By Jeffrey Lord on 8.7.12 @ 6:08AM
Assault on Chick-fil-A -- a finishing touch in America's Obama-era refresher course in leftism.
It was as predictable as rain in a hurricane.
"It" being the attempt by leftist thugs masquerading as gays to ruin the Chick-fil-A fast food empire.
Followed by what the New York Post memorably front paged with the blaringly sly headline "Cock Fight." Or, more boringly put, the backlash. A backlashing that became clear in the lines of customers patiently waiting at Chick-fil-A outposts across the country, vividly showing that Americans are refusing to be bullied by opponents of the First Amendment.
At the Paramus (New Jersey) Park Mall, the Post reported, "long lines snaked throughout the food court into the early evening [and the same scene] was played out at hundreds of other Chick-fil-A locations throughout the country in a show of solidarity for the company's Dan Cathy, and free speech."
By now, unless you have been buried under a sand dune at the beach, you know the story. Cathy had been asked a question about whether his firm supported traditional marriage between a man and a woman. Or whether he was in favor of same-sex marriage.
Cathy, a religious man who keeps his restaurants closed on Sunday, answered by saying: "Well, guilty as charged. We are very much supportive of the family -- the biblical definition of a family unit."
And….BAM!
In Chicago and Boston, Mayors Rahm Emanuel and Tom Menino discussed banning the company from the city limits. New York's City Council Speaker Christine Quinn joined in, writing a letter to New York University demanding the school not allow a Chick-fil-A outlet to remain on campus because of what Quinn called its "discriminatory views." Washington, D.C.'s Mayor Vincent Gray accused the company of selling -- really! -- "hate chicken."
The backlash to what might be called the "gay totalitarians" was instantaneous. Americans were furious.
Rush Limbaugh posted a photo of himself eating a Chick-fil-A sandwich, saying the moves by Mayors Emanuel and Menino were a "a direct assault on Christianity… a direct assault on Christians, with economic punishment thrown in, including threats from government officials that are in direct violation of the Constitution." Mark Levin spoke to Rick Santorum about Santorum's support for Chick-fil-A. Former Governor Mike Huckabee called for a Chick-fil-A Appreciation Day…a move that was also made on Facebook and was a huge success. Herman Cain took to the Sean Hannity show for a discussion with Peter Johnson.
Sarah Palin rallied, saying that Dan Cathy was being "crucified," and visited a Chick-fil-A with husband Todd.
The result? All across the country Americans rallied to Chick-fil-A restaurants to stand up for free speech. The fast food chain was swamped with customers, having a "record setting" day. From New York to California, Americans made it plain that they have had enough of this leftist nonsense.
Rush has astutely noted:
There is an explosion waiting to happen in this country. People are fed up, and this is a sign, "I'll tell you what's gonna happen on November 6th. Obama's gonna get Chick-fil-A'd himself."
Fed up is in fact what's going on here.
Meanwhile, the hypocrisy of the Left was as notable as it was predictable.
All those die-hard opponents of "don't ask don't tell" -- the Clinton-era policy that asked of gays in the military that they keep their gayness to themselves and stifle it when it came to free speech abruptly turned on a dime. Now they were out to wipe Chick-fil-A from the face of the planet. All because Mr. Cathy was demanding the same rights for Chick-fil-A as gays were demanding in the military and beyond.
Down in Southwest Florida liberal reporter Mark Krzos of the News Press was furious at seeing free speech exercised in his midst, whining on his Facebook page that "The level of hatred, unfounded fear and misinformed people was astoundingly sad. I can't even print some of the things people said."
So this means Mr. Krzos wants to shut down Occupy Wall Street? It gets better. Krzos went on:
I have never felt so alien in my own country as I did today while covering the restaurant's supporters…. It was like broken records of Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh and a recitation of half-truths and outright lies…. Such a brave stand… eating a go**amn sandwich.
So this guy feels "so alien" in his own country because he comes face to face with free speech? What country is Mr. Krzos living in? Cuba? North Korea? Perhaps Iran… where they execute gays, as opposed to America where gays are both hired at Chick-fil-A not to mention served just like anybody else who shows up hungry.
Where did Krzos learn that free speech was all about only hearing that with which one agrees? "Informed" speech or speech that is deemed "acceptable" or not filled with "hatred." If "hatred" were the issue, then Mr. Krzos would be in jail right now for hate speech.
This issue has in fact nothing to do with Chick-fil-A or with gays. What's really going on here is yet another non-shocking revelation that the Left, whether in America or anywhere else, is now and has always been addicted to some variety of totalitarianism.
There is nothing at all new here.
As we have mentioned before, leftist intolerance for dissent and opposition is as old as the blood soaked guillotines of the French Revolution. Not to mention the Revolution's 20th century descendants from Communists to the Nazis (aka the National Socialists) to their more modern American cousins like all those progressives who hid for decades behind the hoods of the Ku Klux Klan or a few decades later appeared as Bill Ayers and his bomb-setting brethren in the Weathermen.
Most recently these people were on the prowl in the Sandra Fluke dust-up, haughtily demanding that Rush Limbaugh be silenced by removing him from the airwaves. And at various times with various affect they have targeted Lou Dobbs during his CNN tenure, Glenn Beck at Fox, and Pat Buchanan at MSNBC. Not to mention the big push from the early Obama White House itself to try and shutdown Fox News with repeated attacks.
We haven't even touched here on those little gems of fascism on various college campi known as "speech codes."
All of these events and moments are decidedly of a piece.
They have nothing -- absolutely nothing -- to do with being French in 1789, a Russian post-1917, a German in the 1930s, or an American in the 1920s or 1960s. It matters not whether one is a talk radio or television host in the 21st century, or gay, black, a woman, a fast food operator or a college student.
The core of this first, last and always is the beating heart of the Beast that is the Left.
Either you, Comrade, are on board -- or you are a target. The bullies will be coming. You must be made to shut down -- and shut up. Rush was exactly right in saying that the mayors of Chicago and Boston were "essentially Stalinist."
The difference now is that the American people are in fact finally fed up with this nonsense. The light is on and everybody, and I do mean everybody, is home in the American nation.
For those unfamiliar with the basic tenets of the Left, there has now been provided in the Obama-era a four-year crash course in how leftism really works in early 21st century in America.
The guillotine may be physically departed to the historical mists, but the televised images of an SEIU thug beating up an opponent of Obamacare capture the same mindset at work. Lenin may still lie embalmed in Moscow, but his spirit and that of the Russian Revolution haunts the riots launched by the Occupy Wall Street crowd. Even the tamer example of the Obama administration deciding that the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) was something they didn't like -- and thus refused to enforce the law -- displays the Left's historic contempt for such a trifle as the Constitution. Not to mention the full-fledged attack on religious liberty that is the administration attempt to force the Catholic Church to violate its fundamental beliefs to appease HHS bureaucrats.
Lawlessness. Thuggery. Force.
These are the age old, age olds of the Left.
They have not changed. Nor will they.
The good news here is that the American people now have a refreshed and quite vivid understanding of how to spot the leftist virus that has so infected this, that or the other group.
They saw it the other day with all these alleged supporters of "gay rights" attacking Chick-fil-A.
And to their enormous credit, they stood up and swarmed a fast food chain whose signature is the humble chicken sandwich. Thereby elevating Chick-fil-A into a veritable symbol of free speech.
You could also say Chick-fil-A is something else as well. It has effectively acted as the political equivalent of the Richter Scale -- the scale on which the tremors of a coming earthquake are detected.
There is a political earthquake coming in November.
As Ronald Reagan used to say:
"You ain't seen nothing yet."
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