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If Fox News cancels Laura Ingraham, it might as well close the network

If Fox News cancels Laura Ingraham, it might as well close the network

Long after David Hogg’s fame has faded, attempts to deplatform conservatives and destroy Fox News will continue

https://www.facebook.com/IngrahamAngle/photos/a.946774555470114.1073741827.946279088852994/952020121612224/?type=1&theater

There is an all out assault in progress trying to drive Laura Ingraham off television and radio, led by Parkland student and newly-minted media star David Hogg.

Ingraham is a target, superficially, because she mocked Hogg as a whiner in a tweet after he publicly griped that several colleges had rejected him. On the scale of internet insults, saying that someone is “whining” doesn’t even register it’s so mild.

I don’t believe for a second that any of the outrage against Ingraham is actually a result of what she said. It’s all contrived, or the result of pressure, and part of a political power play.

Certainly, what Ingraham said doesn’t come close to the vile accusations regularly made by Hogg against people who disagree with him on gun control. Hogg is so fundamentalist and absolutist that all his opponents are reduced to demons in his rhetoric.

(Language warning)

It would be a mistake, however, to focus too heavily on Hogg. His current fame will fade when he no longer is politically useful to those who support him now, and I doubt he resonates beyond the bubble of the anti-Trump Resistance. Hogg will be like Sandra Fluke, if you even remember who she was.

Hogg is the excuse to try to deplatform Ingraham, but he’s not the reason. The reason this is happening is that groups like Media Matters have fought a decade-long battle to deplatform conservatives in media by pressuring advertisers.

I explored the history and tactics in my April 19, 2017 post, Here’s why Rush survived pressure on advertisers while O’Reilly didn’t:

Bill O’Reilly’s Fox News career now swims with the fishes.

The conventional wisdom is that after the NY Times exposed a history of sexual harassment  settlements, and two new accusers came forward, advertisers “fled” the show, forcing the hand of News Corp and the Murdochs.

That conventional wisdom is only partially correct — advertisers didn’t flee, they were chased away by the same organized effort as was used against Glenn Beck once upon a time, and Rush Limbaugh in 2012.

Longtime readers will recall my extensive and groundbreaking research into the StopRush operation just after Limbaugh’s comments about Sandra Fluke in 2012, for which he apologized.

I proved then that the operation — at least initially — was a Media Matters astroturfed assault on Limbaugh’s advertiser base, based on a pre-existing plan by Angelo Carusone, then Director of Online Strategy for Media Matters (and now President). Supposedly independent groups coordinated their efforts with Media Matters, and then tried to cover it up….

But of course, for Carusone and Media Matters, it was all about politics, and part of a plan hatched years ago, as we wrote about in 2011, Media Matters Plans “Guerrilla Warfare and Sabotage” on Fox News And Conservative Websites.

As the Daily Caller documented, Media Matters has been an integral part of Hogg’s campaign against Ingraham, providing him from the start with advertiser lists. Media Matter has been joined by individuals and groups under the umbrella of The Resistance to Trump, who have been relentlessly targeting advertisers on social media. They want Ingraham not because of what she said, but because it would be seen as a blow to Fox News and by implication, Trump.

Similar actions were launched right after the Parkland school shooting against corporations partnering with the NRA, and I warned that it wouldn’t stop there. I renewed my NRA membership because attacks on 2nd Amendment rights never stop there:

One of the most astounding aspects of the politics after the Parkland school shooting is how quickly a small group of student leaders and a large number of leftist groups backing them focused on the NRA….

There is an ongoing campaign touted on social media by the small group of students but organizes by groups like Think Progress. Sleeping Giants and Moms Demand Action, who are targeting corporations that do business with the NRA, mostly though discounts offered to NRA members. Using a playbook refined against Glenn Beck, Fox News, Rush Limbaugh and others, companies are being bombarded on social media with demands they sever ties….

But it’s going further. People like Joe Scarborough have joined a campaign to deplatform NRA-TV. That is, to force companies like Apple, Amazon and YouTube to shut down NRA-TV’s ability to stream content.

It should surprise no one that what starts with an attack on 2nd Amendment rights quickly moved to an attack on free speech via the handful of internet oligopolies. Leftists have identified a weak point — private entities are not constrained by the 1st Amendment the way the government is, but they perform on the internet quasi-governmental functions over internet infrastructure and access….

If you think the attacks on the NRA are only about the 2nd Amendment, then you haven’t been paying attention. These people are totalitarian in nature, and that nature is on full display.

It’s not about Laura Ingraham or David Hogg — it’s about an unhinged and emboldened totalitarian movement that seeks to deplatform conservatives. Their primary target for a decade has been Fox News, which is the one non-liberal network in a sea of liberal major media.

Sacrificing Laura Ingraham won’t satiate the beast. If Fox News cancels Laura Ingraham over this faux outrage about her tweet, then Fox News might as well close the network.

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Comments

The only thing Ingraham did wrong was apologizing to the little punk.

    Ragspierre in reply to Olinser. | April 1, 2018 at 9:11 pm

    It was not wrong for Ingraham to follow her Christian conscience.

      Barry in reply to Ragspierre. | April 2, 2018 at 1:55 pm

      At the moment, it’s 49 to 1 that she was wrong to apologize. You being the 1.

      You can lecture on herd mentality all you want, those “votes” are nothing more than the express opinion of those voting.

      You are, just like you always are, defending the progs.

        Ragspierre in reply to Barry. | April 3, 2018 at 8:59 am

        You poor idiot. I defended Ingraham’s act of conscience. You’ll lie about anything. And everything.

    PrincetonAl in reply to Olinser. | April 1, 2018 at 10:55 pm

    Apologizing to SJWs only emboldens them. Ignore them, fight back twice as hard, but don’t appease them.

    As far as following a Christian conscience – there is nothing wrong with that. But apologizing because pressured isn’t following conscience it’s buckling to totalitarianism.

    And there is no need to apologize to fascists, young or old – mocking would be Hitlers is fine anytime.

      Ragspierre in reply to PrincetonAl. | April 1, 2018 at 11:18 pm

      “But apologizing because pressured isn’t following conscience it’s buckling to totalitarianism.”

      She gave her reason, and she was right. It was punching down, and counter-productive.

      Are you saying she lied, using her religion as a beard? What support do you have for that?

        Milhouse in reply to Ragspierre. | April 1, 2018 at 11:56 pm

        It was not “punching down”. as we are seeing now, right now he’s more influential than her. and he has done nothing to deserve that influence.

        Besides, he is a whiner, as he has just proved by whining about being called a whiner.

          Ragspierre in reply to Milhouse. | April 2, 2018 at 1:02 am

          It was both punching down and counter-productive. It was also a cheap shot, and Ingraham recognized all that.

          Of course he’s a whiner. He’s a weak, disgusting lil’ puke who’s arguments and demagoguery are vile. He’s so easily refuted with rational, direct arguments…like those Shapiro would make and Ingraham is very capable of making…that the shot at his being declined by several Ivy Leaguers was both mean (as in low) and vapid. If he couldn’t get into ANY college, what would that prove? Would that refute the little prick?

          But that’s not the question. The question remains was it wrong for Ingraham to follow her Christian conscience?

    mrtoad21 in reply to Olinser. | April 2, 2018 at 7:14 am

    Her mistake was “shut up and dribble”. What is an advertiser supposed to do when the same angry customer is calling to complain about the same personality within 30 days? Nothing? We promise it won’t happen a third time?

    It was a self-inflected error.

    Barry in reply to Olinser. | April 2, 2018 at 9:04 am

    Wrong? No.

    Stupid? Yes.

This is true, Prof. And the way we fight is with reason and well-expressed and documented statements of the truth.

That, and supporting advertisers who remember that they are being watched jealously by the Fox audience.

A vocal BUYcott is a powerful tool, as we learned from Chik-fil-a.

Prof: “It would be a mistake, however, to focus too heavily on Hogg.”

Agreed. Making him a martyr would only extend his influence. And in my experience these people tend to discredit themselves and their movement, given enough rope.

Fox no longer professes to be conservative, if Laura goes, and Fox goes, we literally will be the preverbal tree in the forest .
Twitter, FB, google , AOL, all
Newspapers, Magazines, most TV are anti American, anti Conservatives pro Globalist…
We need a plan B, sooner than later…

All we have, for now is talk radio…

They tried to get Hannity last year, his base was strong enough for him to survive…

It never stops, and that’s why Trump MUST NOT let the caravan of illegals in…

    hrh40 in reply to gonzotx. | April 2, 2018 at 8:12 am

    Fox Business has been more conservative than Fox Establishment Bush/Romney Republican News for at least a decade. Take out Neil Cavuto and Fox Business (FBN) would have almost a complete slate of conservative or libertarian hosts.

    Fox News, except for Hannity, is a globalists network just like all the others, except they support the Republican globalist wing rather than the Democrat wing.

Punch back twice as hard, as a certain pundit is apt to say.

She damaged her own brand by acceding to the demand for an apology. Hogg was playing both sides — criticizing like an adult but hiding behind his age when criticism was directed towards himself. She should have exposed him.

If Fox News cancels Laura Ingraham over this faux outrage about her tweet, then Fox News might as well close the network.

Really? Is she that important?

This strikes me as being something like Britain asking Adolf for terms after losing Crete … which of course didn’t happen.

Her mistake was to apologize. The Left knows how to play the game. Never apologize and double/triple down. When will the Right learn?

Dejectedhead | April 1, 2018 at 10:41 pm

As part of this, the message being pushed from businessinsider and via social media platform Reddit, is that the only people supporting Laura Ingraham are Russian Bots.

https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/88sjjl/russian_bots_are_rallying_behind_embattled_fox/

The right leaning media, along with much of the right political leadership is in denial. They think the left is playing fair. And even when they aren’t, if they given in to them one time, two times, three times, OK, maybe ten times, they will get tired of winning and start playing fair. It doesn’t that way.

If Fox News is not willing to defend their own rights, if they give in without engaging the fight, no one else can help them here.

If they don’t want to directly take on their advertisers publically, they should take them on behind the scenes. If the advertisers won’t budge, they should go public, at least as long as those advertisers decide to continue to advertise on any of their competitors. If companies are going to take sides in a political war and support the left in taking them out of the debate, they need to be called on it. Fox should let every one of its viewers know that these companies are taking sides and ask them if they think this is right and fair. My bet is a lot of viewers will given these companies a piece of their mind, or at least take their wallet elsewhere.

If there is no cost to taking sides, of course these companies are going to side with the online mob in hopes it goes away. And right now, there is no cost to taking sides.

Close The Fed | April 1, 2018 at 10:45 pm

I am astonished by the little cretin’s attitude and behavior.

Who raised this little monster?

I would be in favor of them at least changing the name of the show.

Follow the link, and you will know exactly why David Hogg flipped out on L.I.: his SAT score. You will get quite an insight into him if this is legit.

https://bigleaguepolitics.com/exclusive-blp-confirms-david-hoggs-anonymous-reddit-account/

    notamemberofanyorganizedpolicital in reply to willow. | April 2, 2018 at 1:53 pm

    Very interesting reading there. Thanks.

    From that source: “It appears that Hogg was looking for advice on how to best display his name, which flashes across the beginning of video..”

    “The loudest, most arrogant anti-gun character in America promoting gun violence by posting a picture of a woman holding a gun to her head? It couldn’t be scripted better.

    “Hogg also harbors disdain for Evangelical Christian Trump supporters…..

    “Much ado has been made about Hogg’s college prospects recently. Hogg’s rejection from multiple universities has been a national headline…..

Ragspierre: “t was not wrong for Ingraham to follow her Christian conscience… the way we fight is with reason and well-expressed and documented statements of the truth.”

You are false.

You continually attack others here with lies and emotional tantrums.

You have never once asked for forgiveness, nor have you ever offered forgiveness of others.

Now you hijack Ingram’s dilemma solely to profile yourself as a Righteous Dude. It’s cheap Virtue Signaling driven by repressed shame and narcissism.

Ingram has emboldened and enabled a bully, which will only encourage him to seek out new victims. Maybe she was right to back down and turn the other cheek, maybe she wasn’t.

But you are not the one to defend the Virtues. They are not props to be used for self-promotion. That borders on blasphemy.

If your conscience is uneasy, you can find your way back to the Path with contrition in pursuit of forgiveness. Start with the Professor for soiling his site and work your way down the list.

We are supposed to be brothers in arms. And yet no one here trusts you. That can’t be how you want it. Fix it.

    Ragspierre in reply to Fen. | April 2, 2018 at 1:13 am

    I’m not a “rightous dude”. I don’t claim to be a Christian.

    Do you want me to forgive you? I don’t expect you to “forgive” me, and I don’t give a shit.

    And, oh YEAH, I will “blaspheme” against you and your lies, Little Bill.

    I don’t mind being “Unforgiven”. I can deal with it.

    You are not my “brother” in any sense. You’re a lying, hateful, warped sack of shit who entertains fantasies of killing people’s children regularly here. “Soiling” the site like you think it your job. You do it again here. We all know why.

    notamemberofanyorganizedpolicital in reply to Fen. | April 2, 2018 at 1:56 pm

    Reminds me of how Christ drove the money changers out of the temple – drove them out with a whip and overturned their tables – and the comment in that passage says he sinned not……..

I just wanted to say that, after reading the responses to the Professor’s post that I may die from laughter.

This from Rags:
“This is true, Prof. And the way we fight is with reason and well-expressed and documented statements of the truth.”

It might have some credibility, maybe just a smidgen, if the person responsible for posting this has far more instances of calling people liars, stupid and delusional, all without any reasoned, well-expressed and documented statements of truth. What I an doing here is rendering this person ineffective by impeaching his credibility. tactically, this means that I have to spend less time pointing out his foibles, thereby gaining an advantage.

But, seriously, what Ingraham did was to grossly illustrate the fact that Hogg and the people for whom he shills do not want, nor do they have any intention of engaging in, a debate based upon reason and well-documented truth. They are only interested in winning by whatever means necessary. In their world it is allowable for Hogg, and others, to call people horrendous names, to spout total fabrications concerning them and to assassinate their characters on a whim. However, let someone on the other side call one of them a “whiner” and that person MUST BE DESTROYED for dissing another.

Apparently we have some people who portray themselves as being against the totalitarian actions of the left [lies, street violence, character assassination, etc] who are uncomfortable with forcing these thugs to behave in socially acceptable ways. Hogg and his supporters chose the weapons in this debate; vulgarity and personal character assassination. If that was a mistake, then it was theirs. Trump has learned something that Ingraham has not, when dealing with people like this, do not apologize for telling the truth, double down and make THEM play defense.

    Ragspierre in reply to Mac45. | April 2, 2018 at 1:19 am

    Oh, PLEASE, Mac.22. I pin you to the wall all the time, and you flucking know it.

    Any word on where you get your Malthusian bullshit “economics”? Because I REALLY want to know what in the wide, wide wonderful world of sports you’re reading to get the absolute crap you post!

    You’re a self-identified Birther.

    You expressly denounce the notion of natural rights, and suggest the Framers were just making shit up to suit.

    Any posting on Porter’s wives claiming any murderous attacks?

    C’mon, honey…step on up…!!!

      Barry in reply to Ragspierre. | April 2, 2018 at 9:09 am

      “I pin you to the wall all the time…”

      LOL, I’ve never seen a more delusional idiot posting on the internets, and there are lots of them. You top them all.

      “pin you to the wall”

        Ragspierre in reply to Barry. | April 2, 2018 at 9:33 am

        Hey, lying old nutter cultist, have you attacked the Prof. and all the LI authors as “Progs” yet?

        Waiting…

          Barry in reply to Ragspierre. | April 2, 2018 at 1:44 pm

          I only call progs, progs. And attacking LI authors, that is what you do routinely.

          Like all progs, you attempt to pin your perfidy upon others.

          Plain for anyone to see.

          Barry in reply to Ragspierre. | April 2, 2018 at 2:02 pm

          “Waiting…”

          On the men with the white coats to get there?

      Mac45 in reply to Ragspierre. | April 2, 2018 at 12:23 pm

      I knew that you would be more than happy to help me illustrate my point. As you can see, you presented not a single reasoned, well-expressed, documented truth to counter my remarks about Ingraham’s tactics with regard to Hogg and his backers. Instead, you responded to what you perceived to be a personal attack upon YOU and your veracity. And, you did this, not by presenting a reasoned, well-expressed and documented rebuttal, but by launching an attack upon my veracity, in general, by labeling me in such a way that my effectiveness would be reduced. This is exactly what both Hogg and Ingraham did. Now, I will illustrate what a reasoned, well-expressed rebuttal.

      Well, Slick, my economics are time tested and proven. Whereas your free trade open borders economics have landed us where we are today. So, what was your point?

      As to being a birther, yep. Now, I have no idea where barack Obama was born. I have no idea who his father was. There have been conflicting claims made. And it should be easy to settle these matters, produce a verified long form birth certificate from the state of Hawaii.All I have ever asked is that Barack Obama have the State of Hawaii release his original, long form birth certificate to public scrutiny. What happened, first the State of California passed a law prohibiting this action, then the WH released an alleged long form birth certificate which was examined and found to have been alter with a commercial document program like Photoshop. So, explain to me exactly why a person wouldn’t eimply release a copy of a document that everyone else in the country has to produce at least once in their lifetime, if not several. Oh, that’s right, you can’t do that and neither can anyone else.

      As for “natural rights”, there is only one natural right shared by all of humanity, once they enter this world. That is the right to die. Every other so called “right” can be denied to any individual by other human beings and even the universe itself. And, yes, the Founders not only made up the rights of Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness, they specifically denied those “rights” other residents of the colonies and the new United States. So, yep, these rights sprang from the mind of man, not God or “Nature”.

      As to Porter’s wives, are you referring to Rob Porter? If so, there has not only been no confirmation of the claims of any of his former wives that Porter engaged in any physical violence with any of them. It is all hearsay. No criminal charges were ever filed against Porter for these alleged attacks. And, even better, according to Porter, in a recent media interview [I believe with Fox News], he has an affidavit from at least one witness to him being the victim of a physical attack by his ex-wife, not the other way around. Now, I know that you automatically believe whatever any woman claims, but there was never ANY evidence that Porter committed any violence against his ex-wives. Evidence is always nice to have when smearing someone’s reputation. Also, I NEVER claimed that Porter’s ex-wives aver claimed that he committed a “murderous” attack upon them. If you wish to re-read my post on that subject, you will see that I was providing anecdotal evidence of women claiming that their spouse had tried to choke them to death, when there was no evidecne that such had occurred even though, given the disparity of force between husband and wife, the man could have easily killed the moan had he chosen to do so.

      By the way, did you take your unicorn Easter Egg to hunt
      Easter Eggs, or did the Easter Bunny deliver them personally, when he came over for dinner, yesterday? I apologize, that was punching down [I’m taking your “philosophy” to heart, here]. 😉

        Ragspierre in reply to Mac45. | April 2, 2018 at 9:49 pm

        Yep. Thanks for the confirmation. You’re as nutty as squirrel shit.

        Why do think…

        Oh. Never mind. You can’t.

Soros’ little hitler needs to be slapped in the mouth. Then kicked in the balls. Then slapped again. Then kicked in the balls again.

So does Soros.

    joydbrower in reply to TheFineReport.com. | April 2, 2018 at 7:53 am

    I’m thinking that a massive stroke for Soros would work a lot more effectively. Unfortunately, I understand that that particular devil has spawned two equally rotten half-lings that just might pick up the old man’s torch….

In that she is the only show I watch on Fox, it will be a problem. I like her and Harris Faulkner. But Harris is on early. Bret Baier plays the stupid role too much for me…pretending that the MSM ridiculous talking points sometimes have credence, as if my children could not see thru the charade.

What is so astonishing about this entire debacle is how those on the Left demand that Laura Ingraham be taken off the air due to her bullying while Hogg and others continue to spout hate, insults, and bullying at levels off the scale. While they find Ingraham’s trivial level of “bullying” so offensive that she must be removed, they and their audience see nothing wrong with the intense level of hate and bullying by Hogg et. al. It is beyond all reason that the public and these advertisers actually buy into this hypocritical exercise for it reeks of nothing less than censorship. If I was an advertiser, I would recognize this for the censorship they intend it to be and I would double down on my advertising dollar. But then again it is in my nature to fight against injustice from any side.

Not sure what has transpired in Rags life. But I used to read the comments just to read his. Cogent. Informed. Please seek help. We all have.

    Ragspierre in reply to sdharms. | April 2, 2018 at 9:30 am

    What’s happened has happened not to me, but to the LI commentariat.

    I made two rather innocuous comments early on here. One defended Ingraham’s act of conscience.

    Now, that is not permitted by the rank tribalism here.

    **Fen | March 29, 2018 at 7:34 pm

    Thanks Laura, some of us needed to be reminded that the Groveling Apology Tour ™ doesn’t work with these people.

    You thought you could trade your dignity for your advertisers. Now you will have neither.**

    I am not of the “tribe”. I support acts of conscience.

    So, Fen changes his tune for this attack…

    **Maybe she was right to back down and turn the other cheek, maybe she wasn’t.

    But you are not the one to defend the Virtues. They are not props to be used for self-promotion. That borders on blasphemy.**

    He’s a switch-hitter, and will never allow consistency to interfere with his hate.

    For that, I am attacked. You should know by now I don’t suffer attacks from moral cowards like Fen. Never have. Never will.

    I’ve always been a defender of acting on one’s conscience. For years. It won’t change because the tribal ThoughtPolice attack me in the most cowardly manner they can contrive.

To me this seemed like a twitter war… Dejectedhead mentioned bots supporting Laura, well I have to wonder about the bots that followed Mr. Hogg’s directive and attacked her advertisers. I looked at some of those accounts and they seemed strange. Prof. Jacobson is right, if this possibly manufactured outrage shuts down the Ingraham Angle, then it will be used again. It is more than an unhinged and emboldened totalitarian movement its about faking and magnifying outrage using social media.

Mountains out of molehills on steroids…

I’m glad you mentioned Sandra Fluke!! Indeed, I remember the name, but have absolutely NO memory of what made her 15 minutes of fame so remarkable – but, ultimately, forgettable!! I’ve made the same prediction for Hogg Boy – a real JERK!! (He’s not even mature enough to call an effer!!) I think his days as a Useful Idiot will be over soon….

As that great fictional hero. Leroy Jethro Gibbs, says, “Never apologize. It’s a sign of weakness.”

I prefer ‘buycotts” to boycotts. It’s more fun to give Chik-fil-a its best day ever than to stop buying something you only buy once in 10 years anyway. The increase in membership in the NRA is good for them and kind of fun.
But if we’re going to have a boycott, it would be better to target one of her advertisers hard than to spread it around. It should be a company that sells a lot of small ticket items. I don’t need a new mattress this decade. I think Rachael Ray would be a good choice. While it’s just her pet food company that advertisizes on Ingraham’ show, she sells lots of other stuff and is a TV personality herself. Her wet brand of cat food is already under a recall so she has a bit of a PR problem. We could target her own brands, but also the companies that advertise on her show. Make her take the heat. She has a forum of her own should she decide to do a “mea culpa”.

David Hogg is like Miley Cyrus: managed by his parents. He’s out there, and his parents chose this for him. He is a public figure, ostentatiously inviting commentary.

Henry Hawkins | April 2, 2018 at 9:29 am

Blow up your TV
Throw away your paper
Go into the country
Build you a home.

Plant a little garden
Eat a lot of peaches
Try an find Jesus
On your own.

Spanish Pipedream – John Prine

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BofvfVPFbiM

Any advertiser who drops advertising on Ingraham’s show at the behest of those who do not like what she says are proclaiming by that act that they do not want to do business with, do not want to sell their products to, do not want their products to be bought by, those who like and watch Laura’s show. These people, believing in the principle of mutually voluntary relations that our nation’s system of liberty is founded upon, will naturally avoid doing business with these business that do not want to do business with them. I have bought several items of furniture through Wayfair, but will never buy from them again BECAUSE THEY HAVE DECLARED ME A CUSTOMER NON GRATA.

Business need to recognize that this loss of business is the opposite of the threatened loss of business they face from the left. Conservative supporters of American liberty look favorably on ALL mutually benificial business relations, not just the ones that they themselves form with sellers and buyers of goods and services but also those that others engage in, all others, of whatever varying views, so long as no one is engaging in force and fraud. We look favorably on the SYSTEM of mutually beneficial exchange that is enabled by liberty.

Thus we don’t infer anything negative about a business for doing business with all who want to do business with them. We don’t say we won’t do business with you if you do business with people we disagree with. That is liberty-hating behavior, only exhibited by the liberty-hating left (a description that fits most of today’s Democratic Party). Conservatives only decline to engage in what we would otherwise see as mutually beneficial relations if companies say that they do not want to do business with us.

It is simply wrong for business, when the liberty haters insist that they stop doing business with the liberty lovers, to regard the situation as a symmetrical “damned if they do and damned if they don’t.” The two sides are not the same. They are opposite. Thus the question advertisers face is only the very simple one: do these companies themselves believe in the system of mutually beneficial exchange with fellow citizens who may disagree on a wide variety of questions?

In the present disagreement one side thinks that it is reasonable to criticize children for charging that any adult who does not want schools to be left undefended is to blame mass murder. The other side claims that children should never be criticized, or they find it politically expedient to pretend that they think children should never be criticized. Civil society is full of such commonplace disagreements. Only liberty haters would refuse to do business with businesses that do business with those on the other side of these ordinary disagreements.

The children in the Ingraham case are very expressly on the liberty hating side, which makes it very reasonable to criticize them. They are a budding cadre of would-be totalitarian monstrosities, which should make it that much easier for businesses threatened by these children to comprehend the situation. Do they really want to side with these liberty haters by themselves taking an extreme anti-liberty position, declaring their desire to no longer do business with anyone who disagrees with the liberty hating children? Or do they show that they believe in our system of liberty by saying no, we will not stop welcoming these liberty lovers as customers just because some liberty-hating children want us to.

The choice these companies have been presented with really does seem to be this clear. The companies who have acceded to the wishes of the anti-liberty children must have done so because the managers of these companies do in fact themselves harbor deep hatreds for American liberty, in particular for the natural right to self-defense and the corollary right to be equipped to defend oneself and others, but not stopping there. These companies are also rejecting the principle that exchange that is mutually beneficial for the exchanging parties is beneficial to society as well, that as long as people are not harming each other. Liberty lovers think it is good in general when people find mutual benefit with each other, regardless of what other things we nay disagree about.

It is bizarre for a company that does business with the public not to embrace this principle. They lose business by agreeing with their liberty-hating customers that they should scorn mutually beneficial exchange with their liberty loving customers. The only way they would accede to this, it seems, is if they really are liberty haters themselves, to the point of actually not wanting to do business with liberty lovers.

Can they really just be afraid of losing the business of the liberty haters? Can they actually not see that the liberty haters are rejecting the PRINCIPLE that exchanges that are mutually beneficial for the exchangers should seen by all people of good will as good for society as a whole, regardless of the participants’ particular views on almost any subject?

There can be exceptions where an advertising company explicitly asserts itself as supporting a viewpoint that clearly falls outside of the bounds of civilized opinion, but no such issue has yet arisen to any public prominence. The boycott battles the left is waging are all aimed at advertisers who are simply promoting their own products to audiences that the radical totalitarian left happens to disagree with. Their scorn for the idea that mutually beneficial exchange is beneficial to all is overt and fundamental. Companies really can’t be missing this. Those business managers that go along with such liberty-hating demands must themselves in some deep way identify with the liberty-hating side.

In the field of psychology, the Dunning–Kruger effect is a cognitive bias wherein people of low ability suffer from illusory superiority, mistakenly assessing their cognitive ability as greater than it is. The cognitive bias of illusory superiority derives from the metacognitive inability of low-ability persons to recognize their own ineptitude; without the self-awareness of metacognition, low-ability people cannot objectively evaluate their actual competence or incompetence.

CleanTowelie | April 2, 2018 at 11:47 am

It truly baffles me how this disingenuous, arrogant, emotional, figment of the press has enough sway to scare off advertisers. Off to Sirius Laura. Go where the mob zealots have less power to scare advertisers. What sickens me about this punk is how he acts like a little authoritarian jerk and then says things like ‘love thy neighbour’. How can anyone pay any attention to this crap?

    alaskabob in reply to CleanTowelie. | April 2, 2018 at 12:30 pm

    There are billionaire gun control advocates behind the scene and this is the big time “old boys club”. Add the MSM drumbeat and the only things these corps hear and see are control.

    Propaganda of best Soviet quality is being created within the USA.

“(cue ‘Church Lady’ graphic)

Satan?”

I didn’t know he was John Bolton’s son.

The management of most of these companies has been infiltrated by social activists who are just waiting for an excuse to bring down conservatives. It is not their money.

    MaggotAtBroadAndWall in reply to davod. | April 2, 2018 at 1:37 pm

    Larry Fink, lifelong Democrat and HRC supporter, co-founded Blackrock. Blackrock has $6.3 TRILLION under management. It owns stock in virtually every publicly traded company in America.

    He sent a letter to corporate CEOs telling them o start managing their companies more like they are SJWs. I’m surprised the letter has not gotten more attention in conservative circles.

    http://www.businessinsider.com/blackrock-ceo-larry-fink-just-sent-a-warning-to-ceos-everywhere-2018-1

    I’d note that the Florida shooting happened after Fink sent his letter. Not long after the shooting, Citibank announced it would stop financing certain gun sales. Dick Sporting Guns said it would no longer sale guns to people who would otherwise be lawful purchasers.

    This follows California billionaires Marc Benihoff (CEO of Salesforce.com) and Tim Cook (CEO of Apple) using their power and influence to persuade Indiana’s state legislature to change its religious liberty law.

    Think about that. Millions of Indiana voters voted for their legislature and governor to represent them. The legislature passed the religious liberty bill. The governor signed it into law. Then two Democrat billionaires in CA, neither of whom voted for the Indiana state legislature or governor, decide they don’t like the law. They use their power and influence to change it. In a way, disenfranchising the Indiana voters.

    Google visited Obama 427 times during his presidency. During that time, Google became less tolerant of conservative viewpoints and some conservatives accuse it of suppressing their views on Youtube.

    It’s going to get worse.