How the BB-LiA targeted American conservatives … and won

In the beginning the BB-LiA was just another lobby in Washington DC, plowing through congressmen to get policies that favored its existence (Big Business Lobby in America).

The organization got its trickle-down favoritism, and then got its NAFTA-type agreements (imbalanced foreign business relationships). It put a lot of effort into these campaigns, working the congressmen at golf courses, ski resorts, social affairs, and then selling these ideas to people.

But in the 90′s the BB-LiA realized something: why waste our time on the congressmen … we should lobby the people.

At this point all Americans were fair game. But any good strategy team will analyze cost/return equations. They realized that highly-educated, secular-leaning people (typically these are democrats) were too pragmatic to influence easily; but that the conservatives, who were gullible (gullibility is a by-product of trusting, which is a by-product of faith … the gullibility of conservatives is a sacred feature and should not be exploited), would be easier to influence.

Of course you can’t call up 100 million conservatives and invite them to a vacation retreat in the Hamptons to make your case. What you need is a large scale marketing component, such as a media source or two. Rush Limbaugh was hired; FOX News was put together.

Rush Limbaugh and FOX News are merely the media component of the BB-LiA’s campaign to lobby America’s simple folk, to get them to do the BB-LiA’s bidding in DC through democracy channels. And now you have religious conservatives teaming up with fiscal conservatives, two sub-groups that should be polar opposites.

Is it ok to protest military funerals?

The first amendment establishes “the right of the people (to) peaceably … assemble” … yeah yeah we already know that.

When dealing with any law, especially constitutional law, it is important to consider the spirit of the law, which can often be somewhat different from the verbatim reading ( see Letter and spirit of the law ).

This difference between spirit of the law and letter of the law is sometimes due to the difficulty of expressing a complicated thought with words, or other times due to the lawmakers desire to keep a written law vague, thus opening the door for many ambiguous interpretations.

If we trust only in the literal written words of a law we may misunderstand the purpose, the intent, of the law.

So now we have people protesting at soldiers funerals

So now we have people protesting at soldiers funerals, and they feel that it is ok to do so because the first amendment says, in words, that they can. But somehow it just doesn’t seem right … is it?

PRAGMATIC ANALYSIS – we can summarize the variables involved in this discussion and determine how they all stack up ( here’s a quick qualitative summary ) …

• what was the intention, the concern, of the ‘freedom to assemble’ clause?
• Soldiers are political figures, but they are also people; thus when protesting the politic of the soldier’s position, protesters are also disturbing a family’s most painful and personal grieving moment – did the authors intend on assemblage being used in such a way?
• assemblage is intended to enable people to voice an opinion, and to enable the building of idea-momentum of some common belief, but certainly the location of the assembly is questionable: at the local courthouse to protest property taxes, in front of a restaurant that uses child labor, at a soldiers funeral ( which of these is different from the others ).
• the property outside of a cemetery is public property, but undoubtedly the boisterous attitudes of the protesters are carried into the funeral service by the unsuspecting funeral attendees as they pass by the protest area when entering the cemetery.
• what is meant by ‘peaceably’?
• the protesters have clearly been given the right to protest, but that protest, or the carrying out of it, must not pose wrongs against others.
• what else?

COMMON SENSE ANALYSIS – protesting a person’s funeral service just doesn’t seem right, and I’m sure this is NOT what the authors had in mind when they wrote the first amendment. If you want to protest, do so; but there are plenty of locations where you can do so without being cruel and inconsiderate, and still effectively be heard.

Is it a bad idea to talk politics with neighbors and co-workers?

What happens if at a neighborhood cookout someone starts talking politics? Usually the conversation spirals out of control, and the fun of the cookout is affected by two angry people, each passionate about their point of view regarding some political issue.

Politics at Thanksgiving dinner? Don’t.

But are we being anti-patriotic by avoiding these conversations?

Freedom of Speech basically says that we are allowed to tell others of our concerns … but why are we allowed? The answer is in the implication of Freedom of Speech: the health of our democracy needs these conversations. Our democracy cannot live up to its potential if we don’t each share our political ideas and insights with our friends, co-workers, family members, neighbors.

Being allowed to say what we want is a real sweet gesture, but meaningless if not actuated by you and I, and of course we are going to argue and spit on each other. And afterward we need to show the world that we are the #1 democracy by each objectively considering all the points that our adversary made … and that’s democracy.

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