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So, Who Am I Boycotting This Week?
In the spirit of lively debate, and because what started out as a comment that went on way too long, this is a rebuttal to @cliffordbrown ‘s post, in which he calls for a boycott of Walmart over their announced policy of discontinuing sales of pistol ammunition. I personally require no convincing to not shop at Wally World. I dislike the stores for a wide variety of reasons too long to enumerate here, and I’m not about to start shopping there except in case of immediate need.
So far so good, but let’s be honest, Wally World ain’t losing any money on my account so far because they ain’t getting it in the first place. And I imagine I’m hardly alone in my lack of effect on Sam Walton’s legacy — unless you live in one of the more rural towns where Walmart is the only general-goods game around, you’re not going to be shopping there unless you either need to, unless you like Walmart. But here is where I significantly part ways with Clifford: In his words:
Any one who values the Constitution, let alone gun ownership and the right to effective self-defense, will immediately punish Walmart, shifting all purchases to: [list of alternatives]…The rule is simple: no shopping, and no allowing people who shop there to bring stuff to your dwelling, your office, your picnic, in Walmart bags or with Walmart house brands.
African-Americans won with this technique in the 1955-1956 Montgomery bus boycott. They won by ruthlessly self-policing. It is disempowering nonsense to assert that boycotts are ineffective. They simply take real grassroots will, with a bit of organizing direction…
Effectively, immediately, intensively socially shame anyone who slacks off and goes to Walmart.
So it’s just one more store on the checklist we all now are demanded to carry in our heads of “places my politics tells me to boycott.” Seems every other week now someone is asking for a boycott of something. Skip this place because they gave to Planned Parenthood, skip this other place because they donated to Hillary, skip this third place because they banned open carry (nevermind that I never open-carried), boycott movies from this other studio because their CEO spouted nonsense after the Oscars, best to avoid this brand of socks because they used whale oil to make their elastic, and don’t walk on floor tiles from this company because they fired my great uncle Charlie in 1936 for decking a foreman, don’t go here, and don’t go there…
After a while, the grievances weigh one down and they’re competing for much-coveted memory space with “places we should feel obligated to patronize because it makes leftist heads explode.” So while I’m avoiding getting coffee from Starbucks, I’m obligated to dine at Chick-Fil-A, even though I think their chicken is overrated and I’m never able to get my food in under 20 minutes due to the crowds of other chicken obligates.
I’m supposed to shop at this bakery because the owner is a Christian, even though my waistline is screaming “put down the cake and walk away slowly (because walking quickly is unlikely).” And I simply must buy something from this other place because I’d be “supporting a good cause” (really, do I need another useless tchotchke?), and I have to buy this razor over there since they sponsor a show I like, and then buy this car because my grandmother said they hired great uncle Charlie after that unfortunate incident with the foreman…
So I have to say I object on principle to yet another boycott. We make fun of the lefties for hating the Christian ethos of Chick-Fil-A and mock their hypocrisy when they buy the chicken anyway. Maybe we should focus on something else.
All that said, there are some specific issues with the nature of the proposed boycott that are problematic in their own right. I’m going to address the second quoted point first to clear the decks. I do not see the parallel with a city-owned and city-operated bus system that an urban population depended on for their livelihoods. The bus boycott worked because it was concentrated and impossible to miss, and because the black populace of Montgomery had to make real, tangible, and visible sacrifices in the boycott. A boycott of Wally World is diffuse because there are, for most people, many, many other places to shop, and diffuse because Walmart has such a broad customer base around the country. And it’s not like it would be a particularly pointed sacrifice for most people except in more rural locations.
Further, Montgomery discriminated virulently against blacks on the basis skin color. This discrimination was impossible to ignore. The blacks who depended on those buses to get to work or to do their shopping were treated terribly from the moment they got on the bus. Does a Walmart greeter even notice me when I enter or exit their store? Am I, as a gun owner, wearing some tag that tells Walmart to treat me badly? Will I face hostility, derision, or violence while shopping, just for being a gun owner? (I know I’ll face a slow checkout regardless, but that’s another matter.) There is no parallel here, and it does us no good at all to compare our comparatively petty grievance to the African Americans living in Montgomery in the 1950s — to do so is an insult to them.
But what of the social shaming advocated for those who will not boycott? Given how increasingly militant we are divided as Americans, where our politicians and pundits demand that we boycott this or that, or support that other thing because “it makes leftists’ heads explode,” is the added antagonism worth it — especially over an issue this small? I’m an employer – should I really tell my employees not to bring Sam’s Choice cola to a company picnic, or tell the lady who brings in donuts some mornings to get them someplace else? Should I make my politics their issue too, where they have to consider their own political loyalties a factor in whether they feel welcome and valued as human beings at work?
I have enough political arguments too with our extended family, to the point where I will hush people at family gatherings if they cannot talk politics civilly. I even had a relative storm out of a Christmas party because I told them to can it in front of the kids. In the years since, however, the family has come to respect my rule and abide by it. It’s not that we cannot talk politics, but when talk starts to turn to swapping barbs and trying to “win” by shame or browbeating, it ends or I ask people to leave. To do as suggested would be to tell those relatives to forget everything I have tried to enforce about respect and to make my politics central. They know my politics already. They know what I stand for and why. But I will not make agreement with me a condition for whether they can come into my home. My home is welcome to all, and that I will not compromise.
But there is one more matter:
The only boycott exception, where legal, is to get in the CEO’s face with open carry. Carry politely, legally, openly. Then, expecting confrontation by employees, have a partner obviously employing a cell phone or GoPro camera to capture everything as you tell them they will either respect the American Constitution and your God-given right to self-defense or you will never spend another dime in Walmart and only show up to mock them for “just following orders” when the store closes.
How have these sorts of things gone for us before? Not well. Remember when Starbucks allowed open carry? How did that work out? So long as people did not make it an issue, it was not an issue. The hoplophobes, of course, found out and started to protest and demand Starbucks explicitly ban open carrying. What happened next was that more gun owners started open-carrying at Starbucks. If they had stuck just to discretely holstered pistols I imagine the issue would have gone away eventually. Instead (and you can image-search this easily) people showing up toting long-guns into suburban coffee shops. That was entirely unnecessary, and was little better than LARPing for the spectacle of it all — there was then, and is now no credible case for toting around an AR-15 slung on your back when you go to get a latté. Pretending otherwise for the sake of “muh rights!” is risible.
Open-carrying into Walmarts now, with a friend in tow and a gotcha camera at the ready, is also spectacle, and it will only serve to further shred credibility and perception. Walmart has every legal right as a business to conduct itself in this manner, and I have every right to not shop there. To say otherwise is to likewise say that a cake shop has to bake a gay wedding cake. We all rightly recognize that the lawsuits against Masterpiece Cakes have been borne of malice and spectacle, is that a game we should stoop too as well?
Published in Guns
It’s that you don’t believe in the authority of God or the veracity of scripture that makes you unqualified.
I don’t know the 12,000 pages or the thousands of years of apologetics on the subject either. I know some of it, but not all.
But God is my authority, not you or even the priest who says “that’s just Paul’s opinion”. I choose to trust in the veracity of scripture. At the end of the day, regardless of the holes in my understanding of it, that’s what I am cleaving to.
Much like a 16 year old daughter choosing to obey her stepdad on something she thinks is unreasonable, doesn’t totally understand, but trusts him and his rules and guidance.
We agree — fatherhood transcends biology. Just like a calling to the priesthood (not priestesshood).
Interesting commentary from a totally unrelated article:
“Reminiscent of Marxist ideology, the person perceived to have more power in a particular dynamic, however we may be defining that power, is the default villain. Full stop.
It’s a sort of twisted rhetoric, one that robs individuals of the ability to be lauded for honorable work if they are of the incorrect socio-economic class. Here, given the fixation on “old white men,” the proxy for socio-economic class appears to be a confluence of race, sex, and age. And the fact that these scientists were born into this class means they cannot be celebrated because they are occupying the “wrong” place in the pyramid. This is faulty logic, stemming from a failure to separate the ills of society from the ills of the individual.” [Emphasis mine}
https://thefederalist.com/2019/09/04/left-pushes-erase-high-achievers-university-halls-simply-theyre-white-male/
Interesting article on removing portraits of those who have achieved success, because they didn’t represent a “diverse” race of people. This reinforces the leftist ideal of bringing everybody down to the lowest possible level instead of encouraging those on the lower levels to achieve greater success.
Besides, if this keeps us, my portrait painting business goes down the toilet!
Oh no you di’n’t!
The connections used to reach these faulty logical conclusions are not even substantial. You will notice as an example, when the subject is Islamic extremism, the same kinds of connections are not applied.
St. Paul would agree with that!
My material speaks but the spirit is strangely silent.
So natural differences can have some variation and bell-curve stuff? With outliers?
Where does WC, or any Christian, say that natural differences between men and women are not like that–that they are such that even the best woman is worse than the worst man at leadership?
Do you think WC denies that G-d called the biblical Deborah, or would not prefer Carly Fiorina or Nicky Haley to Bernie Sanders?
I see no incoherence or obviousness.
What I see is an unsupported assertion to that effect.
Logic is no elaborate construct.
And is there any in this paragraph? I can’t tell what evidence you’re citing, and I’m not even sure what the conclusion is.
Is this the People disagree about the Bible, and therefore there is no clarity to be found in it argument?
Since when is agreement a requirement for clarity of facts?
Rubbish, my dear Sir. I point to real, factual, and relevant similarities; to relevant differences that count against my view; and to relevant differences that count for it.
Whereupon you ignore the logic, make a specious objection or two (see, e.g., # 51 of another thread), deny that we know anything about Socrates (see # 46), and make a specious comparison to irrational belief which is very, very unlike my belief.
Jolly good show!
Wrong again.
I rather doubt that God would give a fig about Sanders Vs. Nikki as President – these Gott Mitt Uns arguments are the first thing that have to go if we’re ever going to make any headway – but he apparently is AOK with Fr. Sanders so long as Fiorina or Haley never find themselves in vestments!
Here:
Women’s natures make them unfit for church leadership. I didn’t utter this. Women are different. So different that they can’t be (true) leaders in the Church.
This is as clear as crystal to me, so why bother quibbling with me when this is clearly the proposition that is on the table? A proposition to which I was offered the tiresome Peter Kreeft (a lesson which I soon determined I had heard in the past) who in turn offered up much ontological confusion masquerading as wisdom. There are no Priestesses in Islam either, Mr. Kreeft. This hardly seems like a point of commonality one wants to tout, particularly given how thoroughly homosexual the male-dominated church has turned out to be.
You are a smart person who is good at defending weird conclusions reached for initially wrong reasons. Given a similar set of circumstances but different initial conditions you would likely argue just as floridly for the theological truth of the Book of Mormon. Do you think that Mormon theologians don’t use the exact same set of supposedly airtight arguments that you do? Or Muslims? I mean sure – many of them are more explicit in their invocation of Divine Command Theory (even proposed by some guy named Augustine!) but it all boils down to the same thing in the end: These things happened because God willed them to happen. We moderns are to believe in magic on the basis of claims made by illiterate, superstitious peasants from the late Bronze age, and these claims supposedly trump our rational faculties.
Such claims as provided about these fantastic goings-on do constitute a form of evidence – but they are the weakest form of evidence supporting the strongest sorts of claims, and tell us nothing about the world we didn’t previously know. It is also sufficiently obscure as to be non-falsifiable, thus providing the cover one needs to go on believing.
That’s all. :)
The smiley face doesn’t cover for the anger and hate. So many good people you know believe this “magic” and irrationality, but it doesn’t keep you from attacking in the harshest tone. Huh. I wonder why that is?
I’m neither angry or hateful, WC: I only ask for one thing but I never receive it.
Some shard or sliver of proof. We are asked to believe and sacrifice much, are we not? Could we at least get something in return; some token? This isn’t in the offing.
I love my family who are Catholic, but I cannot endorse their continuing to attend that organization’s Churches for a variety of reasons.
You are familiar of course with the dictum to “love the sinner but hate the sin”? I love all of the Catholics and Christians in my life with all my heart. This has to do with my nature as a decoupler.
Also: while “magic” is a slightly crude term, it is a convenient shorthand to explain suspensions of the normal, natural order. I apologize for any offense, but I stand by the term for its economy and neat encapsulation of otherwise incredible things.
Shawn, I see you have a passion for truth and justice. But, your starting point for all these discussion is rejection of all Christian premises. This cannot be a fruitful conversation.
When it comes to the Left, I reject the premises. However, there are transcendent truths that are the basis for our civilization — the very basis of reason and science! That the universe is ordered and intelligible makes scientific exploration to understand it reasonable. Christians and their institutions, including the Catholic Church are not your enemy or the enemy of the people you love. That individuals who lead these institutions sometimes do wicked things (and what is the Yardstick by which you measure wickedness…?) is attributable to the human condition, not necessarily the fault of the institutions or the ideas by which they operate.
And, yes, it is insulting to compare Christianity to Islam.
I will unfollow this now. I have not enjoyed the arguments against religion very much at all. Thanks for your wrap-up and I agree with your last statement.
This is something you have never seen before?
I actually heard some pretty profound things when I was listening to a recent audiobook discussing Exodus.
Lots of offers of slivers of proofs in there.
He’ll have faith just as soon as he finds a religion that doesn’t require it.
He calls this “rationality.”
Link
It’s a dreadfully inaccurate term.
Golly, are you ever unclear!
WC’s remarks entail nothing of the sort.
Then you are either a bad reader, or a bad logician. Nothing she says here entails what I was asking about.
An absurd mischaracterization of the kings, poets, doctor, scholars, and so on who actually wrote the Bible. (Amos and Peter, yes, could be characterized “peasants,” and no doubt some witnesses were illiterate.)
And some more chronological snobbery from you. Once again:
I try to pay attention to myself. How interesting that you still know so much more about me!
They don’t. That’s a fact. And if it’s not a fact, why don’t you cite some facts for a change?
As I keep saying, if you can show me that the arguments do follow the exact same patterns, I will have to change my religion.
I had a student in Pakistan, a wonderful chap. We talked about religion. One time he gave me the same general pattern of argument; there was an appeal to a historical miracle by Muhammad as evidence. But the specifics of the pattern were very different. The problem was that the historical record of Muhammad moving the moon was much less good than the historical record for the death of Socrates, whereas the historical record for the Resurrection of Yeshua the Messiah is much better.
The Resurrection is still falsifiable, and always has been. All you need is a corpse, or an occupied tomb. It’s just that the best evidence for falsification–reliable witnesses seeing the body, dead as a doornail–would be historical and difficult to verify.
No, they tell us that we have remarkable testimonial evidence for a remarkable event, as part of a set of historical events having no archaeological falsification and some archaeology confirmation.
As historical knowledge goes, that’s darn good.
You contradict yourself, but I think maybe this was just a bit of an intentional overstatement, so no problem.
How much evidence do you want? What sort of token would be enough for you?