people can boycott any business they like, and etc.

These are rights. People can do these things.

But in these censorious times, wouldn't it be nice to have an advocacy group dedicated to making the moral/socio-political case that people shouldn't inflict major economic damage on people over political tiffs?

And wouldn't it be nice to have a single advocacy group dedicated to pushing back against the many, many left-wing pressure groups who spend all their time hunting right-wing heretics?

Do you want the left to be the only player in the market for branding what is Forbidden and what is Mandatory? Personally, I'd like to see some vigorous competition in that market.

I'm proposing a sort of a FIRE for people who aren't in college.

Most of the time the people it advocates for won't have any legal right to demand a company not f ire them, but I'm sure they would at least appreciate a professional organization making the case for personal freedom of thought for them on TV, and arguing against the scalp-hunting mob's demands that the heretic must be burned at the stake right this moment.

Most of their work would not be legal in nature, but simply hortatory, persuasive: We must stop this vicious culture of scalp-hunting if any of us are going to keep our heads intact.

And it would be nice to shame the shamers in return -- to point out how militant, dogmatic, zealous, and cultish they are.

And how hateful.

And how petty. And stupid.

And cruel.

***

We don't all have to agree, but we must agree on this one point: that we have the right to disagree without mobs seeking to punish us into conformity.

That way lies -- and I do not mean this metaphorically -- war.

A people can only agree to be ruled by a ruler not to his liking if that rule is relatively light-handed and does not extend into every corner of his life.

If the rule by an antagonistic king is to be heavy-handed and dictate our every choice and utterance, then I'm afraid that we will not consent to be ruled by an enemy king, and that we will have to instead agree to divide our peoples and our lands into separate states.

It is the state of man that he must suffer under a number of masters -- his boss, his customers, his obligations to provide for his family, his own limitations, his own tendencies towards sin and self-destruction -- that place a claim on 16 of his 18 waking hours per day.

No man should permit himself to be controlled by 100,000 masters who lay claim not just to all his waking hours, but his dreaming hours as well -- these pagan cultists even want to control the little fantasies you indulge yourself in books, movies, and videogames too.

And he should act with dispatch and grim seriousness of purpose if one hundred thousand such villains come forward declaring themselves to be his new masters.

Jim Geraghty writes about the growing social-media threat to your ability to express yourself, but I should note, his post is descriptive and he certainly doesn't endorse or even hint at the prescriptions or warnings I do in my post.

He makes a lot of points I've made since years back: the real threat to your right to expression comes not from the government (mostly -- thankfully), but from pressure groups telling your boss to fire you or your customers to desert you or there will be consequences.

We need something to push back against that, and not just a few articles here or there making the point. We need an advocacy group with a troupe of paid on-call lawyers and advocates who can go on CNN and Fox at a moment's notice to make the case for more social latitude for heterodox thought and less social coercion that we must only repeat the same approved hymnals from the same weird leftist bible of thought-control.

Dullards hate the interesting and unimaginitive -- different ideas unsettle and frighten them, and perhaps make them feel a bit self-conscious about their own dimness -- and will stop at very little to destroy those who oppress them with new (or forbidden) ideas.

posted by Ace at 04:41 PM

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