Georgia

When Democrats pushed for a boycott of Home Depot, I was openly critical. When Democrats pushed for a boycott of Soul Cycle, I was openly critical. When Democrats pushed for a boycott of Hallmark, I actually defended the idea of a boycott had Hallmark not reversed their decision. When it comes to boycotts, liberals have clearly gone overboard. That does not mean that I view boycotts as inherently wrong.

A lot of people talk about the over-the-top arguments for boycotts being part of cancel culture. This idea of cancel culture came up when Georgia passed a controversial voting law. Even liberal media outlets have admitted that the Democrats lied about parts of the law, but the specifics of this law are technically irrelevant to the bulk of what I intend to write.

Democrats promoted the idea of boycotting Georgian businesses if they didn't speak out against the law. This is a bit hypocritical of the political party that has repeatedly demanded that businesses should not be allowed to influence politics. Many of these businesses obliged. Personally, I thought that it was excessive for liberals to talk about a boycott for not saying what they wanted to hear.

During this time, #BoycottGeogia was trending online. Perhaps there was a reason to misspell the name of the state, but I never saw an explanation. It came off as though they wanted to dictate the laws of a state that they cared too little about to even spell correctly.

This was followed by a big announcement from Major League Baseball. They were going to move the All-Star game out of Georgia in protest of the law. In other words, they were harming people who had absolutely nothing to do with the law in an attempt to bully a state into changing its laws. Regardless of what you think about the law, this was not the right approach.

Before I go further, I want to mention one of my many frustrations with liberals. They frequently use the hypocrisy of the Republican party to defend their own hypocrisy. A good example of this tactic was when Barack Obama renewed the key provisions of the Patriot Act. Democrats defended the law they once considered to be among the worst ever by accusing its critics of hypocrisy.

Each time I saw someone online criticize the Patriot Act under Obama, liberals would attack the critic for hypocrisy. That's right. Liberals use people's criticism of a law as evidence they supported the same law. In the ideal world, this would have been considered completely absurd. Oddly enough, nobody ever corrected them. I can honestly say that I am among the minority of Americans who had the same view of the Patriot Act under Bush as I did under Obama.

There's a reason that I'm bringing this up. Republicans started talking about boycotting Major League Baseball. Liberals were quick to hypocritically turn against the idea of boycotting by attacking conservatives of hypocrisy. Of course, this was very different from the Patriot Act. There is a distinct difference for calling for boycotts of businesses who don't make a political statement and calling for a boycott of a sports league that harms people who had nothing to do with a law as a means of bullying a state into changing a law. It is not hypocritical to see the difference.

Just go back to how I started this post. You can be against cancel culture without believing that boycotts are wrong. Although I am not to the point of boycotting, I can understand the reasoning. Personally, I would need to see a pattern of repeat behavior before I joined such a boycott. Of course, I doubt that most conservatives would still defend a boycott if the roles were reversed.

Many conservatives went beyond Major League Baseball. They have pushed for a boycott of Delta and Coca-Cola for their statements against the voting law. Although I see a difference between boycotting over saying something and not saying something, these potential boycotts are a lot flimsier. I refuse to defend them.