Carla_Danger
Platinum Member
This would make any proposed law unenforceable and subjective - very dangerous in my opinion.
Why? If it is legal to destroy a person's business and/or livelihood for no other reason than the person said something somebody didn't like, what rights does anybody have? How is not allowing people to attack other people's businesses and livelihoods more dangerous than allowing people or government to attack others at will?
Foxfyre - I think you're playing a little loose with the language when you say "destroy a persons's business". When people organize boycotts and picket businesses, they aren't destroying anything. They're simply encourage other people to avoid patronizing that business. As far as I'm concerned, unless - as has been covered here - there is actual libel involved - it shouldn't matter whether someone has a "legitimate reason" for the boycott or not. The is the same logic used for the anti-discrimination laws, which insist that a business open to the public must have a "legitimate reason" to refuse service.
Both cases are antithetical to freedom because they turn liberty inside out, requiring that we justify our acts, in essence implementing guilty until prove innocent. If they acts are truly harmful, if they truly infringe on the rights of others, our reasons are irrelevant, they should be illegal across the board. And if the acts aren't harmful, if they aren't violating anyones inalienable rights, then they shouldn't be illegal. In both cases, the act of not serving someone, and the act of persuading people to shun a business, no one's rights are being violated. There is no right to be free from other people saying you're a jerk and there's no right to be served by someone who doesn't want to serve you. In both cases attempting to assert such a right is really an attempt to gain power over others.
In my opinion, if people are allowed to organize and picket, boycott, threaten a business's customers, suppliers, advertisers, sponsors and otherwise attempt to destroy that business owner's business and/or livelihood for no other reason than the business owner expressed an opinion somebody didn't like, then none of us have any liberty at all. Anybody can put anybody out of business for any reason they want at any time they want.
I can find no argument of any kind for how that would be okay.
But again, if a business displeases me, I have every right to say so, to tell everybody I know, and to fill out a rating for that business expressing exactly how I feel about the service or treatment I received so long as I do not represent that untruthfully. I have every right to sue if I was materially or physically harmed by the business's failure to provide a product or service I paid for.
But I should not have a right to organize a mob to attack and destroy that business just because somebody made me mad.
So the OP is saying that no one should have the right to put PP out of business just because of what was taken out of context in those anti-abortion those videos, right?
I don't have a problem with protests against a business engaged in evil, unfair, unethical, or immoral practices that are harming people who have no choice in the matter and no realistic way to protect or defend themselves. But that is a separate debate and discussion for another thread.
This thread is re tolerance of what people think and believe when they are requiring nobody else to agree with them and/or their right NOT to act in matters/events/activities they believe to be immoral, wrong, or for whatever reason.
Who gets to decide what is evil, unfair, unethical, and immoral?