If you’re a Christian businessman who doesn’t want to service a faux wedding, you may be destroyed by your government. But if you’re a restaurateur who doesn’t want to serve Trump voters, well, hey, you’re just exercising your rights.
This message comes through loud and clear after a Hawaii café recently posted a sign stating, “If you voted for Trump you cannot eat here! No Nazis.” Grub Street reports:
Honolulu restaurant owners Robert and Jali Warner want a Trump-free America so, so bad that they’ve straight-up told his voters they “can not” eat at their Italian eatery. The ban comes in the form of a recent sign conspicuously taped to Café 8½’s window…. The couple tells Fox News the ban’s only sort of in earnest, since it’s not like the waitstaff is canvassing to see which customers are to blame for Trump’s victory. Also, they wouldn’t (just to give an example) “put anything different” in those voters’ food. Jari [sic] explains her husband merely wanted “to express how much he doesn’t like Trump.”
It’s hard to say how much business the Warners will lose, with Hawaii being a Democrat bastion. And they certainly have their supporters. As Fox News informs, “A photo of the sign was shared with FoxNews.com. One also is proudly posted on the café’s Facebook page, and was ‘liked’ by some 40 people. ‘… The next time you’re in Honolulu, eat lunch here, not only are they on the right side of things, the food is delicious and reasonable,’ Facebook user Ariel Agor wrote next to the photo.”
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Jali Warner did play the diplomatic good cop, in contrast to her reportedly irascible bad-cop husband. She also stated, “If people take it personally or it hurts them, we cannot help. That’s why we say they have [a] choice if they want to come or not come. We don’t force them.”
Ah, freedom of association. How quintessentially American. What common sense.
And how uncommon it is today. As social commentator Erick Erickson noted:
Liberals are outraged that the Rockettes are going to perform for Trump. They think any Rockette who objects should be allowed to bail on the performance. In fact, Rockettes will not be compelled to perform, but the initial leftist outrage was premised on compulsory attendance. These same leftists think Sweet Cakes by Melissa should have to bake a cake for a gay wedding or be put out of business.
The left thinks performers who are refusing to lend their talents to Trump’s inauguration are heroes, but any Christian small business owner who refuses to lend his talents to a religious ceremony that violates his beliefs is a bigot who should be punished by the state.
It is Hypocrisy 101.
Actually, these leftists have graduated way beyond that. Consider how Orwellian the treatment of the above-referenced bakers has been. As American Thinker reported last year:
The former owners of an Oregon bakery who refused to bake a cake for a gay couple’s wedding are being forced to pay damages in the amount of $135,000 and have been ordered to cease and desist “from publishing, circulating, issuing or displaying, or causing to be published … any communication to the effect that any of the accommodations … will be refused, withheld from or denied to, or that any discrimination be made against, any person on account of their sexual orientation.”
Aaron and Melissa Klein, whose bakery “Sweet Cakes by Melissa” was forced to close because of the decision, say, “According to the state of Oregon we neither have freedom of religion or freedom of speech.”
It gets worse, though. Commissioner Brad Avakian of the Oregon Bureau of Labor and Industries, who has been leading the charge against the bakers, had “ruled that the Kleins’ simple statement of personal resolve to be true to their faith is unlawful,” the couple’s lawyer related. Avakian also stated, oh-so reassuringly, that his goal was only to “rehabilitate” the Kleins. Hey, you’ll feel right as rain once you’re absorbed into the collective.
Many of the same leftists who applauded the persecution of the Kleins are now applauding the Warners. Of course, they may say the two situations aren’t analogous — and they’re right.
The Kleins had no problem serving homosexuals, only with servicing a homosexual event.
In contrast, the spirit of the Warners’ sign wasn’t a simple refusal to cater a Trump event. The idea, and what leftists the nation over are defending, is discrimination against a certain class of people. This was noted by former chairman of the Hawaii Republican Party Willes Lee, who is of Japanese descent and likened the Warners’ sign to pre-Hawaiian statehood days when Filipinos or Japanese “couldn’t go in certain places.” “Ah, but unlike homosexuals or racial groups, Trump voters aren’t a protected class under the law,” some say.
This isn’t a reason but a rationalization. All it means is that instead of Americans having freedom of association and deciding how they will discriminate in their own businesses, the government now decides how they may discriminate (which requires discrimination). Moreover, wholly contrary to the principle of equality under the law, the government is creating special and “protected” classes — leaving other classes, presumably, unprotected.
In addition, the leftist argument here is a legal one, not a moral one. It’s no more credible than saying antebellum slavery or the Nazis’ anti-Jewish policies were okay because, well, it was the “law.”
Governed as they are by emotion, such hypocrisy is the norm among today’s leftists. Some fellow “scholars” are currently defending Drexel University assistant professor George Ciccariello-Maher after he sent the Christmas tweet, “All I Want for Christmas is White Genocide.” They claim we must “preserve academic freedom.” Yet this concern appeared absent last year when Marquette University professor John McAdams took up the cudgels for a student opposed to faux marriage. Subject to a lynch mob of fellow academics, McAdams remains suspended from teaching and may ultimately be fired.
Perhaps the worst aspect of this is the self-delusion, for it’s easier to do evil when deceiving yourself as to what it is you’re doing. The Left is operating not on principle but preference. And instead of alluding to freedom of association in their Warner defense or citing “academic freedom” and free speech when that’s convenient, it would be better if leftists simply admitted they don’t believe in those principles, that they draw lines. Good policy begins with honest discussion.
Of course, though, this doesn’t allow for the moral preening that convinces one of his own righteousness — and has soothed the consciences of tyrants since time immemorial.
