Unable to comment on the "Duck Dynasty" controversy last week due to my hectic Kwanzaa schedule, I am able to sweep in at the end and comment on the commentary.
Anyone who utters the mind-numbingly obvious point that A&E's suspension of "Duck Dynasty" star Phil Robertson doesn't involve the First Amendment because a TV network is not the government, should be prohibited from ever talking in public again. You can bore your few remaining friends with laborious statements of the obvious, but stop wasting everyone else's time.
We know A&E is not the government. It may shock your tiny little pea brains, but free speech existed even before we had a Constitution. Free speech is generally considered a desirable goal even apart from its inclusion in the nation's founding document.
Suppose TV networks were capitulating to angry Muslims by suspending people for saying they opposed Sharia law? Would that prompt any of you pusillanimous hacks to finally take a position on the state of free speech in America?
Or would you demand that we stop the presses so you could roll out your little cliche about a television network not being the government? That fact has very little relevance to someone whose life has just been ruined. Hey! Don't worry about it -- at least it wasn't the government!
Instead of the government censoring speech, what we have is shock troops of liberal agitators demanding people's heads for the slightest divergence from Officially Approved Liberal Opinion.
Evidently, the word of God is on the banned list. As Robertson himself has said, all he did "was quote from the Scriptures, but they just didn't know it."
His offending remarks delivered to GQ magazine were:
"Everything is blurred on what's right and what's wrong. Sin becomes fine ... Start with homosexual behavior and just morph out from there. Bestiality, sleeping around with this woman and that woman and that woman and those men. Don't be deceived. Neither the adulterers, the idolaters, the male prostitutes, the homosexual offenders, the greedy, the drunkards, the slanderers, the swindlers -- they won't inherit the kingdom of God. Don't deceive yourself. It's not right."
There's absolutely no question but that Robertson accurately summarized biblical strictures. But liberals can't grasp that God is not our imaginary friend, who says whatever we want Him to say, when we want Him to say it. (I promise you, except for venereal disease and eternal damnation, life would be a lot more fun if we were making it up as we went along.)
So they blamed Robertson for Holy Scripture. True, God created the universe and every living thing, but liberals think they can improve on His work.