Trump has reminded the left of this wondrous and recently important right known as Freedom of Association. As always, when the left identifies a "right", it is a "right" as long as you agree with them.
The right to discriminate — to choose with whom we will and won’t associate — is vital to human liberty. A dressmaker who can’t say no to a commission to design a gown isn’t free, and it doesn’t matter whether the gown is for a first lady or for the brides in a lesbian wedding. A liberal baker who declines to create a lavish cake decorated with the words “Congratulations, President Trump” is entitled to as much deference as a black baker who declines to decorate a cake with the Confederate flag, or a Muslim baker who declines to decorate a cake with the message “No Muslim Immigrants.”
Freedom of association, like all freedoms, isn’t absolute. Common carriers, innkeepers, and vendors open to the public are barred by law from refusing to serve customers because of their race, religion, or sex, for example. But when it comes to providing personal services to others — whether the service is cleaning homes or singing the national anthem or taking photos — coercion is anathema. It would be ludicrous for the Trump committee to sue Andrea Bocelli or Phoebe Pearl to compel their involvement in the inaugural. It is just as ludicrous, or ought to be, to sue florists and bakers to compel their involvement in weddings they prefer to avoid.So Associational Freedom is now important. As I wrote in 2015 however, it was NOT important in 2015 and whole states were put in the sites of the powerful for failing to bow to celebrate the bold new order of gay "marriage".
In my universe, Assosicational Feedom would in fact approach "absolute". You may well go out of busniness if you push the boundaries, but the state would not be breating down your neck.
Also in my world, when the "popular culture" decides that they will define new norms and beat down the minority that disagrees with them, turnabout is absolutely fair play. What the left wanted was a society WITHOUT Associationa Freedom when they assumed they were always going to win and be in the majority.
What is good for the goose is good for the gander in the relativistic world that the left thought they had created. In EXACTLY the same way as fining a baker for not baking a cake, fining a dancer for not dancing is perfect turnabout. The left wanted the civil servant in Kentucky JAILED for not giving out a license for a gay "marriage" -- putting EPA employees in jail who fail to comply with the edicts of President Trump is exactly the same.
EITHER we return to rule of law and transcendent principles, or we MUST make sure that those out of power are punished for being out of power. Without riule of law, raw application of power is the only way to get the point across that doing what the left has been doing since Roe V Wade and longer MUST have consequences when they lose!
My belief is that a return to rule of law is STILL the right thing to do, but treating Rockettes differentlyt than Bakers is acceptible withut a FIRM agreement with the left people that we really don't trust because they have proven themselves untrustworhty over and over.
It's a dilema -- somebody has to take the moral high ground and defer to law EVEN when they are in power! The left has shown us it isn't going to be them -- can the right do so and manage to make it stick again?
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