Should We Adopt The Tactics of the Left?

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Yup, this is gonna be more about Chick-Fil-A. I’m sorry but I think this entire sh*tshow is a great microcosm for where we stand as a country right now. A company spends its own profits to promote values that the management holds dear and this is somehow seen as the worst affront to civil rights in fifty years, branded as “hate” by the left.

But there is a lesson here that the left (and some of the right as well) seems to miss. On Wednesday, those who sided with Chick-Fil-A (either because of their stance on marriage or they just don’t like seeing a business bullied by government. I fall into the latter camp myself) came out in full force although the mainstream news won’t really tell you about it. The company broke sales records that day and every single person who participated was civil and law-abiding. Chick-Fil-A even provided free water to protesters. The left, on the other hand, wasn’t content to just sit around and watch believers in the First Amendment spend their hard earned money. There was a bomb threat at a Chick-Fil-A in West Virginia and some a-hole berated a drive-thru clerk (he has since been fired from his job for being a douche). So the only problems that cropped up other than insane traffic jams came from the left. Hmmmm okay.

Yesterday was National Kiss In Day at Chick-Fil-A locations across the country. I personally applaud this effort as an exercise of free speech (much like Cathy’s statement supporting traditional marriage). I thought to myself that I hope they keep it classy and off Chick-Fil-A property and that the left can have their counterpart moment to Chick-Fil-A’s on Wednesday. I guess I had my expectations set too high because yesterday a Chick-Fil-A in California was vandalized by someone who clearly disagrees with them (and suffers from a common misconception that free speech rights does not extend to graffiti).

So Kiss In day has resulted in property destruction, broken laws, and some generally classless behavior and awful sentiments (which is legal but I can still point it out). Call me naive but I always hope that situations where two groups disagree like this remain civil and people speak with their mouths and with their wallets (and don’t get me started on the completely lopsided media coverage).

However, time and time again, the right plays by the rules but the left has to resort to destruction of property and general lawlessness. We saw this with the Occupy Movement and we are seeing it again now. The right engages in by-the-book discourse while the left decides to brand someone’s opinion as “hateful” which is code for “now we can break all the rules to attack them.” It might have something to do with the fact that the administration bends and breaks the rules whenever it suits their agenda (the new amnesty plan, Fast and Furious, lying about the ACA being a tax, this WARN Act change with the Dept of Labor, killing American citizens without due process, and the list goes on). So what do we expect from the left when their leadership is consistently breaking or re-writing the rules? I guess we should expect this:

So should we, as Conservatives, start playing by the playbook authored by the Left? (I’ve got some spray paint in my garage and can be tagging Wendy’s locations within the hour). Our approach of obeying the rules doesn’t seem to be getting the job done as we are continually marginalized by the administration and the media. To be honest, it is very tempting but the way to really get things done is to continue what we did in 2010. What we seem to realize that the left does not is that you actually have to elect members of Congress to get what you want, you can’t just crap on cop cars and hope that changes things. We are poised to improve on our 2010 gains this year and it can hopefully include getting Obama out of the White House.

So, while it may seem that, because of the whole outrage (no matter how manufactured) over Dan Cathy’s statement, the respect for free speech and free expression is dead and gone. We should take solace in the fact that those who sit up and pay attention to these kinds of things came out in overwhelming support of Constitutional values. The most refreshing takeaway is many people came out to support Chick-Fil-A who don’t actually agree with Cathy’s statement. Those are the people who actually get what it means to be an American. These people understand that freedom of speech can be summed up by Voltaire, “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.”