Rod Dreher Smells a Rat at Disney
Gene Callahan sent me this interesting article on Disney and the NFL threatening to boycott Georgia if its legislature passes a religious liberty bill that opponents say discriminates against gay people. The key takeaway:
When you’ve lost Disney and the NFL — that is, when even Disney and the NFL consider “religious liberty” to be a code word for “hate” — you’ve lost, period. Get it straight in your head now, orthodox Christians, Jews, and Muslims: Big Business is the enemy.
There is precious little we can do about it now, but we can at least stop fooling ourselves that the free market is a friend to orthodox religion. It never was, but now, it’s positively hostile.
At the state and local level, there are Republican politicians who are willing to try to protect religious liberty, but they’re getting smashed on the economic front by nationals and multinationals. As angry as I get when GOP pols put economics over moral principle, I can understand it. Don’t agree with it, but understand it. Traditional Christians and other social conservatives face a terrible choice: vote for Democrats, who will gleefully stomp on religious liberty, or vote for Republicans, who will feebly oppose it, then cave, because the business of America is and always will be Business.
If this doesn’t compel conservative Christians to radically rethink their politics, they are so far in the GOP tank that they can’t tell up from down. Reagan is dead, and so is his coalition.
“but we can at least stop fooling ourselves that the free market is a friend to orthodox religion. It never was, but now, it’s positively hostile.”
We should first stop fooling ourselves that what we have is a free market.
When the choice NOT to trade is punished with fines, and sanctions from governments, that is proof we do not have free trade. Free trade includes the freedom not to enter into any trade with anyone for any reason.
The NFL’s threats are just communications that the owners will not trade with the Georgia public. That should be legal.
It is hypocrisy. People choosing not to trade on religious grounds is illegal, and people choosing not to trade on anti-religion grounds is legal.
Good point MF, I’m glad you made that. Of course I agree with you; boycotts are voluntary and hence should always be legal.
“we can at least stop fooling ourselves that the free market is a friend to orthodox religion. It never was, but now, it’s positively hostile.”
Fallacy of composition, mistaking participants in markets (large businesses) for the markets themselves.
“The free market” here, properly understood, is freedom of association. Big business that think the government can and should compel association, are not “the free market.” They are opposed to it.
In email, Bob mentioned to me that people will say “this is not the true free market”: and of course you are right!
I recognize that the current situation is not a “free market” one. But I don’t think it is because we haven’t tried hard enough: it is because a “pure free market” is an abstraction, and CAN’T be realized.
And please, I’m not trying to threadjack! I just want to note that I agree with all of you that we don’t have a “true free market.”
So because you feel confident in be!Irving that there will likely be murder and rape in the world, that this is sufficient grounds for you to look at isolated cases of wanting to stop murder and rape, as naïve and misguided attempts to create an impossible “pure” world? That we should just morally and intellectually accept murder and rape as they occur and never defend against them?
Is that it? Really?
Markets are just places to exchange things. They’re not for or against anything. Humans are for and against things.
Gene-A government which does not compel association is hardly an abstraction. The notion that the government can and should do so is a relatively recent idea here in the US where freedom of association was once a cherished constitutional right.
You are not Nostradamus.
To claim that you know the inevitable course of history and to know what people in the future will inevitably do, is intellectual arrogance at its worst.
“When you’ve lost Disney and the NFL — that is, when even Disney and the NFL consider “religious liberty” to be a code word for “hate” — you’ve lost, period.”
Uhh …:
Sports Stadiums: Temples to Crony Capitalism
https://mises.org/library/sports-stadiums-temples-crony-capitalism-0
“But the league’s most precious gift from the state is perhaps Public Law 89-800, which grants the NFL a legal monopoly over broadcasting rights. Walmart and BP can only dream of such a gift. According to Gregg Easterbrook, the 1966 law was “effectively a license for NFL owners to print money.” The deal was offered to the NFL in exchange for one promise: not to schedule games on Friday or Saturday nights during the fall, the time when most high schools and colleges play their games.
“There are many unintended consequences at work, according to Bloomberg, many cities, counties, and states also pay the stadiums’ ongoing costs, by providing sewer services, electricity, stadium improvements, and other infrastructure. All this is happening while the NFL shrouds it’s rhetoric with free-market jargon like “job creation” and “revenue generation” which economists are now seeing the real cost of.”
“because the business of America is and always will be Business”
Because they are refusing to do business? Sounds like politics.
If you refuse to bake a cake for some lesbians in the shape of a dildo, they will sue you.
If you bake a cake for some lesbians in the shape of dildo, Ted Cruz will indict you.
And if you bake a cake containing NFL logos or Disney characters, you will be vaporized on the spot.
http://www.cakeswebake.com/forum/topics/copyrites-can-i-be-sued
Isn’t it interesting how some people interpret the concept of “my property”?