{"id":8786,"date":"2018-12-19T11:25:43","date_gmt":"2018-12-19T10:25:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/?p=8786"},"modified":"2018-12-19T11:29:41","modified_gmt":"2018-12-19T10:29:41","slug":"conservatives-need-to-stop-defending-their-enemies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/8786\/","title":{"rendered":"Conservatives need to stop defending their enemies"},"content":{"rendered":"

In my podcast<\/a> with Chris Mounsey of The Devil’s Kitchen we spoke about how modern-day politicians (and business leaders) are all at sea because they don’t adhere to any principles, and their speech and actions are made up on the fly depending on which way the winds of maximum approval are blowing. In the ZMan’s latest podcast<\/a> he says what might be construed as the opposite, that the reason the right has lost the culture war on every front is because they are more interested in espousing principles than defeating the enemy.<\/p>\n

However, our two positions may not be contradictory. The ZMan believes principles are drawn up and adhered to by the victors after the fight has been won by any means necessary, and there’s probably a lot of truth in that. Half the time the principles are applied ahistorically to explain why their side won: look at the moral posturing from the victors of wars that were won chiefly thanks to greater industrial output and superior logistics. A good example of the ZMan’s example of the right’s problem unveiled itself yesterday. Here’s the story<\/a>:<\/p>\n

A children’s speech pathologist\u00a0who has worked\u00a0for the last nine years with developmentally disabled, autistic, and speech-impaired elementary school students in Austin, Texas, has been told that she can no longer work with the public school district, after she refused to sign an oath vowing\u00a0that she \u201cdoes not\u201d and \u201cwill not\u201d engage in a boycott of Israel or \u201cotherwise tak[e] any action that is intended to inflict economic harm\u201d on that foreign nation. A\u00a0lawsuit on her behalf\u00a0was filed early Monday morning in a federal court in the\u00a0Western District of Texas, alleging a violation of her First Amendment right of free speech.<\/p>\n

The child language specialist, Bahia Amawi, is a U.S. citizen who received a master\u2019s degree in speech pathology in 1999 and, since then, has specialized in evaluations for young children with language difficulties (see video below). Amawi was born in Austria and has lived in the U.S. for the last 30 years, fluently speaks three languages (English, German, and Arabic), and has four U.S.-born American children of her own.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Regardless of what you think about the American practice of making people take various oaths, especially those related to Israel, if we’re adhering to classical liberal principles the requirement is an abomination and probably in violation of her First Amendment rights. But here’s the thing. The left imposes political purity tests on swathes of the population up and down the country, including hounding people from their jobs and social media platforms for the slightest wrongthink. They also attempt to destroy the careers of those who don’t succumb to the bullying tactics of the blatantly antisemitic BDS movement; if the only country in the world you’re boycotting just so happens to be the Jewish one, and when the subject comes up you sound as though you\u2019re reading from a Hamas pamphlet, people will draw their own conclusions. (Indeed, the pledge the teacher was asked to sign was created specifically to thwart anti-Israel boycotts and a version of it is included by law in any contract an American company does for work abroad, including the Middle East).<\/p>\n

When a right-winger is having their life destroyed for holding the wrong opinions, left either justifies the infidel’s treatment or they simply stay quiet. But when the shoe is on the other foot and it’s one of their own side being violated, they suddenly discover principles have a use after all – namely, to beat conservatives over the head with:<\/p>\n

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Will free speech warriors dave Rubin, @SamHarrisOrg<\/a> , @jordanbpeterson<\/a> speak out on behalf of the teacher in Texas that declined signing an anti-BDS pledge clause in her contract, costing her her job? Ironically, they’ve all become what the claim to despise<\/p>\n

\u2014 b bartell (@bartellall) December 18, 2018<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n