Sunday, March 24, 2019
Now it’s “Good afternoon!”
Sunday’s depressing ethics potpourri continues…
3. Psst! San Antonio! This is unconstitutional! The San Antonio City Council rejected Chick-fil-A ‘s application for a site at its airport this week because the company’s foundation has contributed to organizations that oppose same-sex marriage
Councilman Robert Treviño told the news media that the council made the decision based on “inclusivity.”
“With this decision, the City Council reaffirmed the work our city has done to become a champion of equality and inclusion. San Antonio is a city full of compassion, and we do not have room in our public facilities for a business with a legacy of anti-LGBTQ behavior. Everyone has a place here and everyone should feel welcome when they walk through our airport.”
Have these fools and censors even read the Bill of Rights? A government can’t penalize a business because it doesn’t like the opinions of its owner or management. This is viewpoint discrimination, and a screamingly obvious First Amendment violation. As Chick-fil-A accurately pointed out in its response, no one has ever been refused service or treated differently in one of the company’s restaurants because of race, gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation or gender identity. That’s their LGBTQ “behavior,” not their entirely legal and protected choice of charities and non profits.
Once again from the Democratic Party and the Left we whiff the rotten stench of nascent totalitarianism. Believe as we do, or be punished. This is the same company several Democratic mayors said were not welcome in their cities. Once again, this unconstitutional and undemocratic act by San Antonio’s Democrats is assured of a reversal by the Supreme Court, and if Justice Ginsberg still has most of her marbles and Sotomayor isn’t chasing rainbows and unicorns, it ought to be a 9-0 vote.
Local government actions like this ought to concern followers of both parties equally. The First Amendment should not be a partisan issue.
4. When you combine the New York Times’ bias and the San Antonio City Council’s contempt for the Bill of Rights, you get…this offensive editorial by the Times editorial board. New Zealand’ government, employing the “Barn Door Fallacy” that silly governments have resorted to forever when the vox populi is shouting “DO SOMETHING!”, reacted to the Mosque terror attacks by banning “assault-type weapons.” The Times applauds, and figures out a way to insult President Trump in the process, with the title “America Deserves a Leader as Good as Jacinda Ardern”: New Zealand’s prime minister moved swiftly to ban weapons of mass killing after a gunman attacked two mosques.”
This is dishonest and stupid in oh so many ways. First of all, there is no reason to think the terror attacks would not have occurred if the “ban” were already in place. The terrorists got their guns illegally anyway. Moreover, if they were determined to attack, there are many other ways to kill people. Recent data has finally surfaced that suggests that the wonderful Australian gun ban celebrated by, among others, Hillary Clinton, has had little effect on reducing violent crimes. Then there’s that inconvenient Second Amendment. The ongoing irony, lost on the resistance, is that President Trump’s foes, while calling him a Nazi and nascent dictator, continue to advocate policies that if enacted by Trump would be laying the bricks for a dictatorship. I don’t know about you, but when High Empress Ocasio-Cortez sends her brown shirts to confiscate my car, board up my vaulted ceiling and force me to term my winter thermostat to 60 degrees, I will make sure my trusty AR-15 is within reach to make certain, as William Barrett Travis memorably said, that victory will cost the enemy so dear, that it will be worse…than a defeat. The measure that the leader of the Kiwis so brilliantly pushed is illegal here, and may it always remains so.
Leave it to the Times demagogues to blur and distort the issues:
“That attitude stood in stark contrast to the way the National Rifle Association and its political allies in the United States have resisted any restrictions on weapons like the AR-15, the semiautomatic rifle used in several mass killings. In New Zealand, it took one mass shooting to awaken the government. In the United States, even a string of mass killings — 26 dead in a school in Newtown, Conn.; 49 in a nightclub in Orlando; 58 at a concert in Las Vegas; 17 in a school in Parkland, Fla. — has not been enough. Nor has the fact that 73 percent of Americans say that more needs to be done to curb gun violence, according to recent polling.”
Anyone semi-educated on the realities of this issue should be able to spot the Times’ dishonesty. The NRA’s job is to protect that Second Amendment, not to weaken it. The AR-15 wasn’t used in Newtown, or Las Vegas. At least 73% of the American public couldn’t correctly recite a single one of the Bill of Rights amendments. That’s why we don’t have a direct democracy: the mob is ignorant, emotional and stupid. Citing polls to justify policy is a signal that one has run out of real arguments.
But that’s not all! The Times apparently thinks a strong and virtuous leader would also gut the FIRST Amendment for our safety and “the greater good.” [Special Thanks to Neil Dorr for pointing me to this issue.] Yesterday, New Zealand’s government banned the gunman’s racist, angry manifesto, arguing that the 74-page document “promotes murder and terrorism.” You know—you’ve been hearing this from Democrats, progressives, Chris Cuomo, Howard Dean and others now for years. It’s bad speech, dangerous speech, hate speech. The government should be able to decide what people read. It is wise. It is benign.
Again, it is the beginning of the end of liberty and democracy. Says the censorship-happy Times,
“Earlier in the week, she told Parliament that social media sites must address the ease with which the internet can be used to spew hate and images of violence. “We cannot simply sit back and accept that these platforms just exist and that what is said on them is not the responsibility of the place where they are published,." she said. “It cannot be a case of all profit, no responsibility.." Ms. Ardern didn’t propose immediate measures to limit the reach of Facebook, Twitter and other internet publishers, and it’s not obvious what could be done without trampling freedom of speech.”
Yes, and that’s because you can’t mandate censorship of social media without “trampling” free speech. When President Trump made ill-considered “do something” comments about changing libel laws to be able to punish irresponsible journalism, The Times and other media outlets screamed with indignation. A New Zealand leader who suggests stifling speech, however, is the kind of “good” leader America deserves.