The outrage over Indiana’s religious freedom law (no air quotes here) is a great example of how purely hypothetical the Left has become. In fact, from now on I’m going to call them The Hypotheticals. They oppose this law because—hypothetically—it could lead to discrimination.
Here in the non-hypothetical world, however, Sweet Cakes by Melissa really did go bankrupt for not baking a gay cake and the Giffords really did have to pay $13,000 for not holding a gay marriage in their living room. I understand the argument that Indiana’s law might have repercussions down the line, but why pontificate when we can see the adverse effects of doing the opposite right now?
Well, firstly because without pontification, The Hypotheticals have nothing. As Charles Murray pointed out in “Coming Apart,” much of America has become disconnected from the real world. This is especially true of upper-middle-class liberals and their non-relationship with America’s working class. Liberals can passionately defend their utopia because it exists, unchecked as a figment of their imagination. It’s a virtual belief system that hurts those of us living in the real world.
The Hypotheticals Don’t End There
Throw a dart at a board of liberal issues and you’ll not only see the cognitive dissonance that guides The Hypotheticals’ beliefs but also the horrific side effects this naiveté begets.
They assume public schools are a few dollars short of success. They don’t know how much we pay per student and nobody told them test scores haven’t budged in half a century despite constantly throwing money at the problem. So their belief starts and ends with, “I believe children are our future.” Meanwhile, in Harlem, charter schools are thriving. Kids from single-parent households are getting the kick in the ass they need to get their grades up, and they’re not getting it from bloated unions. They’re getting it from the free market.
I talked to reformed ex-con Taleeb Starkes about his book, “The Un-Civil War,” on my podcast. I brought up the liberal argument that blacks are incarcerated far more often than whites for the same crimes, especially drugs. Starkes is very anti-thug, so I wanted to present him with this discrepancy in defense of black criminals. This academic theory often discussed on blogs and in classrooms had never come up in his world. To the kids he knows in the ghetto, prison was a place you go to get in shape and recalibrate your crime techniques. The guys he served time with didn’t see it as some kind of racist rip off. They saw it as a respite. This never occurred to The Hypotheticals because they come up with all their theories in their head. To them, if it sounds reasonable, it’s a fact.
Condemn Now, Don’t Apologize Later
The list goes on and on. While The Hypotheticals imagine a world of black and white, we’re left to sort out the grays. They tell us unusual sexuality is healthy, and end up defending pedophilia. They tell us abortion is a right, and end up promoting infanticide. They bleat that we’re a nation of immigrants, while we try to untangle the web of 15 million illegals and the problems with amnesty. While they create an imaginary world where white cops shoot innocent black men for no reason, we face the fact that real black kids are being shot by real black kids right now.
Gawker had Razib Khan fired after 24 hours at the New York Times just because he’s open to IQ data. I spoke to the blogger responsible for this and learned his motive was that such research might effect minorities negatively down the line. So, he had a visible minority fired now to protect visible minorities later. The Hypotheticals ban stop and frisk because they assume it’s racist, but they don’t realize ending this police procedure actually makes the ghetto less safe. As Jason Riley’s book so clearly states, “Please Stop Helping Us.”
Which brings us back to religious freedom. This isn’t sharia law. These bakeries are not discriminating against gays. They don’t care if they have to bake a gay birthday cake. We know this because they never ask the sexual proclivity of birthday celebrant. They just don’t want to help celebrate an event that goes against their religion. Many American states still make this act illegal.
The People Actually Being Hurt Are the Religious Ones
Why are bakers considered so radical? You know The Hypotheticals would have nothing to say about Muslims baking gay cakes. It’s virtually impossible to imagine a Muslim organization being forced to do something it considered blasphemous. Should Sandra Fluke’s Madrasah pay for her birth control? I’ve lived next to Hasidic Jewish communities my entire adult life, and their religion is all over their business. They refuse to touch women’s hands, so giving change involves kind of lobbing the quarters into my wife’s palm. It’s kind of annoying, but it’s certainly not an invasion of our rights. We also don’t care that they all close on Saturdays. Should we? Bakeries all over the world are going bankrupt because of the possibility a religious preference might possibly lead to discrimination at some point.
What about the here and now? The Giffords didn’t forbid gay marriage on their property. They told the lesbians they could have their reception on the Gifford farm. They just didn’t want to have a gay marriage in their own living room. We are forcing Christians to not only tolerate homosexuality but celebrate it in their very homes. I love gays as much as I love Christians, but that’s just wrong.
The most telling thing about the real damage Hypotheticals do can be seen in the fine the Giffords were forced to pay. It was $13,000, with $3,000 going to the angry lesbians and $10,000 going to the government. That’s what happens when The Hypotheticals and the state get together to regulate our morality. The government gets the lion’s share, the aggrieved get a small commission, and everyone else gets screwed.