Bobcat Love's Sense of Shame
9/27/2017 12:20 PM
And the beautiful irony in this particular case is that it's being done in the name of Patriotism, with a capital P. We're so goddamned Patriotic that we don't even care about the first amendment anymore, and the biggest enemy we can conjure up is the opposition party.
I'm not an expert in the Constitution.
Fortunately,I have a friend who is.
He's a Constitutional Lawyer,who is qualified to argue cases before the Supreme Court.
I asked him about the whole National Anthem/kneeling issue.
According to him:
The language in the First Amendment is clear.
"Congress shall make no law . . . ".
That has nothing to do with this.
This is strictly a private employer/employee matter.
He used the same example I believe someone else may have posted ,that a restaurant owner can prohibit a server from saying to customers that eating meat is murder.
The only way the First Amendment could possibly come into play is if the employer wanted to prohibit an employee from exercising their free speech rights,outside of work,in "street clothes".
You're not grasping my point at all. I'll use examples this time:
When Google fires an engineer for writing a memo critical of their diversity hiring strategy, conservatives freak out about the left's propensity for politically correct shaming. Rightfully.
When a college professor's fired or reprimanded for some infraction it's the same deal. The reaction is that the left's waging a war on the first amendment. Rightfully.
When college students try and create safe spaces and criticize those who present ideas they find distasteful, the right criticizes them. Rightfully.
But when NFL players kneel during the national anthem and the fucking President -- a state actor -- calls for a private company to fire them, the NFL players don't find the same support from the right.
When Kathy Griffin posts a tasteless photo -- conservatives call for her firing and the left defends her.
When Jamelle Hill calls the President a white supremacist, conservatives (including the President) call for her firing and the left defends her.
For God's sake, people are asking DirectTV for refunds because players protested during a game they were watching. Is that not the most over-sensitive, politically correct garbage you've ever heard of?
My point is that EVERYBODY AGREES that political correctness is out of control. It's evident in the NFL protest, it's evident on college campuses, it's evident in companies like Google. Political correctness, and outrage culture have become weapons used by both the left and the right, and instead of recognizing it, when something like this NFL thing pops up, it becomes a cause that's immediately seized upon to try and make headway in an un-winnable, and damaging culture war.
Which is why I mention the First Amendment. We're all supposed to deeply believe in it, regardless of what's said. And instead of weaponizing it to get each other fired, why don't we stop being such fucking babies about it when somebody says something we disagree with?
I mean, the GOP, the party of small government, is now blindly supporting the President's right to call on a private company to fire a private individual. You see how crazy and backwards that is relative to the ideals conservatives historically believe in, right?
Last Edited: 9/27/2017 12:25:25 PM by Bobcat Love's Sense of Shame