UPDATE May 26, 2023:
Thank Democrats for teaching us a very important lesson about freedom.
There is a Target store less than a mile from my house. It’s so close that I often walk. It’s fast, inexpensive, and convenient. I have shopped there many times but won’t be going back. It feels really, really good.
One of the great freedoms of our free market, capitalist economy is the right to decide where we spend our hard-earned cash. Democrats are determined to take this freedom away with agenda items like banning gas stoves and mandating electric car purchases. They promote politically-motivated bans, boycotts, and cancellations of what they oppose, and have intimidated cowardly corporate America into supporting their nonsense.
Now it’s our turn.
What do baseball and these Sisters have in common? Democrats.
Democrats have been enormously successful with their whole of society effort to ban conservative values. Federal government agencies, the media and Big Tech, state and local governments, our public school and university systems, and too many corporations are mobilized against anything that resists a woke agenda so extreme that we’re supposed to agree that men in drag and surgically altering children are reflections of what Americans hold dear.
Those running afoul of what brings donor cash to the Democrat Party are quickly called out, shut down, and silenced. For example, when the Dodgers decided to deep-six the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence LGBTQwhatever activist group, angry Congressman Robert Garcia (D-CA) cried foul:
At a time when the Dodgers should be embracing the strength of our diversity, they are instead trying to divide our LGBTQ+ community. Los Angeles is better than this cowardice and deserves better from the Dodgers. Our community should boycot [sic] this “pride night” and protest this decision. We’ll see if they choose to be on the right side of history.356
This is emblematic of the intolerance we’ve come to expect from a political left that responds with anger, denunciation and hate when anyone disagrees with the values they deem politically expedient.
Imagine swapping the Sisters for a group that mocks Islam. Heads would roll. Democrats would demand that we boycott baseball from coast to coast along with every business that supports it.
Attacks on those of us who resist having Democrats’ extremist agenda shoved down our throats are now normal and accepted. Conservatives are condemned for opposing the fringe sexuality forced on children in our public schools as part of the far-left indoctrination of America’s next generation. This is sick and perverted. There is nothing normal about it. Anyone who tells you otherwise is lying:
During her remarks, Rep. [Melanie] Stansbury (D-NM) highlighted the dangerous rise of transphobic legislation across the nation, calling on Republicans to end their bigoted attacks on trans children. She contrasted the recent bill that New Mexico Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham signed into law that protects gender-affirming care.
“Our colleagues are trying to claim that they’re out here defending the rights of women, as they’re waging a campaign to take away our reproductive freedoms, to ban books and now to bully our kids. It’s disgusting,” said Rep. Stansbury.357
Yes, it is disgusting that our politics descended to the level of ticking off hot button talking points with no thought to what’s behind them or who is hurt in the process. If you are not a Democrat your role is to stop thinking, shut up, put up, and cower in the face of unrelenting leftist hate for anything this party and its acolytes disagree with.
Take pride in being hated. It shows you value your freedom.
Conservatives are learning to wear our various pejorative labels with pride because it proves we value freedom and refuse to submit to the demands of the leftist herd and its boycott and cancel culture. We’re also learning to do what they do when they want to punish those who step out of line.
Money can talk and it’s not a good thing when people walk.
In a capitalist economy money talks. When people walk it’s not good for business. While there should be more productive ways to express our values than punishing stockholders who have nothing to do with corporate decision making, this is where Democrats have brought us. They attack our children in the public school systems they handed over to unions. They try to replace the family unit with indoctrination by agenda-obsessed “teachers” the CCP would be proud of. They promote mutilating kids to grow the ranks of their party’s identity politics victims. They so terrified corporate America that two giants did something really, really foolish and are now paying the price.
We just learned that we have a recourse when all of society attacks what we believe in. Stop spending. Just walk away.
What comes after bad beer and a big box store?
Beer and a big box store are only a start. Just consider the possibilities. We can refuse to shop in the violent downtowns of Democrat hellholes like Chicago. With Pride Month about to be shoved down our throats with threats of being called homo- or transphobic, all we have to do is turn away from who and whatever shoves this agenda in our faces. We don’t have to promote the economic success of any company or any city that endorses values we disagree with. All we have to do is stop spending and walk away.
Is this the right thing to do? Driving companies out of business because of politics is not how America thrives, but at this point we have little choice. Like early voting and drop boxes, conservatives are late to a party held at our expense. Now, thanks to a watery, flavorless, less than mediocre beer and a type of swimsuit I had never heard of before this week and don’t care to know about, conservatives have an option that works better than anyone expected. We should embrace it.
Democrats threw a big party that cost us our freedom to embrace our conservative values. They’ve been doing it for years. Now we know the best way to respond is to not show up.
UPDATE May 28, 2023:
Freedom is absolutely free until your government takes it away.
This Memorial Day weekend you will hear many times that freedom is not free. There is truth in this, of course. Countless lives have been sacrified around the globe to preserve the notion that we should be able to live our lives as we choose, unfettered by dictatorial governments and the ambitions of autocrats like Hitler or Putin or Xi Jinping.
Nonetheless, it’s important to remember that before government gets involved freedom is absolutely free. The largest threat to freedom comes from governments and leaders who stand to gain from taking our freedom away.
Americans are incredibly fortunate to live in a country with a representative government based on freedom of the individual. We still must agree on the ground rules that bring order to our society. We also have to decide on the limits of government as we evolve as a nation. America’s Founding Fathers were especially concerned about this. It’s true that absolute power corrupts absolutely. This is a continual threat they knew must be avoided at all costs.
While we like to say that freedom isn’t free, except for the Civil War the cost of defending America’s freedom was borne largely by those who went overseas to fight aggression from other governments seeking to expand their power and control. Many never returned. We honor them on Memorial Day.
Threats to our freedom still exist, of course. We’re currently spending billions on a war against Russian aggression in Ukraine that our president warns could lead to nuclear Armageddon. The threat of China is omnipresent economically and militarily, but the consequences of Xi’s aggression are more likely to be suffered on foreign soil and not here at home unless we make the decision to involve ourselves militarily.
So where does the greatest threat to our freedom as Americans come from?
The greatest threat to our freedom is from our people and leaders.
There is another threat to our freedom that we tend to overlook. It comes from the American people and the leaders we choose to govern our country. This is where representative government and free and fair elections, the bulwarks of our liberty, can go horribly wrong.
Representative government relies on an informed electorate. When voters are not informed, or when they are lied to and deceived, it is impossible to fulfill this fundamental duty as American citizens.
In remarks at West Point’s commencement yesterday, Vice President Kamala Harris told her audience:
You will take an oath to “support and defend the Constitution of the United States of America” and, by extension, to support and defend our most sacred ideals: freedom, democracy, and rule of law.358
She affirmed an absolute truth:
Our democratic ideals of freedom and liberty inspire billions.359
Despite perfunctorily mouthing these American values because that is what the moment required, Harris and President Biden neither support nor defend our Constitution, democracy, or rule of law. They have little regard for freedom or liberty. Absolute power for themselves and their party is what they support and defend.
The Biden administration is the greatest threat to freedom Americans have faced in many years. At times the president acts like an all-powerful autocrat, imposing draconian vaccine mandates while lying about their effectiveness and arguing out of the other side of his mouth against government involvement in health care when it interferes with abortions.
Biden circumvents representative government with executive orders because his activist agenda is more important than the will of we, the people and the historic values that made America great. He took away our freedom to live in a sovereign nation and allows foreign drug cartels to manage our border, refused to protect us from CCP surveillance and worst of all, relies on inciting internal division and enemies of the people propaganda to turn American against American and advance the power of his administration.
Internal division is the greatest threat to freedom Americans will ever face.
Our identity as one American people enabled us to survive a civil war, to draw together and summon the resources to fight in two massive world wars, and go to battle in Korea, Viet Nam, Iraq, and Afghanistan. There is no cost to rejecting our government’s efforts to divide us or the Biden administration’s attacks on our unity, but the cost of agreement is tremendous.
Americans elected a president who labels his political opponents MAGA Republicans, semi-fascists, domestic terrorists, and right-wing extremists. He claims that terrorism from our own people is the greatest threat we face while he allows a massive invasion across our southern border and a Chinese spy mission from overhead, and weaponizes our federal security and justice agencies against our citizens.
A leader who values freedom does not do these things.
These are not the actions of a leader or government that values freedom. Freedom is not protected by dividing the people, destroying our national identity, or creating political enemies with dangerous, inflammatory propaganda. This is how autocrats and dictators consolidate power and take freedom away.
Countless Americans have died defending the Founders ideal of a free nation with a limited government that leaves its people alone to live their lives as they choose. A government that respects freedom does not tell us what kind of cars we must buy, what stoves we are permitted to own, what political beliefs must be instilled in our children, or how we must suffer while our leaders live in unfettered luxury and ignore the prohibitions they impose on the governed.
Most important, a government dedicated to freedom does not threaten, intimidate, harass, or take away liberty for the sake of a political agenda moderated by an activist minority. It doesn’t threaten those who voice their opposition and it doesn’t use the entirety of government to attack political opponents who are favored by the people.
It’s true that preserving freedom is not free, but we should always remember that freedom has no cost until someone tries to take it away because freedom is the natural state of mankind.
On Memorial Day 2023 we are not fighting a global war to preserve our liberty at home, but the internal threats we face are just as dangerous and even more insidious because they undermine the most important thing about us: we are all Americans who live in a free country governed by we, the people.
356“Congressman Robert Garcia Calls for Dodgers Pride Night Boycott Following Divisive Action to Remove LGBTQ+ Group from Lineup.” robertgarcia.house.gov. May 18, 2023. https://robertgarcia.house.gov/media/press-releases/congressman-robert-garcia-calls-dodgers-pride-night-boycott-following-divisive, retrieved May 26, 2023.
357“Rep. Stansbury Denounces Transphobic GOP Legislation On The House Floor.” stansbury.house.gov. April 19, 2023. https://stansbury.house.gov/media/press-releases/rep-stansbury-denounces-transphobic-gop-legislation-house-floor, retrieved May 26, 2023.
358“Remarks by Vice President Harris in Commencement Address to the United States Military Academy at West Point.” whitehouse.gov. May 27, 2023. https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/speeches-remarks/2023/05/27/remarks-by-vice-president-harris-in-commencement-address-to-the-united-states-military-academy-at-west-point/, retrieved May 28, 2023.
359“Remarks by Vice President Harris in Commencement Address to the United States Military Academy at West Point.” whitehouse.gov. Op. cit.
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People do not understand how the Democrats and the Obama administration are slowly strangling the very freedoms that the Revolution was fought for. The facts are clear when you see the Constitution being trampled on by Obama, and then realize that he could not pass a gun owner background check, which is why he has sealed “ALL” of his records.
If congress were to pass any new legislation on background checking it must include the requirement that “ALL” politicians running for public office must “PASS” those requirements or be disqualified.
As it stands right now, Obama could not ” PASS” a standard FBI check from the details that were written in his book, which is why his certification was challenged. The judges that had cases before them refused to hear the arguments and thusly dismissed those cases. What gutless wonders we have in the justice system including the Supreme Court.
Obama is tearing our nation apart. and he is banking on the ignorant that don’t pay attention. obama has a shady past and i am not convinced that he is a true citizen of the united states. If you vote democrat you are voting to end america as a freedom country. Obama is taking it all away and people are not paying attention. when it’s gone and you are under the control of a dictator you will wish you had paid attention. but this country has been under attack before obama but now it’s speeded up so much it will be a miracle if we can keep it
We’ll find out next week how well people are paying attention, won’t we, Sandy? I agree, it’s pretty amazing that no matter how bad things are or how misguided the actions of public officials, they still manage to convince people to support what they do. Watch what happens in the Illinois governor’s race next week. If Pat Quinn wins, it’s a pretty good sign that we are truly lost.
freedom from harm is not a reasonable freedom. Freedom from unjust aggression is reasonable, and the primary reason for government.
Thanks for your remarks, Ed. Interesting how some of what’s happening now at the hands of government could be considered unjust aggression, like the searches they conducted in Rhode Island looking for New Yorkers. It’s difficult to know where to draw the line between government overreach and the public interest, but that was quite a line to cross.
Obama signed a bill to allow the media to profess false narratives for the peoples ow good HR4310
Joseph Goebbels would be so proud.
I don’t know if the intention was to turn lies into the sole means of communicating with the people to the complete exclusion of the truth, but it has certainly paid off for Democrats and the White House.
Wow, the RWNJ is strong with this one.
I’m listening, John.