Conservatives against Capitalism & Freedom: Chick-Fil-A vs The Muppets

In case you’ve been living under a rock over the last week the president of the restaurant chain Chick-Fil-A came out with a statement that the chain supports the idea of  “traditional marriage“.   This was met by the expected reactions by liberals and those who support the LBGT community of condemnation and talks of boycotting the chain.  A quick side note, one thing that has always bugged me about Chick-Fil-A is that it’s pronounced chick filet, when clearly the way it’s written it should be pronounced chick fill uh, a much less sophisticated name.  This is not really all that newsworthy as these type of things seem to happen with some regularity and not all that unexpectedly from a restaurant chain primarily situated throughout the bible belt.

However what really kicked this whole thing up to another level was when the Jim Henson company came out against Chick-Fil-A and their bigoted stance.  That’s right, even the Muppets are against Chick-Fil-A, when you’ve lost the moral high ground to puppets you really are in a bad place.  There are of course now lots of protests and protest responses occurring, there is a national support day on August 1st and a corresponding same sex kiss day.

As Conservatives are always quick to point out, the restaurant is a private entity and has the absolute right to support financially or otherwise the anti-gay marriage agenda.  However what I find funny is how up in arms Conservatives get that people are exercising their right to protest this stance.  One of the primary conservative political planks is supposedly the support of freedom and capitalism.  Well, in a free capitalistic society people have the right to protest a company’s obvious bigotry by exercising their right to convince people not to spend money at that business.  Unfortunately what people on the edges of political belief, both left and right, always fail to recognize, is that your opposition has the same exact rights that you do.

To me the saddest thing about the anti-gay marriage stance, is that to any person of reasonable intelligence can see the direction all of this is heading.  Like the civil rights movement of the 1960′s the equality of marriage movement will culminate in all people in the United States having the right to marry the people they love.  Being against that says three things about you. 

First, you are mired in an outdated world view that no longer makes any sense.  The biblical arguments against same-sex marriage are ridiculous.  The way the bible guides the lives of Christians has and will always be re-interpreted into modern times, for example, we no longer stone people to death for working on the sabbath.  Essentially you will soon find yourself on the wrong side of history.

Second, you don’t have a basic understanding of history or culture and you certainly have not spent time with the people in the LGBT community.  Yes that’s right they are people, not Gays, or deviants or any other term you want to use to dehumanize them, they are just people just like you.

Third, at the absolute core of it all you are against love.  You are in opposition of the idea that two people have the right to express their love for each other in the same way you do.  Basically you are denying them freedom, the same freedom you wave as a flag, the same freedom found in the Constitution of the United States of America.  So at the end of the day, opposing Gay Marriage, is basically un-American.

Occupy Wall Street has a long US tradition

Occupy Wall Street has a long US tradition

There have been worker revolts in the United States pretty much as long as the United States has existed.  However the revolts took on another tenor in the late 60’s.  During the civil rights movement these labor disputes began to be focused racial on blacks.  According to Howard Zinn’s, A People’s History of the United States, in 1966, seventy poor blacks occupied an unused barracks on an air force base.  After this event had been resolved, much in the way many occupy encampments were resolved this year a Mrs. Unita Blackwell said,

“I feel that the federal government have proven that it don’t care about poor people.  Everything that we have asked for through these years had been handed down on paper.  It’s never been a reality.  We the poor people of Mississippi is tired.  We’ve tired of it so we’re going to build for ourselves because we don’t have a government that represents us.” 

It’s amazing how 45 years in this country doesn’t seem to change much, this statement, albeit most likely with a little better grammar, would not seem even remotely out of place today.

Again from Zinn, during this time period A. Phillip Randolph advised the president, “ The Negro’s protest today is but the first rumbling of the ‘under-class.’  As the Negro has taken to the streets, so will the unemployed of all races take to the street.”

This is what the Occupy movement is about, not some socialist ideal but an opportunity for people to be treated fairly and decently in this country.  That of course is based upon the idea that it’s not fair or decent that the 1% of the nation live like gods while there are so many people hurting, that’s why people are in the street.  Now that may be a socialist ideal but basic common decency is a socialist ideal I can get behind.

Our Convenient Patriotism

Our convenient patriotism

 I was watching football tonight and was a little surprised that the game was starting a couple of minutes late and I realized of course, they are at commercial while they do the national anthem in the stadium.  For some reason tonight this made me think of the football games right after 9/11 and how for the weeks after that horrible day all of the networks showed the playing of the national anthem.  We do the same on Veterans Day and Memorial Day.  Our patriotism seems to be convenient to whenever it will best play on television or for the right audience.

 During election campaigns patriotism, or at least the appearance of patriotism, is at an all-time high.  Remember all of the flack Obama took for not having an American Flag pin on his lapel, or putting his hand over his heart during the national anthem?  Right now the Republican presidential wannabees are all trying to one up each other on how patriotic they are.  If you listen to one amnesty is the patriotic thing to do for illegal immigrants, if you listen to another you hate America if you give illegal immigrants amnesty.  Because the American public responds to the flag waving, hand over the heart type of patriotism TV networks and politicians use it when it is convenient.

 However bring up the ideals of free speech, the loss of liberty from the PATRIOT Act, or the right to protest overnight in a park and you’re nothing but an unpatriotic, radical hippie trying to take down the government and not adhering to the words, thoughts and deeds of the holiest of holy, the most patriotic of them all, the Founding Fathers!  You know the ones whose words should guide us in everything we do like the shiny beacons of patriotism that they were.  You know the slave-owning, every WHITE MAN is a full man, blacks, not so much, women don’t have the right to vote bastions of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.  Well,  assuming you are a fully entitled, property-owning white man.

 We interpret history the way we want and we use patriotism when it’s convenient, but if you’re an asshole like me that questions these things you can’t possibly be a patriot, or can you?

The First Amendment is only valid during daylight hours

The Occupy movement has been told in New York as well as in many other cities that you can only protest during the day.  So I guess your first amendment rights only operate during daylight hours.  The link is to an article about the court decision:

http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/2011/1115/Judge-tells-Occupy-Wall-Street-You-can-t-sleep-in-Zuccotti-Park-anymore

So you can protest as long as you do it in a way that doesn’t disturb or interupt anything, so to be clear you can complain as long as no one can hear or see you.

Government using police to crack down on the Occupy movement

Over the weekend governments in several cities decided to crack down on the Occupy movement.  I’ve been hearing and reading lots of comments in the news about how it’s time this thing ended.  They made their point now it’s time for them to go home.  At Harvard the campus allows Harvard students to occupy a place on campus, but keeps gates closed to keep non-Harvard occupiers out, apparently we have elitists even within the 99%. 

In Berkeley, police decided to end the protest and proceed to stab protestors in the guts with batons the video at the following link is pretty brutal:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NSat-nRefXY

The government is scared and so now it will oppress and deny people their first amendment rights to protest.  The protest was acceptable and cute when it was in one park in New York.  Now that it has gone global and there are Occupy protests in many major US cities the government has called out the goon squads.  This does nothing but ramp up the violence, and although many people in the movement quote John Lennon on the mistake of using violence, at some point when the man is cracking your skull open, you’re going to swing back.

People are being injured, are being killed, an Iraq war veteran was shot in the head with a tear gas canister and then people who went to his aid were blasted with a flash grenade.  This is starting to seem like war.

As I watch all of this going down I wonder if this was what it was like watching the civil rights movement happen.  There are a lot of similarities, the mainstream media painting protestors as radicals, trouble makers, fringe elements without popular support.  Denying that the movement is active, or sizable or focused.  Every time they ramp up the oppression they make more people like me want to go out and join them.

Below is a link to an article about several of the crackdowns

http://www.cnn.com/2011/11/13/us/occupy-movement/index.html

 

Somethings Happening Here….

Somethings happening here is the first line of a Buffalo Springfield song, the song feels very, very current because without a doubt something is definitely going on around here, first the Tea Party and now the Occupy movement.  What it is, ain’t exactly clear.

There is an undercurrent of frustration in this country right now.  In America, a lot of frustration runs under the surface, we pretend that discrimination is rare in our country but it’s not; there is plenty of gender inequity, racism and although many conservatives don’t seem to believe it, tremendous economic inequity.  The economic inequity maybe the hardest pressure of all and it impacts American across racial and gender lines.  Parents come in all colors, both genders and lots of different family configurations however they all share one thing, the fear of what their children’s lives will be like in the future.  A lot of people right now liberal and conservative fear for their children’s future.  Throw that in the mix with a generation that has a serious sense of entitlement, people my age who never quite knew what to protest, and a lot of old hippies fearing for the future of their grandchildren and I think you have a country wide powder keg.

 Of course what’s lighting the fuse right now is the “Great Recession”, folks pay attention, the “Great Recession” is in many ways every bit as brutal as the Great Depression was and if you ask a lot of economists, yes, even conservatively bent economists, we’re going about getting out of this recession the wrong way, extending the duration of this mess.

 I’ve been reading Howard Zinn’s, A People’s History of the United States, it’s a fabulous book and it does something unique in looking at history, it follows the money.  There are a lot of parallels right now to the frustration, class warfare and economic inequity in the early part of the 20^th Century.  A time when there were large labor movements and violence in the street.

 So the fuse is lit, and the powder keg is present, the real question is what does it take to blow things up?  Personally, I think we are living in a dangerous time and one more significant pressure could make it blow.  Like what?  I don’t know, maybe people freaking out over 2012, maybe another financial crash, maybe well, maybe a lot of things.  No matter what, the next 16 months are shaping up to be very, very interesting, something is happening round here my friends, keep your eyes open.

BS Moment of Silence Part 2: Arizona Legislature off the rails and the most hateful Christians in America

 I want to start this post by introducing you to the equivalent of radical Islam living right here in the United States.  The world appropriately looks down on Al Qaeda and radical clerics because they take a beautiful peaceful religion and turn it into a brutal, hateful mechanism of pain.  I have heard people who denigrate Muslims paint the entire religion of Islam with a broad brush due to the actions of this minority.  I wonder if those same folks paint Christianity the same way when they hear about the actions of the Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka, Kansas.  These are the people who proclaim in the name of the lord to hate homosexuals and to show their hate, they picket the funerals of homosexuals or any funeral or event they can somehow link to homosexuality.   Here is a link to the Wikipedia site about the group:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westboro_Baptist_Church

This group is nuts but also in my opinion wholly insincere, what this group is really about is getting attention for this group.  They regularly picket that bastion of homosexual lifestyle, Kansas City Chiefs home games, the NFL is a lot of things positive and negative but a big gay pride festival it is not.  This group claims to have an annual travel budget of $200,000 and that money must come from donations and I say shame on anyone contributing to this hate group.

So the Westboro Baptist Church has announced it will protest at the funeral of the nine-year old girl who was shot in Tucson earlier this week that targeted Congresswoman Giffords.  In watching CNN today the network appropriately reached out to the church to get a statement from them, it is fair to hear both sides of the story.  In full character the church responded with a hateful rant including accusations about everyone including the little girl.  I think the Westboro Baptist Church is a collection of the most hateful Christians in America and if there is a Christian God, I’m quite sure he has a one-way ticket to Hell punched for these cretins. 

As someone with a Libertarian bent, and a strong believer in the freedom the constitution guarantees, I will wait and see what the Supreme Court says this spring about whether or not this type of speech can be banned.  It worries me on some level to ban any speech that does not cause direct physical injury, the cliché screaming fire in a crowded theater.  The infliction of emotional harm is a much stickier issue and the one that the Supreme Court is facing and it will be interesting to see what they say.  Regardless, you are scum if you picket the funeral of a nine-year old girl for any reason!

Happily, the people of Arizona are fighting back against the nut jobs like people have done on many other occasions.  People have conducted anti-protests against the Westboro church ever since the Matthew Shepard funeral in Wyoming in 1998.  The way they do this is to wear giant angel wings and use these to block the view of the protestors by the mourners.  The image below comes from the Portland Independent Media Center at:

http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2005/10/326599.shtml

Counter-protest Angels

Finally today I have a huge problem with what the nuts of the Arizona legislature are doing now.  They are rushing to pass a bill today to keep the protestors at some set distance away from any funeral.  They are waiving rules and are setting records in getting this law done and signed in one day.  Let’s be clear, their intent is to be commended, as I’ve said picketing a little girl’s funeral is despicable.  However, this church has been picketing military funerals for years and so once again today I ask the question why is congress so special?  Does the Arizona legislature only care about the mourning of families if they get killed standing nearby a congresswoman but not if they were killed in the line of duty in the military?  Or is it that they only care about their citizens when the media is watching?  I think the government of Arizona has shown in the last two years that it is completely off the rails.