Yeah, I’m kind of late to the Chik-Fil-A party but it’s been a busy couple of weeks. Being a good Southern boy, they’ve always been first and foremost in my mind whenever the term “chicken sammich” is uttered. My heart leaped with joy when they (and Waffle House) started opening franchises up here in the blighted cultural wasteland that is Ohio.*
Having established that foundational truth, I’m ashamed of myself for not participating in Wednesday’s grand nationwide customer love-in. Couldn’t get away from work for the time it would’ve taken just to sit in the drive-through. Thursday was a different story, but it turns out they were just as crowded! Apparently everyone who couldn’t make it the day before (like moi) was there to make up for it.
Well, good for them. Because you all know what this is really about, right (besides yummy sammiches)?
Freedom of speech. Period. End of freakin’ sentence.
Here’s the deal: “love” and “tolerance” are not the same thing as accepting everything someone elses believes, or agreeing with their lifestyle. That’s a lesson the former CFO of a certain manufacturer of medical implements learned the hard way this week.
And here’s another important lesson: when you’re that far up the company ladder, there are a couple of reasons they’re paying you well into six figures. First is that they trust you to make consequential decisions with the potential to sink the company if you’re wrong. The other is that they trust you to be one of the public faces of said company. That means you behave yourself in public.
In other words, it’s not because they think you’re a great guy. They are making a very large bet based on their evaluation of your personal judgment. And you just failed that test on both counts, pal. If you’d been an entry-level drone in accounts payable, you would’ve had a better chance of remaining just another anonymous ass-clown on YouTube.
Power-mad turd blossoms like Rahm Emmanuel are a different matter entirely. Politicians like him, in a position to deny business licenses, have openly stated they will use their power to block said businesses simply for disagreeing with their personal principles. That they feel safe enough in their positions to openly threaten a CEO for simply voicing his opinion (and choosing where to donate his money) speaks volumes about the current state of politics. And that’s fine – the cowards need to finally show us what they’re really all about.
What Adam Smith, Rahm-bo (and his posse), all have in common is an inability to recognize their own towering hypocrisy. Though in the politician’s worldview, “morals” and “tolerance” are just calculated buzzwords they use to browbeat their opponents so that’s probably immaterial.
This childish view of “acceptance” has thoroughly poisoned our political discourse, to the point where otherwise intelligent and/or responsible adults behave like petulant teenagers whenever they encounter principled opposition.
Me? I cannot support gay marriage due to my religious convictions. If not for being a believer in Christ, I’d likely be a straight-up libertarian and therefore wouldn’t really care. Part of me still feels that way. But in the end, I just can’t do it.
Having said that, in the long run I don’t think we’re going to win this particular battle for a number of reasons. First and foremost is that we’re talking about what is in essence a morality issue and the bulk of our argument is based on Biblical teachings – so how exactly do we argue that in Federal court? Because it’s almost certain to end up there. It’ll be interesting to see how craftier minds are able to square that circle, because I certainly can’t.
That’s not being defeatist, just pragmatic. And frankly, we should always keep this in mind: it does us no good to let ourselves be drawn too deeply into political arguments. It’s like mud-wrestling a pig: you both get dirty, but after a while you figure out the pig likes it. If we were doing a better job of spreading the Gospel in the first place, we wouldn’t need to engage in politics.
Any lefty trolls who want to go on about how Chik-Fil-A is an evil financier of knuckle-dragging Christianists is willfully missing the point. I’m sure it makes it easier for you to digest current events, but in the end you’re just lying to yourselves. Keep it up, because it’ll make it that much easier for us to defeat you at the polls.
In recent years the Left, all the way up the President, have flat-out stated that they see us (meaning conservatives) as enemies. Not opponents – enemies. Well, good. If that’s how you feel, it’s important to get that out on the table. But know this: just because you picked the fight doesn’t mean we won’t finish it. If you’ve elected to label your fellow citizens as enemies, then you’d better be prepared to back up your rhetoric.
All the way back to Sun Tzu, effective military leaders have known that to defeat an enemy, one must never underestimate them. The first step to avoiding that fatal conceit is to understand the enemy. And by relying on Tea Party caricatures instead of examining our arguments, the Left has utterly failed to understand us.
See you in November, beeches.
*OK, so it’s not that bad. We’re actually blessed with some pretty good local non-chain restaurants. But nothing will ever supplant good Southern cuisine. That’s just the way it is, and we’ll all get along much better once ya’ll accept it. Ever had hush puppies with Calabash flounder? ‘Nuff said.
The Chiles Files 