Yes, boycotts. They tend to be important tools of protest. Saying that we do not like what your company, your organization, your Government, is doing, so we will take away our business from you and limit our activity. They are an extreme form of protest.
SB-1070 has been passed recently in Arizona, and with it, have been a slew of Protests and…yes…boycotts. Boycotts by certain Cities of all economic activities in Arizona, Governors not coming, companies like Arizona Iced Tea….made in New York…are called on as being the tea of fascists.
Now boycotts can be perfectly legitimate forms of protest, and several of them have been pulled off successfully…and for good reason. The most famous of these is the Montgomery Bus boycott that MLK and Rosa Parks did to combat the policy of a target company, and a specific policy.
Not through Government force, but normal people.
Now the hallmark of a good boycott is two-fold, you need to have a clear target, and a clear reason for going after the target.
That is just not happening here. I mean sure, if you believe that the bill is a fascist bill then that is a pretty good reason to boycott something and to try to not spend any money in Arizona.
But lets consider that for a second.
The motivation is specific, but the target is not.
The boycotters are willing to protest anything, the Arizona Diamond Backs, any local business, and the tea of fascists.
When none of these people are to be held responsible. Your quibble is with the Government of Arizona and not its citizenry, though many citizens do support this bill. (70% in Arizona, and 60% nationally currently.)
But yet you are willing to economically strangle a state for not agreeing with your specific position. You are willing to completely freeze, and isolate a state, for trying to solve an insane problem.
Gee, California, I hope that Arizona does not return the favor or you could get real thirsty…real fast.
How about instead of trying to coerce someone, through force, that you try to help them out? Help us to come see the light and lets come to a reasonable solution together. Boycotts should be the protest of last resort.
I have a friend, a good friend. He does not agree with me on this issue, we do not quite see eye to eye on education and other issues. But, he is a friend, I welcome his input and he has made some very good points about the bill.
I still support the bill, that has not wavered, but I do see his points and it is some of the most logical criticisms I have heard against the bill. And I have problems with the bill, there is room for improvement.
Instead of trying to destroy us, work with us, that is all we beg of you. That is all I beg of you.
Instead of saying, I will not drink the tea of fascists…from New York, make a commitment to help change, and then if we poor obstinate Arizonans do become a threat, and the bill is not good, then you can boycott all the things you want to boycott.
But there is another thing that I want to bring up to.
Could you imagine the wailing, the moaning, the caterwauling, and the ‘oh how dare they’ if people threatened to boycott the federal Government for the passage of a controversial bill that many have called fascist or Communist.
What if, you know, people started to…secede…over the passage of a simple bill.
What would the people who are boycotting us be saying now?
Normally you would not hear the three of these words together, and nor should you really.
Right now there is a movement to legalize, soft drugs…maybe even hard drugs. To remove their use as a crime, because it is victimless and it is what someone does for or to themselves. It is not the responsibility of society to pay for, or punish behavior such as that.
Now, on the whole notion I am luke warm on and really cautious about. I am not sure all drugs should be legalized, and am cautious on the effects that they will have on the rest of society.
I do believe it is a state issue and for the states to decide. If California wants to legalize marijuana, then let them, no skin off my back, I am in Arizona. It is not really an issue for the Federal Government to deal with. Unless it crosses borders.
But in the end, my advice is, not yet, not now, and we really need to take a long look at the process before we decide on what drugs should be legal and not, and how and where they should be legal.
We should do that anyways, but given the political situation in this country right now makes it really important that we put this off onto the back-burner.
It’s an end of the road sort of thing.
What I mean is that right now we have limited freedom, limited control of our own lives. Everything, seemingly, is being taken away from us by our power mad Government. What to eat, where to go to school, what health care to buy, etc etc.
So why drugs?
We know why liberals tend to be more supportive of gay marriage, of abortion, of illegal immigration…sorry immigration ‘reform’…and a host of other issues.
But why drugs? Especially since many Liberals/ Progressives are bent on controlling your health, passing health care, mandating that restaurants cannot sell certain things. And drugs are health concerns in some small part or another.
To give us another distraction, another issue to keep us busy. And then if we get the drugs then it will just give…a certain percentage of the population, the ability to be doped up and to ignore events, thereby to be more easily controlled.
It’s just to drug us up, get us high, and ignore things. And then to paint anyone who does not want the drugs as hypocrites. Oh you do not want drugs but you love liberty? Hypocrite.
But right now we cannot excercise that right because we are nowhere free in any other aspect of our lives to use that right. Our lives and liberty are under control, or under siege, ever-increasing siege.
We need to get the freedoms we have lost, to restore them in our hearts and minds and our society, before we can worry about being strong enough or free enough to make the decision, yeah I want to try me some of that.
We need to restore our own personal responsibility, the proper role of Government…and dare I say it morality.
Then and only then can we have the conversation of what to legalize, and how we should legalize it, and how it will affect the rest of society, the pros and cons.
We have to regain true freedom and true liberty, before we worry about what to add onto it. We have to realize what our priorities are as a society to fix before we can move on and try to address these concerns, and we have to do it slowly, with great consideration.
Well I tried to get through most of the bill, but it just wound up being a bunch of legalese, and started to repeat itself towards the end of it.
This issue is so important to where I believe this country is heading as a nation and as a people. It really is the pinnacle issue of all that is going on, and it proves a prediction that I made on this very blog. Arizona is the crossroads for this entire debate.
But to set this up, I think a video by ACORN CEO Bertha Lewis:
I will get to that later.
But first, my thoughts on the bill.
People have been saying that it is fascist, it is racists, it sets up racial profiling, that it is unfair to the illegals and Hispanics who help build this country despite the lazy white guy.
I have not found any of this to be true in the least, from my reading of the bill.
It does not mention fascism or socialism or extreme government control of their lives, nor does it mention that people can be dragged away from their homes and their cars on the mere suspicion that you are here illegally, or that you look ‘illegal’.
In fact what it does mention is that the state has to go to the Federal Government in order to ensure that someone is here illegally.
And if someone hires and illegal they will face extreme punishment.
One of the biggest complaints that I have read, and read this morning before I started this, is that citizens will now have to prove that they are here in the country legally, and they have to prove that they are here legally.
That this violates one of our most sacred principles, innocent until proven guilty. And that just because you do not have an ID that is not sufficient evidence to prove that you are here illegally.
This is blatantly false. The police, and local agencies, still have to go through the steps of whether or not you are here legally or not. They might be able to take you in the mean time, but it is still an issue of the courts, and the federal government and their databases to prove your immigration status.
That you need some form of ID, but in case you do not have it that is not an automatic assumption of your guilt. Whether you are Latin American or anything else.
Perhaps the biggest concern about the bill is racial profiling. Also again a false concern to me for the most part. Governor Jan Brewer has, since signing the law, signed an executive order making sure that the police know how not to racially profile, and has signed another bill too much the same effect. To make it crystal clear that the original bill, which does not racial profile, does not racial profile.
But lets play along with the potential abuse of the law.
A good dear friend of mine claimed that if there is any potential abuse under this law then that makes the law bad, immoral, illegal and should not be done.
I sympathise with him, I am a libertarian, any government intrusion, coercion, and abuse is a very bad thing.
But let us run with it, potential abuse under the law.
In this country we have a Second Amendment that gives Citizens the right to Bear arms. The right to defend themselves using firepower, guns, back in the day muskets.
Now this is a fundamental principle that can be open to buckets of abuse.
Someone who has a gun, takes it, is drunk, angry, or is just having a bad day can take it, and murder their spouse who they just had a fight with.
Whose at fault? The fundamental principle or the guy who fired the weapon?
I put forth that it is the guy who fired the weapon. The guy based on other fundamental principles of our government, will be jailed, punished, or executed for his heinous crimes.
Much the same with happen in this law. If an individual exceeds his authority and profiles racially, in any way, he will be punished by this very law that says that is a no-no.
And if the law itself is Unconstitutional I will trust in the courts to deal with it.
There is also a huge amount of hypocrisy about the whole thing.
You need an ID to vote, to drive a car, to get employment, a house, to have an alcoholic beverage, to visit other countries, and to re-enter this country when you are done.
So why not to determine your status if you are here illegally? To determine who you are and what your intentions may be?
Also back during the health care debate people said read the bill, read the bill, you should read the bill. And yet, now, the people who do not read the bill say its going to be fascist.
We are being set up gang.
In the clip by Bertha Lewis she claims that the evil…..tea partiers in that specific case..are out to get you.
And it will surpass the era of McCarthy, that it will surpass the camps in WW II, and it will surpass Jim Crow.
Now anyone with any amount of logic will tell you that is crazy. Only Governments can do those things to you.
But the clip reveals quite an important part of her psyche and the psyche of Big Government people. Any growth of Government on the right is Fascist, that they are using the European model, the Progressive model.
That this will happen when and if the white and the tea party members and the right ever come into power again, that they will grow the Government and come after the Left Wing Socialists and Communists and everyone else who is different from them.
Enter in SB 1070.
A bill passed by a Republican, and thus maybe a Conservative…thus is the popular perception in Republicans versus Democrats. A person that could be supported by the tea parties, again the perception, a white person.
A bill that is supposedly fascist and will allow for racial profiling. A bill that will allow people to be rounded up in the streets for just looking illegal.
And then they will be put into the Concentration Camps of local sheriffs.
This is what is being said about the bill.
And none of it is true.
Nevermind that the bill and the subsequent legislation outlaws racial profiling. Never mind that we have the right to defend ourselves and our borders, never mind that we need ID to do almost everything else in our society.
A piece of our society that can be abused easily as I have bought up in the past, but I digress.
Nevermind that this bill is supported by upwards 60% of the American People, including a majority of African and Hispanic Americans.
Nevermind that most people, apparently, do not care if there is a theoretical civil rights violation under this bill. committed by an individual will be in violation of several laws.
But none of that matters. Its meant to set up a false premise.
Fascists on the Right, Socialists on the Left. That you cannot go to the right, they are fascists, sure we may be enslaving you and creating massive government programs, but at least we will not kill you. After all they will just do the same things we are doing, and besides they are a bunch of racists that will not accept you because you are different.
That it leaves those in the middle apathetic, unwilling to engage, or go to the other side.
All this is meant to do is an attempt to rile up their base, not to mention bash, debase and vilify anyone not subscribing to the progressive socialist utopia.
And any opposition to this socialist nirvana must be squashed, as one sign said at the May Day Rallies, by any means necessary.
I can blog about many things, and I am not sure on which topic I should be blogging about. I could do taxes, blargh, or the disparity between federal and private employees, ugh.
But again the issue that comes to mind is immigration.
Now, I have blogged about this recently, but I think there is something that needs to be bought to light.
I live in Arizona, and many around the country have heard of Sheriff Joe Arpaio.
Here in the local news, a couple of weeks ago, a local Latino advocate or Politician was advocating that Maricopa County should be taken over by the federal government.
Well this really disturbed my Constitutionalist/federalist/ conservative/ Libertarian self.
It also got me thinking.
Maricopa County maybe, and Arizona most likely, will be the crossroads and the main battle line for any immigration reform.
Because, depending on who you listen to, the Federal Government is either considering a Jobs bill, or they are considering trying out some form of immigration reform.
Which, the latter, will likely involve some form of amnesty.
The purpose of this is wide and varied, but in short, I believe that it is to make us forget about Health Care.
But more importantly it is going to polarize the country, and leave the independents confused on where to go. They cannot go to the liberals because they insist on taking away our freedoms, but the Conservatives and Libertarians are dirty racists, at least so we hear in the media, and do not want immigration reform.
At least this is what I fear, as always this is just the beginning of this process, so we will have to wait and see, but we already know that the dialogue is that we are a bunch of racists.
We are just going to have to wait, and see, and hope I am wrong.
Colfoley's Blog 